The JUST Centre and Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission’s Good Futures Project

Position
Policy project

Policymakers need to be able to direct climate investment toward equitable economic growth, maximising co-benefits and building public consensus for a just transition. This project tackles the critical implementation gap between the principle of a ‘just transition’ and the practical reality of local policymaking.

This project will trial, test and extend the Good Futures Framework, an innovative tool for climate decision-making. A fully developed toolkit will help policymakers identify positive and negative impacts during policy planning, enabling them to increase potential co-benefits, mitigate potential negative impacts and integrate stronger protections for vulnerable groups.

This toolkit draws on three strands of research to provide evidence-based, practical tools to enable climate decisions to be fairer, more effective and ultimately more supported by affected groups.

The project will:

  • Host six training and knowledge exchange workshops with local/regional policymakers.
  • Integrate two additional features requested by policymakers (indicators and real-world examples).
  • Conduct a comparative case study of the framework’s uptake across two local authorities, exploring factors that affect the adoption of just transition principles into decision making.
  • Develop a toolkit enabling the framework to be tailored to local authorities and organisations across the UK.
  • Host five major impact events with communities, and both local and national policymakers.

This project is funded by the 2025–2026 Research England Policy Support Fund.

Contacts

Partners

  • Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission
  • Joined Up Sustainability Transformation (JUST) Centre