Posted 26th May 2025
Rhoda was invited to take part in a Just Transition Workshop in April along with 15 other members of DIWC. Here, she writes about her experience in the workshops and her thoughts on Scotland's Net Zero policies.
Dundee International Women’s Centre is full of surprises with its far-reaching interests. This month, on 22nd and 23rd April, fifteen of us Centre members, attended a research project which examines how local communities understand the Scottish Government’s initiative, ‘Just Transition’ and how it will affect its people. Us! The project also wishes to find out how we, as communities, will be able to adapt to climate change. And beyond that, the two-day workshop was aimed at strengthening our abilities, in all the diversity of our diverse communities, to demand and attain justice in our ongoing transition to a low-carbon society.
The prototype project was conducted by a group of four academics from the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh, whose fields of studies include sociology, law, and politics. In addition to the research leads, facilitators, students, and the University of Dundee’s Community Engagement Manager were all involved in making the two days run smoothly, easy to understand for the participants, and, generally, very comfortable. Partners in this project include the Wester Ross Biosphere, Dundee City Council, ScrapAntics, and DIWC. We were also joined by several representatives from the Boomerang Community Centre.
After a brief introductory video, which introduced us to the idea behind a just transition, to the research we were participating in, and to the fact that the team has also conducted this research in Brazil, we started to talk about whether anything about the film struck a chord with us. Despite the fact that Brazil is literally on the other side of the globe and has a vastly different climate and culture there were many similarities in peoples’ needs. We shared the need for better housing, good food, and less threat of violence in our and our neighbours’ lives.
Later in the morning we talked about what kinds of injustices there are in Dundee, and about how life has been changing here, if at all. Conversations were lively and it soon emerged that everyone had something to say. People made notes of their ideas and thoughts, ranging from housing needs and community cleanliness, to schooling and family solidarity, to transport and job availability, and energy.
In the afternoon, we focussed on our needs for more support and communication in our city, and we spent some time looking at Graham’s great drawings.
Everyone finished out the day feeling like we were maybe really going to help make a difference in the world.
On Wednesday, our initial ideas evolved and we discussed Community Resilience and Care, which means how people in our localities are able to deal with the many injustices, real and perceived, that every community (especially the more vulnerable ones) face. Facilitated by members of the teams, our three tables took on different aspects of instances of support.
There were some awesome ideas suggested and great coping strategies already in play. An amazing list of the opportunities, services, and groups already existent in Dundee emerged. One of the main takeaways for me at this point was that we do not have a really good method of tracking these various resources. We need better coordination of this knowledge!
In the afternoon, we moved our discussions from the present to the future. There are so many hopeful scenarios of what we could look like in Dundee in 2035 with good organisation and by using our voices. I hope to give you more detail in future blogs. For now, I’ll leave you with the assurance that this new small community we formed over our two days talked about what needs to happen in our own communities to ensure that no one gets left behind and so everyone gets to enjoy a cleaner, greener, and fairer world.
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