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The integration of climate targets into EU forest governance is politically contentious, with policy actors pursuing conflicting objectives through justice-based claims of victimisation and marginalisation, often resulting in intractable conflicts. This paper examines how justice is framed and perceived by policy actors in political debates concerning the EU's Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation. We answer three research questions: a) what just transition frames are employed by policy actors within the LULUCF discourse, b) who uses these frames, and c) how these frames relate to the official EU LULUCF policy framing. To address these questions, we analyse 101 stakeholder submissions from the EU's Have Your Say initiative and key EU LULUCF policy documents. Integrating frame analysis with environmental justice and political ecology theories, we identify five distinct just transition frames: Forestry first, Forests for climate, EU transition policy pragmatism, Biodiversity and climate first, and Addressing the periphery. Findings reveal significant structural power asymmetries, with economically dominant, industry-aligned frames being privileged in official policy texts. Conversely, ecological concerns, regional interests concerning Europe's periphery, and specific forms of practitioner knowledge remain marginalised or excluded. Such underrepresentation intensifies regional inequalities, ecological vulnerabilities, and socio-economic marginalisation. Across all identified frames, policy actors consistently highlight perceived procedural injustices, including limited transparency and inadequate participation opportunities. The paper concludes that addressing these perceived justice deficits requires recalibrating EU forest governance toward genuine procedural inclusivity, fairer distribution of policy burdens, and explicit recognition of both material and epistemic marginalisation.

Whilst sustainability transitions are key in addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, attempts to implement them are often confronted with protest. Despite a rich body of literature around dynamics of transitions, there exists a knowledge gap on how to address this lack of social acceptance and the political response to date is showing a trend of policy dismantling. Current approaches to understand social acceptance of transitions, and the social acceptability evaluation processes behind them, are fragmented and often normative, rooted in predefined moral foundations and prioritised value orientations. Without an integrative framework that integrates this fragmented knowledge and that allows for the inclusion of societal social acceptability evaluations rather than predefined normative criteria, policy makers lack clear guidance on how to govern transitions in a way that increases their social acceptance, beyond watering down transition objectives. Based on literature reviews and empirical data from the English post-Brexit agricultural transition, this article introduces a heuristic, diagnostic, and integrative framework of social acceptability evaluation dimensions within transition governance to support policy makers in their efforts to implement transitions by focusing on the extrinsic social construction processes through which the social acceptance of sustainability transition efforts is negotiated and it provides researchers with a tool around which to anchor examinations of social acceptability evaluations of sustainability transitions.

Forests are central to climate change mitigation, and there is consensus that climate transition efforts must be just. However, the “just transition” concept often functions as a boundary object, leading to ambiguity in its implementation. Statements of commitment to just transitions therefore require scrutiny as to what a just transition is meant to entail, what kind of justice transition policies seek to ensure, and how these ambitions are envisioned to be realised in practice. Yet, it is precisely this that is missing in the current academic literature, especially in the forest sector context. This study addresses this gap by analysing implicit and explicit justice expressions in the Paris Agreement, and EU- and Swedish climate-forest policy mixes, thereby providing empirical insights on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of just transitions in the forest sector. Using a newly developed framework that combines the policy mix concept with distributional, recognitional, and procedural justice dimensions, the analysis reveals shared narrow foci in just transition understanding, discrepancies between expressed just transition motivations, and inconsistent mechanisms for implementation across governance levels, thus risking stakeholder disengagement. The results call for explicit discussions in policy debate on how justice can be ensured in transition efforts in the forest sector across levels, regardless of the specific understanding of justice that is adhered to, and open societal debate on what a just transition ultimately ought to mean in a forest context. Furthermore, policy makers must take the step from ambiguous promises to concrete instruments to support forest stakeholders through the transition.

Sustainability transitions in agrifood systems imply significant changes in agriculture encompassing land use and farming practices as well as the goods produced. Transition processes are challenging and politically contested in many European countries with various climatic, market, and policy conditions. However, research has not yet examined how perceptions of justice in agricultural sustainability transitions differ or align between countries with relatively similar environmental farming conditions. We compare two countries, England and Finland, with similar challenges in climatic terms yet relatively different policy and market conditions. Using interview and focus group data, we examine how justice related issues are described and claimed by farmers and other stakeholders in the context of agrifood system sustainability transitions in these countries. Findings from both countries revealed more similarities than differences. The similarity of many concerns, especially among farmers, implies that just agrifood transitions would greatly benefit from increased cross-country exchange, learning, and knowledge exchange. We also uncovered relevant differences in, for example, problem diagnosis and proposed or claimed solutions. Our results show the value of cross-country comparisons and have implications for realizing just agrifood transitions more successfully by fostering cross-country learning, exchange, and collaboration.

