Climate justice and social contracts in focus at CLIMA Workshop

On 26 May 2025, the Centre for Climate Change Law and Governance (CLIMA) at the University of Copenhagen hosted an online workshop titled 'Policy Pathways for Equity, Welfare, and Just Transitions: Workshop on Climate Change and the Social Contract'. The event brings together leading legal scholars, policy experts, and climate governance researchers to explore how environmental policies can support a fairer and more inclusive social contract in Europe and beyond.

The workshop brought together academics and key stakeholders to discuss how global environmental imperatives, specifically climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, disrupt the social contract.

Beatriz Martínez Romera began the session with an introduction, providing an overview of the event’s objectives and situating it within the broader goals of the EXPRESS² project.

This was followed by a presentation from Alberto Barrio, who presented the main climate-related stressors to the social contract that had been identified through research conducted within the project framework. He analysed key areas of friction and proposed potential approaches to address these challenges.

Presentations included:

• Bea Cantillon from the University of Antwerp discussed equity-driven eco-social policies, using the Just Transition Framework in Belgium as a case study.
• Diego Marín from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) explored the role of environmental justice in the eco-social contract.
• Kalina Arabadjieva, from the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), focused on safeguarding workers’ rights in the face of climate change and the green transition.

The event concluded with a roundtable discussion in which all the speakers reflected on the preliminary findings of the project on this topic and explored synergies between equity, welfare and labour protections when it comes to addressing climate-related stressors.