1. Introduction

Rural areas play a pivotal role in green transition processes as natural resource bases. Yet they are at risk of being reduced to instruments of larger national and international policy goals, creating a sense that their portion of the climate “bill” is disproportionately large. To counter this discrepancy between rural and urban areas, we must examine some of the Nordic rural regions’ complexities in the context of the green transition. For example, the Nordic rural areas have a high level of open land use, raising issues related directly or indirectly to energy and food production, climate adaptation, biodiversity, wetlands, drinking water, infrastructure, zoning and planning, and ownership questions. In addition, a large number of relevant interest groups’ needs must also be considered, encompassing actors such as citizens, farmers, local energy communities, investors, politicians at all administrative levels, and/or interest organisations (Høst et al. 2020; Nielsen 2022). 

The accelerating impact of climate change, the need to adapt to changing economic and political realities, and the recent energy crisis have ensured that the green transition is foremost in most Nordic people’s minds. Yet the leap between acknowledging a fact and agreeing upon its policy implications can be vast, and a transition that only superficially addresses the existing system will not prove successful. Therefore, transition proposals and implemented projects aimed at increased sustainability inevitably result in social, cultural, economic, and/or environmental consequences, with both positive and negative impacts on the established systems. In this context, deploying a proactive approach to the goal of a “just transition” requires a focus on causes, preventive measures and the processes involved rather than merely evaluating outcomes or official plans. A just green transition requires a holistic interpretation of the concept, taking all societal groups and spatial variations into consideration. In this situation, the implications of the upcoming policy shifts for urban-rural divisions are potentially so great that the Nordic Council of Ministers has suggested that geographical inequality should be one of the main focus areas for Nordic climate policies (Høst et al. 2020; Karlsdottir et al. 2022).

Thus far, research has placed an excessive emphasis on either urban areas or immediate stakeholders engaged in energy transition policies instead of examining the position of the regions or the spatial distribution of sustainability transitions. Such a narrow focus risks excluding local rural engagement and disregarding the needs and interests of the rural population, leading to social inequality and ultimately endangering efforts to reach the Agenda 2030 goals for a low-carbon economy. There are major differences in how people experience the transition, both between the Nordic countries and within them. For example, in a recent survey, 80% of Danes and over 70% of Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders viewed climate change as a serious threat, but in Finland, this number was only 55%. The same study revealed that Finns believe current climate policies do not benefit their economies and that the negative effects involved will be unequally distributed across various regions and groups (Tapia et al., 2023). Another survey from 2020 notes that although 68% of Finns acknowledged the important role of rural regions in combatting climate change, only 13% believed that climate policies treat rural and urban regions equally (Ovaska & Vihinen 2020). 

Evidently, the rural aspect of green transitions and related policies has been generally neglected in both research and practice. To contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of a just green transition from a rural viewpoint, this report’s case studies have examined different forms of local benefits in six specific regions in Finland, Norway, and Denmark. In conclusion, we will outline some phenomena that might further explain the existing gap and suggest some forms of local-level action that might address these discrepancies. 

Another gap in the research is the lack of studies that look at how climate adaptation policies consider the dimensions of justice (if at all) (Halonen et al. 2022; Juhola et al. 2022). The policy environment easily leans towards a goal of “having it all”: economic growth, ecological integrity, and social justice. In the context of green transitions, this translates to assuming that after the transition is completed, all these benefits will automatically emerge. However, difficult prioritisations and other sharp political choices are also a part of the process and must be discussed to ensure that local communities experience benefits directly relevant to them, as well. Tensions arising from an unbalanced distribution of benefits can relate to, for example, funding favouring large-scale projects, benefits accruing far from the local communities, or the lack of any local or regional ownership (Halonen et al. 2022). On the other hand, it can also be misleading to assume that the location of a renewable energy project automatically implies that it generates greater advantages to the local community than one managed by national or international actors. Local ownership of the vision of an energy project is thus more important in relation to its perceived justness than the shareholding structure of the company involved (Liljenfeldt 2022). Therefore, the location of a green transition project must address several separate ways of engaging communities, including benefits such as community building, job creation, diverse income sources and monetary compensation, municipal property tax, infrastructure investments, municipal attractiveness, etc., as well as on-going dialogue between all involved partners.

Justice in the context of just green transitions is commonly divided into three subcategories: recognitional, distributive, and procedural. Recognitional justice recognises past and current disadvantages in policy-making processes, while distributive justice refers to the distribution of environmental goods, costs and benefits, and the related vulnerabilities regarding resource access and affordability. Procedural justice focuses on the inclusiveness of the decision-making processes (planning, monitoring, implementation, evaluation) (McCauley & Heffron, 2019; Juhola et al. 2022). In addition to these, other categories are also possible, such as cosmopolitan justice (encompassing the ethical responsibilities of all human beings regardless of their geographic location) or restorative justice, concerning community involvement in the governance of green transitions with all the implied values. However, these divisions again run the risk of not considering spatial justice to an extent that undoubtedly would be pertinent. In the context of rural regions, taking spatial justice into account means considering the rural communities’ vulnerabilities to (climate) impacts due to factors such as remoteness, resource-based economies, limited economic diversity, and ageing populations (Dikeç 2001; OECD 2021; Juhola et al. 2022; Tapia et al. 2022). Previous research has discovered that of these categories, procedural justice features most commonly, followed by distributive justice (especially in the form of assessing the geographical distributions of risks), while recognitional and restorative justice – aspects discussing more complex experiences of past inequalities – are the most seldom (Juhola et al. 2022).