Creating a new climate transition politics? Reflections on a Real Deal for Australia

Abstract

Economic responses to climate change, such as just transitions and the Green New Deal (GND), have helped shift climate policy debate to focus on the economic dimensions of climate change. Yet these approaches have also been limited; they have not always delivered, they have left some groups behind and at times have polarised affected constituencies. This article argues that a key reason for this is that these agendas have primarily involved imposing solutions on communities without activating people's participation in the perpetual cocreation of new social, political and economic solutions. Here, community and academic researchers reflect on the first five years of the Real Deal for Australia project and its effort to realise a community-led climate transition politics through its application of the ‘relational method’. This paper locates the Real Deal within the traditions of just transitions and the GND, and details the theories, methods and practices that it has built upon and involved, including in two place-based projects. It reflects on the intentions of the project and the learning that has occurred in the process, in particular from seeking to privilege the voices of Indigenous Peoples, form diverse community coalitions made up of strong interpersonal relationships between existing trade union, environmental, neighbourhood and faith-based groups, produce robust place-based agendas and buid effective actions for alternative futures.