Climate-Solidary Pathways: Individual Choices and Collective Strategies for a Just Transition

About this Research Topic

Background

Climate change mitigation is an urgent and complex challenge, demanding profound economic, social, and cultural transformations. Both individual behaviors and collective strategies must align to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster sustainable practices, and ensure a just transition toward a more equitable, low-emission future. Across diverse contexts, research suggests that this transformation involves not only altering material infrastructures and production processes, but also reshaping everyday routines, norms, and values to facilitate a pro-environmental and pro-social orientation (Shove & Walker, 2014).

From a sociological perspective, a key research priority is to understand how social mechanisms influence the emergence, consolidation, or resistance to low-emission behaviors. At the individual level, cultural patterns, skill repertoires, and social ties shape the willingness and capacity to embrace sustainable consumption, mobility, and dietary choices. These daily practices are entwined with broader systems of energy production, material distribution, and policy frameworks, highlighting how transitions depend on multi-scalar processes—micro-level behavioral changes, meso-level community and organizational dynamics, and macro-level political-economic institutions (Köhler et al., 2019; Stoll-Kleemann & Nicolai, 2024).

The challenges to achieving meaningful mitigation are manifold and may trigger social tensions, conflicts, and inequalities, as well as new forms of cooperation and prosocial behaviors. Adopting low-emission lifestyles often requires overcoming ingrained habits, contending with entrenched interests, and navigating the contested meanings attached to sustainable practices. In this sense, the climate challenge can inspire inclusive approaches that incorporate diverse knowledge systems, enact fairer regulatory measures, and build contexts conducive to social learning and solidarity (Scoones, Leach, & Newell, 2015). This perspective underlines the importance of just transitions—ensuring that those most vulnerable to environmental changes and policy shifts are not left behind, but rather empowered and supported.

This Research Topic aims to bring together innovative contributions from a range of disciplines—sociology, environmental studies, political science, geography, economics, and related fields—to deepen our understanding of the cultural, structural, and institutional conditions that enable or hinder shifts toward lower-emission societies. By critically examining methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and empirical findings, we seek to generate new insights into how established knowledge and novel data sources can be leveraged to support a transformative and climate-solidary transition (Bazzani, 2023). We welcome comparative and interdisciplinary approaches that illuminate variation in responses across different regions, generations, and social groups, as well as inquiries into how digital tools, policy interventions, and organizational strategies can facilitate sustainable changes.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Identifying social mechanisms, both enabling and hindering, that influence the adoption of emission-reducing behaviors and practices
• The role of organizations, employment, and work in enabling or resisting climate transitions
• Transformations in organizational cultures, occupational identities, and labor markets in response to mitigation imperatives
• Exploring strategies that incentivize or sanction emission reductions, examining their effectiveness and fairness
• Investigating the role of digital platforms in disseminating information, mobilizing communities, and guiding transitions to low-emission lifestyles
• Examining how perceptions of climate risk, willingness to change, and solidarity differ by generation, gender, and educational background
• Analyzing territorial and regional variations in emission reduction efforts, considering cultural, institutional, and infrastructural contexts
• Studying narratives of climate risk and sustainable transitions, and how they shape collective imaginaries and moral economies
• Documenting the emergence of solidarity networks, collective action, and conflict resolution strategies that facilitate just climate transitions
• Assessing the role of businesses, trade unions, and civil society organizations in guiding and responding to low-emission transformations, including new models of capitalism and economic development
• Assessing the role of civil society organizations, trade unions, and businesses in shaping fair labor transitions, including risk mitigation and employment security in climate-sensitive sectors
• Considering the political, regulatory, and governance challenges inherent in scaling up emission reductions while ensuring equity and justice

By focusing on the interplay between individual agency and broader social structures, this Research Topic aspires to provide nuanced perspectives on climate change mitigation. We invite scholarly articles that offer original empirical evidence, refine theoretical frameworks, and develop new analytical tools. Ultimately, this collection aims to inform policies, practices, and public debates that foster meaningful and equitable pathways toward climate resilience, prosocial behaviors, and long-term sustainability.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Editorial
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Editorial
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review

Keywords: climate change mitigation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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