Just Transition in National Climate Policy: Evidence from the Latest Nationally Determined Contributions

Despite the growing prominence of just transition in international climate discourse, little is known about how countries translate this concept into national policies. This paper addresses that gap by analysing how Parties to the Paris Agreement interpret just transition in their latest Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). We find that 127 of 196 Parties explicitly refer to just transition in their NDCs. Combining keyword-assisted quantitative text analysis with close reading, we examine the design of national just transition policies and map their presence across climate actions. The results show that just transition has been widely used across mitigation, adaptation, and means of implementation, but substantial cross-national variation persists in the development objectives, policy applications, sectoral priorities, and narrative framings associated with the concept. Based on these findings, we argue that (1) United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could strengthen international just transition governance by providing guidance to promote greater policy coherence across Parties, (2) energy transition and finance may serve as practical entry points for building a consensus-based international governance agenda under the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP), and (3) fostering peer learning and cooperation among countries with similar transition conditions could further strengthen international policy alignment.