From 17 to 19 February 2025, the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) in collaboration with the Presidential Climate Commission of South Africa and with the support of the World Resources Institute (WRI), hosted a Global Workshop on Monitoring Just Transitions in Cape Town, South Africa. The event brought together country representatives and experts from over 15 countries from all continents– including Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa to exchange insights on the critical task of monitoring just transitions. Participants explored key challenges, effective frameworks, best practices, and practical approaches for tracking progress toward more equitable climate action.

Over the course of the three-day event, participants shared their experiences using the ICAT Just Transitions Monitoring Guide, developed with the support of WRI. Discussions covered a range of topics, from defining just transition indicators and developing national priorities to applying them in practice, adapting approaches to  local contexts and fostering collaborations. The workshop activities were structured around the following stages:

• Establishing a foundational understanding of just transition: Key themes included the necessity of context-specific strategies, strong governance mechanisms, meaningful stakeholder engagement, integrated planning and monitoring, and a holistic perspective encompassing labor markets, economic diversification, and social justice. 
• Focusing on the practical application of monitoring: Discussions addressed indicator selection, data sourcing (including challenges in disaggregating data), private sector engagement and financing, and the importance of data-driven ambition and flexible milestone-based tracking.
• Shifting to strategic integration of monitoring into policy and practice: Participants explored how monitoring informs planning and communication, and considered the potential of a Community of Practice to enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Participants’ insights led to the following key reflections and best practices for monitoring just transitions:

• Start with what’s available, but build toward what’s needed: Countries should establish functional monitoring systems using existing data while proactively identifying desired data points for future collection. For example, Nigeria utilized existing datasets for reporting on nationally determined contributions, then integrated social and labor indicators, employing “dummy indicators” to address initial data gaps.
• Set milestones, not just targets, to track meaningful progress: Countries should define transition milestones that capture the direction and scale of change as a flexible alternative to rigid targets. This approach allows for incremental progress tracking and enables course correction and effective communication of achievements, even with non-linear outcomes and when targets are not precisely met.
• Identify political and regulatory barriers: Given that many just transition challenges arise from political decisions, regulatory delays, or institutional barriers rather than policy gaps, countries should design indicators to create visibility around these governance issues without risking political backlash.
• Beyond risk-tracking: measure economic renewal and new opportunities: Monitoring should capture both risks (e.g., job losses, stranded assets) and opportunities (e.g., new green jobs, investment flows), ensuring that success stories are also measured and amplified. Countries such as Brazil and Nigeria emphasized the importance of tracking not only what is being lost but also what is being built.
• Data is not just for reporting – it must drive decisions: Monitoring frameworks should provide timely, decision-useful data for investment strategies, workforce planning, and policy decisions, actively shaping the transition rather than merely observing it.
• Global knowledge-sharing and collaboration will be critical: As countries move forward with the implementation and institutionalization of their just transition monitoring efforts, global knowledge-sharing, dialogue, and collaboration are essential.  A structured Community of Practice could provide a valuable platform for countries to continually compare methodologies, refine indicators, and exchange best practices.  

Photo credit: WRI

Participants left the workshop feeling empowered and committed to sharing responsibility for creating effective, adaptive, and inclusive monitoring systems that ensure no one is left behind in the shift to a low-carbon, climate-resilient future. 

As one participant put it, “This can’t be the kind of transition that only a few people measure. If we’re not all learning from each other, and if we’re not using the data to improve systems, then we’re missing the point.”