Local actors are recognized as key drivers for climate action. Making climate change relevant and possible to act on in local contexts is thus a critical undertaking for both researchers and society at large. Connecting climate change to people’s known surroundings and experiences, and framing climate action in relation to everyday practices in the local context, might then be crucial to making climate change relevant and actionable on the local level. In this paper, we explore the potential of forests to serve as such a connection. We have worked in close collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders in two case study locations in Sweden to explore potential courses of action for local climate action in relation to forests. We critically analyze these local articulations of climate action and examine the assumptions underlying them, with the aim to assess the effects and consequences of different problem representations. Our results illustrate the challenges of thinking and acting outside of the prevalent business-as-usual or more-of-everything discourses, of recognizing the importance of politics and choice, and of overcoming perceived barriers to action. We find tensions in the allocation of responsibility in both time and space – but also potential room for more local action in assumptions of un- or underused potential for political and civil action on the local level.

The agricultural sector is one of the areas that has been highlighted as requiring a sustainability transition. For these kinds of transitions to succeed over the long-term, farmers need to be able to adapt to the required changes. Identifying which individual and institutional aspects are important for farmers' adaptive capacity and willingness to adapt is therefore an essential step in gaining insight into the role of farmers’ agency in transition processes and their long-term sustainability. So far, adaptive capacity literature has mainly focused on adaptive capacity in relation to climate change or individual innovations, thereby leaving a knowledge gap on adaptive capacity in relation to sustainability transitions. In this study, we aim to address this by deepening our understanding of these aspects through 24 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with English farmers and organisations in the context of the post-Brexit agricultural transition. Whilst we found many similarities with previous adaptation literature in the context of climate change and individual innovation, we also found aspects that have not been prominent and thus seem to be specific for adaptation in relation to sustainability transitions. These include the dual role that access to finances and information can play; land ownership status in terms of having the right to implement adaptation measures; state of mind; feeling respected, appreciated, and understood; perceived level of control and ownership; and considerations of (global) consequences. Further research is needed to strengthen and further develop our findings, for example through case studies in other geographical locations or sectors.

There is consensus that we need sustainability transitions and increasing acknowledgement that such transitions should be conducted in a just manner. However, what exactly a ‘just transition’ means and how this should be brought about is less clear. Attempts to examine the justice of transitions to date primarily rely on normative interpretations of what justice means. Using the English agricultural transition as a case, we develop an instrument that builds on the underlying dimensions of justice evaluations to provide a tool for decision-makers to gain insights into societal perceptions of what a just agricultural transition means to them. When adapted, this instrument is also valuable for sustainability transitions in other sectors. We establish adequate construct reliability and validity for a number of constructs such as Equality, Entitlement, and Merit as Principles of Procedural Justice, whilst others such as the different Topics of Distributional Justice will need further refinement.

Agriculture is facing increasing challenges as a result of climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and demographic change. Yet, at the same time, currently dominant agricultural practices contribute to exacerbate these challenges. It is therefore widely recognized that there is a need for an agricultural sustainability transition. However, what this transition should look like and how it should be brought about is a value-based, normative judgement with differing implications for different people, making transition processes inherently political. In order to govern these processes in a way that recognizes the ethical implications of the political nature of agricultural transitions, we need to understand all the components that influence, and are influenced by, transition processes, interactions across societal levels, and the normative and power dynamics that come together to shape the direction and outcomes of transition processes. In addition, we need insights into what aspects people consider when they build their perceptions of the legitimacy and justice of an agricultural transition. In this paper we draw together overarching lessons learned from extensive reviews of dominant transition, legitimacy, and justice theories, interviews with stakeholder organisations, and a survey of 400 English adults.

It is widely recognized that there is a global need for a transition towards more sustainable forms of agriculture. In order for such a transition to be socially sustainable, its input (problem and goal formulation), output (policy instruments), and throughput (processes) need to be perceived as legitimate. However, we currently know relatively little on how to legitimize normatively shaped transition processes and their outcomes. We aim to address this knowledge gap by examining how the governance of agricultural transitions can be shaped to improve the perceived legitimacy of the transition. Through a combined lens of normative and sociological approaches to legitimacy we investigate the English post-Brexit agricultural transition as a crucial case-study. Building on a policy analysis and semi-structured interviews we find that in order to create perceived legitimacy of agricultural transitions, both in the English case and for agricultural transitions generally, clarity and diversity in design is essential. In addition, in order to take account of the normative and political nature of agricultural transitions, our study highlights the importance of a broad problem formulation, a diverse mix of instruments, and a process that is transparent and includes stakeholders in a meaningful and equal way. We conclude that a combined lens of normative and sociological legitimacy forms a useful framework for future research to critically evaluate the normative and power dimensions of transition processes. In addition, it can support governments in their efforts to develop policies for agricultural sustainability transitions that will be accepted by society.