I'm Dirk Hollermanns, Co-President of the Foundation and your host today. This webinar is also the formal start of our Just Transition Project, a transnational project of the Green UP Foundation that allows Green Foundation from different countries from Europe to work together on this challenge. So I'm very happy that next to, let's say the general public to also have my colleagues here with me from Spain, Croatia, UK, North Macedonia and Serbia. Now why do we find Just Transition as a concept, as a movement, as a goal so important? Well because it is a challenge. We all know that the transition to a climate neutral economy is necessary, but this involves much more than just the application of new green technologies. It's also about changes in the kind of jobs that will be available or not. Change there will be choices and these choices will decide which groups will benefit. And if bad choices are made, some people will suffer from the transition. But the choice we as Green Family want to make is clear. We need a new economic system that takes care of the planet, that takes care of the people and in which all costs and benefits are distributed in a fair way. This of course raises a lot of questions. How do we, for instance, transform in a sustainable way our labor markets? How do you make sure the transition to renewables is inclusive? How do we make sure that different regions in Europe are not left behind? Now to introduce this concept of Just Transition, I'm very happy that we have a very inspiring speaker today, Bela Galgotsky, his senior researcher at the European Trade Union Institute in his talk. Bela will explain to us what Just Transition really means and also which current developments there are now going on. He will also give some examples from the world of work. So Bela will talk about 30 minutes but divided in two parts, first and more general introduction then there's room for questions and then a second part with two concrete examples. Now in meanwhile, while you're listening, you already can put your questions in the chat box and it would be very nice if you mentioned from which country you are. So we really can see how European this webinar is and then I will collect the questions for the Q&A. So this is a bit how it will go and so I now invite Bela to give his presentation. So hello and good afternoon everybody. I'm Bela Galgotsky, a sad European Trade Union Institute in Brussels. I'm originally coming from Hungary. As you see from my name, but I'm here for 16 years now and in the last 10 years, one of my focus research topics is climate change and just transition also from an employment and workers point of view. So I would like to introduce now the concept, we know that we have a climate emergency. I don't want to make, to have too much details on why it is an emergency. There is a lot of scientific evidence for that and newer and newer evidence is coming up underlying that we are already too late. We have 10 years of a carbon budget and so it's kind of indeed an urgency to go down to zero carbon economy by 2050 and that means that our whole production system and the way we consume and live needs to be transformed. And indeed that has cost, it has a sacrifice, there are winners and losers. We also have now the European Green Deal that at least shows that it is getting to be serious also at the European level and it is kind of an unprecedented initiative. I will then introduce the just transition, the concept, the origins, because I think it's still interesting to see how it emerged, then also how trade unions deal with it. It is not that easy and then also talk about a little bit on employment and regional and distributional effects because that is kind of the underlying issue behind just transitions and then we would have case examples and what I also, yes, so the clock is ticking and there is no vaccine for climate change and this is why I would really mention the link. We all are now in an absolutely unprecedented situation with this health crisis and our life changed from one day to another and we live in this situation for more than two months already and we don't know where the end is. This is of course another emergency and it is very serious now. There are common features between the two emergencies. The one is that in both we have an exponential increase of a hazard that is hitting a limited resource. The limited resource on the one hand is the planet, the planetary boundaries. The limited resource on the other hand is the health care system that actually can even be expanded but the planet cannot be expanded. So that is one. The other important thing I would mention right here that the responsibility of the state and the role of the state. We saw in this current health emergency that with a huge turn suddenly the state and the governments became the central institutions to guide and control this process. It is an unprecedented intervention into production, into consumption, into movements. This would never be accepted in context of the climate change. At the same time we also know that the climate change doesn't pose such a direct threat because we don't feel that our life is in immediate danger. It is in danger and probably many more lives are in danger in the longer term but it is in the longer term and it is not direct, it is not necessarily happening here, it is happening somewhere else. So the link is much more blurred and then we don't feel the emergency. So one lesson is of course that we certainly need a role of, more pronounced role of the state in guiding also the climate emergency and the climate policy issue. So that will be one. And the second important thing I would underline now that what we are confronted with now, that there is a crisis and employment emergency at the same time because millions of jobs are in jeopardy now. This is certainly not the way how the climate emergency should be tackled. We always denied and wanted to avoid that there is an environment jobs dilemma and there shouldn't be one. But in order not to have a climate jobs dilemma, we need the just transition concept. So this is why the current situation also shows why the just transition concept is so important. It's important to mention that getting to zero carbon means a really radical correction of how we are cutting emissions. It needs to be much more than what we had been doing in the last 30 years. So if you see on these graphs, the bold black line is the actual cuts and then the dotted lines showing down to the zero is where we have to go. So first of all, the first part is simply the target but then down at 2050, this is where really we have to go. So this means it is going to be much steeper and this has a consequence because that means that climate policy needs to be much more ambitious, we need much more investment and the effects on jobs and livelihoods will be also much harsher. So what we experienced in the last 30 years, it is just a foretaste of what is coming. So that's why again, it's important that we take up the just transition approach. I don't make any further comment on the European Green Deal. One thing is of course important here that it's a very ambitious investment project. We do not exactly know yet where exactly the money will be