THEMATIC AREAS
Just transition: baselines and futures
- Informal waste workers empowerment
- Citizen participation and science
- Cost and benefits distribution
- Financing just transition
- Indigenous communities
- Just transition across the world and stakeholders
Our PLASYS24 focus
The informal waste collection and recycling sector (‘waste pickers’) have historically been filling an essential gap of environmental protection services not provided by the public or private sector, while operating under extremely adverse working conditions, and wider socioeconomic and legal factors in place. Their massive contribution in preventing plastic pollution now becomes more visible. While the need for a Just Transition is established the forms and the specificities for informal waste workers remain widely unclear. Just transition should also include workers in the plastic industry and in the formal waste and resources industry – who are often also, for other reasons, partially overlooked.
Can we establish adequate baselines of the existing stakeholders, workers, financial play field and size of the informal sector, so that we can develop appropriate action plans that serve for fair compensation and reparation. How a Just Transition that is genuinely empowering and transformative be envisioned and financed? At PLASYS24, we want to steer the debate and explore the format by which an equitable and just transition can take place, including for example at a macro-economic scale modalities, and the potential role of extended producer responsibility.
