Facilitating participation in the green transition: Insights from Finland & India

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master_Sahdev_Tanya_2025.pdf (600.75 KB)

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School of Engineering | Master's thesis
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2025-11-23

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International Design Business Management

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Master's Programme in International Design Business Management

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en

Pages

90

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Abstract

The global shift to low or zero-carbon energy systems and economies, constituting the green transition, carries major technological, social and political implications. The concept of a just transition, which aims to ensure that such shifts are fair and equitable for all stakeholders, has gained prominence. However, participatory processes for ensuring a just and green transition face critiques such as lack of context sensitivity, inclusion and governance uptake. This thesis examines how participatory processes are facilitated and adapted in the diverse contexts of Finland and India, to support more contextually sensitive and inclusive energy transitions. This qualitative study is based on thematic analyses of seven semi-structured interviews with researchers and practitioners experienced in facilitating participatory processes for just and green energy transitions. The findings illustrate that facilitation is implemented as an adaptive practice, influenced by context and participant dynamics. Facilitators reported continually adapting their participatory approaches to account for participant capacities, needs and inclusion along with local knowledge systems, language and cultural factors. Thus, adaptation emerged as a way of facilitating recognition and procedural justice in participatory processes for green energy transitions. Additionally, this study identifies challenges with formal governance uptake of participatory process outcomes. While these processes lead to perceived impacts such as increased ownership, learning and empowerment among individuals and communities, their formal outcomes on policy or strategy remain uncertain and diffused. This study contributes to and extends the current literature on justice in sustainability transitions by demonstrating how conceptual justice dimensions connect to the practice of facilitating participatory processes through adaptation. The results emphasize the role of context in influencing how participation can be implemented. The thesis further recommends clearer and more direct mechanisms between participatory processes and governance uptake to strengthen their long-term impacts.

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Supervisor

Björklund, Tua

Thesis advisor

Eriksson, Vikki

Keywords

just energy transitions, participatory processes, adaptive facilitation, context sensitivity, governance uptake, procedural justice

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202512169316

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[dipl] Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu / ENG