Youth Visions on the Climate Social Justice Nexus - Winter School in Cluj-Napoca

From 5 to 12 March, students and supervisors from four academic institutions in France, Germany and Romania gathered for a trinational winter school to discuss and exchange about “Youth Visions on the Climate Social Justice Nexus”. The participants came from CIFE (Nice, France), the Fachhochschule Erfurt - Fakultät Architektur und Stadtplanung (FHE, Erfurt, Germany) and the University of Stuttgart – IER (Stuttgart, Germany) and were welcomed by organisers and students of the Babes Bolyai University – FSPAC (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). 

The Winter School took place in in Cluj-Napoca, one of the most dynamic cities in Romania and was realised thanks to the generous financial support of the Franco-German Youth Office (OFAJ/DFJW). It aimed at confronting young people from different academic backgrounds with a topical question: Studying energy justice in the framework of the EU’s current climate and energy transition in order to understand the inequalities and injustices that result from it, in three different contexts.

The many visits and activities confronted participants with the reality of how the energy transition may impact low-income households and local communities if it is not carried out in a fair way. Brainstorming sessions help them realise that despite the socio-economic differences of the three countries they represented, we are all facing similar challenges to make this energy transition socially just and politically acceptable. Together with linguistic and intercultural activities, the programme also helped identify path dependent variables explaining the variety of approaches and implementation of a just transition. This resulted in a common vision paper about Energy justice challenges in France, Romania, and Germany. Mapping inequalities, exploring normative approaches and identifying policy recommendations.