Key Questions About Justice and System Transitions (Williams and Doyon)

Distributive Justice

  • Where and how are the costs and benefits of the transition being distributed?
  • What scales (e.g., jurisdictional, spatial, and temporal) are used to assess impacts and benefits?
  • Are actions reactions to mitigating impacts of events, or proactive planning for future benefits of the transition?
  • What is the scope of analysis (e.g., pilot project, social innovation lab, or whole system)?
  • Are the human rights of affected peoples being respected?

Procedural Justice

  • Who is part of the decision-making process, and in defining “just” and “transition”
  • Do all stakeholders have adequate capabilities to participate? If not, what tools or techniques are being implemented to engage a wider set of stakeholders?
  • How are individuals’ values and motivations being integrated?
  • How are non-human actors engaged in dialogue?
  • How are future generations engaged in dialogue?
  • What power asymmetries exist within different processes (e.g., financial, political, structural) and how are they addressed?
  • What opportunities are there for resistance to dominant political and economic (infra)structures?
  • What happens when there are unresolved disputes or asserted violations of human rights?
  • How are communities impacted by your research engaged in collaboratively developing research goals?

Recognition Justice

  • How is recognition, misrecognition, or non-recognition treated?
  • What cultural institutional processes, legacies, or existing inequalities are present (e.g., the role of colonial legacy and relationships with Indigenous peoples)?
  • How are minority or marginalized worldviews, knowledges, and values recognized and integrated?
  • How are conflicting knowledges and values consolidated or addressed?
  • How are multiple overlapping identities (intersectionality) recognized?
  • How are costs and benefits identified (i.e., through different worldviews, knowledges and values)?