A transition to low-carbon based transport modes is indispensable to reach net-zero emissions and curb further global warming. Sweden has embarked on a journey to become the first fossil fuel-free welfare state in the world by 2045 and to do so based on legitimacy, trust, justice and acceptance. This process will bring significant technological and organizational changes to the transport sector, with likely profound implications for workers, in terms of their working life, health, safety, identity and skill requirements.

Together with the Swedish Transport Workers’ Union, the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies and Lund University’s Division of Human Rights Studies, the JUSTIT project will investigate:

• the likely implications, both beneficial and detrimental, of policies and strategies to decarbonize the transport sector on transport workers in Sweden and the ways these will vary from a gender, age and geographical perspective
• the ways in which transport workers’ concerns and proposals are included in company and government planning and decision-making with regards to the fossil-free transition
• policy options to support transport workers in the transition to a fossil-free Sweden.

The project will provide new insights on how to navigate the fossil-free transition in a fair way and how to ensure it goes hand in hand with improvements in working life for transport workers. This will help in creating a broadly shared vision of a fossil-free welfare society and identifying governance interventions that enable an effective and just fossil-free transition in the transport sector.