Iron & Earth defines a ‘prosperous transition’ as the process of upgrading our economy and society to achieve multi-generational prosperity for people and the planet. Therefore, this transition must strive for equity, fairness and well-being for all workers, families, communities and the natural environment. Many of the solutions required to power the transition are already available and ready to scale. Our challenge is to create and implement a blueprint to rapidly upgrade the world’s workforces, manufacturing facilities, businesses, infrastructure and environment to support these solutions and streamline the transition. Along the way, we must ensure that those who are currently the most vulnerable and marginalized within our current energy economy can meaningfully participate in, and benefit from, this transition.

Indigenous Economic Leadership and Self-Determination
The new economy must be grounded in recognition of Indigenous peoples’ right to be self-determining over their own lands and resources. Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities have an opportunity to build a prosperous transition together, one that is based on a principled, rights-based approach. Indigenous communities are already at the forefront of the energy transition, drawing on traditional knowledge about living in balance and abundance on the land while applying new skills and innovations to meet the challenges of our times. The journey to deliver decentralized, independent zero-emission energy offers an opportunity for Indigenous communities to attain ‘energy sovereignty’ and new prosperity grounded in self-determination.

Shovel-Worthy Net-Zero Solutions
Achieving a net-zero world will call for a vast array of technologies and nature-based solutions, from emerging zero-emission energy sources to ‘negative emission technologies’ that remove existing atmospheric carbon. Many transformational solutions are already available to us, including those rigorously vetted by Project Drawdown6. In addition, the Energy Futures Lab has identified ‘five ‘shovel-worthy’ technologies’7 well suited to mobilize fossil fuel industry workers, stakeholders and infrastructure as a foundation of the transition. Although many of these solutions are being implemented around the world, they require policies, strategies, and above all vision and leadership, to introduce them into the mainstream at scale.

Achieving net-zero requires us to understand the interconnectedness of social and economic factors and the varied characteristics of our geographic regions. The pathway to net-zero must be paved with realistic, pragmatic, and intersecting steps. The journey will be decades-long but the groundwork, in terms of investment in technology, infrastructure, manufacture and training, must begin immediately with stimulus funding focused towards a green recovery.

Prosperity for All Workers
Re-envisioning and re-shaping the world’s energy infrastructure to deliver net-zero by 2050 calls for bold action that will create many millions of new jobs, even as traditional jobs are gradually superseded. The drive toward net-zero will also create demand for expertise in new sectors with entirely new job descriptions, requiring workers to adjust to this dynamic environment. As such, it is critical to illuminate pathways for change, supporting workers undergoing transition, and enabling them to thrive and support others, in turn, to make the switch. The urgent nature of the transition cannot rely solely on ‘organic’ job growth or purely market-driven mechanisms—clean energy roles must instead be created by a series of measures that are calibrated, cooperative and comprehensive.

Prosperity for Families
The global pandemic has given us fresh insights into the value of the diverse skills that contribute to our economy and we must strive to ensure that all workers earn a fair, living wage that is sufficient to support a family. In a transforming economy, we must adopt new and more relevant metrics to assess the well-being of society, measures that give us insights of far greater value than ‘gross domestic product’. And, as jobs evolve, we must ensure prioritization of continuous skill development, along with equal opportunity and access to secure, well-paid and durable jobs, so that no family gets left behind. Existing studies point to the potential marginalization of Indigenous, immigrant and racialized groups, and also of women unless equity is made a central priority of social and economic transition from the outset. It bears repeating that ‘equity for all’ is a lens through which we must view all proposed recovery measures.

Prosperity for Communities
A prosperous transition would enhance the quality of life and the cohesion of communities through projects providing decentralized power, localized agriculture, urban greening, zero-emission transportation and more. Development planning should ensure that knowledge and skills are imparted to community members to a degree that enables members to secure employment on projects within or near their community. Additionally, projects should include community benefits agreements and provisions for community ownership where possible. The energy transition can potentially enable more uniform distribution of opportunity that builds resilience and restores community pride.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of our globalized supply chains. In order to ensure that the global economy will not break under the strain of future global emergencies, the supply chains of individual regions need to be diversified and strengthened. Therefore, national and community resilience must be at the forefront of our planning for the net-zero economy.

Prosperity and Stewardship of the Environment A prosperous transition must be framed around maintaining the thresholds of the 9 key planetary boundaries8, including:

• Climate change
• Ocean acidification
• Stratospheric ozone depletion
• Bio-geochemical flow (Nitrogen and phosphorus cycle)
• Global freshwater use
• Change in land use
• Biodiversity loss
• Atmospheric aerosol loading
• Chemical pollution