Voices from the field: working for a just climate in India

In this chapter, Seema Arora-Jonsson discusses the question of just transitions with a cross section of people working for a better climate in India: a former civil servant and climate negotiator who has long worked with climate issues, a practitioner/activist working on just transitions in an NGO, an activist with a long history in the women’s grassroots movements, a gender activist who has worked extensively with climate change at the international level as well as a networker who maintains a platform for corporations for climate finance. We discuss the context in which transitions are taking place, go on to current policy approaches and its gendered aspects and the structural challenges and barriers of policy approaches to a just transition. In the overarching gloom, we also discuss the rays of hope, and we end with what we believe is needed to take the world into a sustainable and climate-resilient place.