coming and how exactly it will be coming. There is much leverage here and promises and with some uncertainties. But let's hope that it will be materializing. And then important also to see that there is what is called just transition mechanism that is part of this process and it's important that is an integral part of the policy framework. So just transition is about fair or just burden sharing of all the costs and burdens that come with this very ambitious transformation. And it is in the origins, it is roughly 30 years now that we have the just transition concept. It emerged in North America in the 1980s and in the 1990s, international trade unions like the forerunner of the ITUC was picking up this concept and pushing it to international well forerunner at the Kyoto Conference, then later at the COP, at the Cancun COP and then the Paris COP, it became an integral element of now the international climate policy framework, so to say. So for the origins, there was always one route was environmental justice. Environmental justice in the sense that environmental hazards are certainly destroying nature, the soil, the atmosphere. At the same time, they are an imminent threat to people, people and workers. And it was also recognized that the way it is affecting people is very unequal. It is always the vulnerable groups that are hit more. And even there was a discrimination element of that. That vulnerable groups were always much harder hit by environmental hazards. And they were always the ones that are less responsible for that. So this was the environmental justice part. The climate justice element was developing in the global north and global south dimension, recognizing that it was the expansionist capitalist production model of the global north since the Industrial Revolution that was well pushing this model and was responsible for the historical emissions, while at the same time the global south and the poorer societies are paying the price. They are much more affected and they are much less prepared for that, although they have no responsibility. So this asymmetry of responsibilities and effects was done that with the climate justice. The climate justice narrative was then expanded to take up how the climate policies that are necessary, how these climate policies are affecting different people, different income groups.  In terms of employment and in terms of price, energy price, carbon price. And that made it important to have concrete policies that deal with these distributional effects on the one hand, and with the employment effects. Because the employment, actually, it is often argued that it is probably a net positive game going to zero carbon with the new technologies, new energy system. There is a job creation effect of that. But at the same time, we also know that jobs are disappearing in certain sectors and most of the jobs are being transformed. So there is a huge pressure on employment as a result and this needs to be tackled. So that means that if a coal mine or a coal plant is being closed down, it is not the coal miner or this employee that is responsible for that. They need to have a perspective. They need to have, even if their jobs are lost, they need, first of all, an income security and then they need a perspective. That means training and an active job counseling, active support into a new, well, green employment world. And that is also true to regions because there are entire regions that are dependent on energy intensive industries and what comes after. So we also recognize that there is no jobs environment dilemma per se. There is no inherent conflict. But in real life situation, it can appear and it needs to be addressed. Once more, from a functional perspective on for the just transition, we can see it has a part that is focused on the outcome because we have a vision of where this process is going. It is a zero carbon economy, but a zero carbon economy that is inclusive with less inequality than we have now and where jobs are not only green, but jobs are good, well paid, secure and unionized if possible because as we know that many of the jobs that are actually on disappearing were relatively good jobs and organized jobs. So the mining, the steel industry, the automobile industry, they were all well paying, safe jobs and unionized jobs. And it needs to be, yeah, happen like that in the future. The process is the second important element of the just transition concept. And this is how we get there. And this is about the transition itself and managed transition where nobody is left behind with just burden sharing and managing the social impact, revitalize local economies and said also actively managing the employment transitions. It is absolutely crucial. So and it is not an abstract concept, but it is a real, there are real practices in real workplaces. And this is why there might be conflicts because real workplaces as we know are not ideal, they are not free of conflict. They are well, can be characterized by the capital labor relationship or conflict. We know that it's precarious work and working conditions that are hard that we see normally at workplaces. So if in this environment you need to have a fundamental change, it will bring more pressure on the individual workplaces, even in those cases, if jobs are not being under threat. And you need to manage this process in a way that is well, not going against the interest of workers. And this is where social dialogue is key. And it is also true that the concept of just transition is multifaceted. It is, it has become very broad and wide. And it really depends on the concrete strategies and the concrete actions. And certainly it is very much depending on the institutional frameworks of societies. A just transition in Norway looks totally different than a just transition in South Africa. Within Europe we see also big differences, Germany, Poland, etc. So it must be, just transition must be adopted, must be applied, implemented into the concrete social and economic realities of countries. And this is the on the ground perspective. There is no silver bullet. There is no general solution that you have to do it like that. There are certainly guidelines. The ILO 2015 guidelines are very helpful for that. How, what are the basic and most important elements of just transition? But we also see that different sectors of the economy have very different characteristics and peculiarities, vulnerabilities and opportunities. And so just transition in the coal sector looks, for example, quite differently than in the automobile sector. First of all, in the coal sector, well, there is no future of the jobs there. The important thing is what happens after. And it is definitely a complex initiative and policies that are needed there. Investment policies, regional policies, industrial policies. At the same time in the coal sector, just to mention at this point, there are much less jobs. It is, well, yeah, less than one tens of the European jobs that are linked to coal in terms of coal plants and coal mines. It is not a big number, but it is concentrated in regions. And those regions are depending on it. The automobile industry is a different thing because there are, well, almost 14 million jobs in Europe that are depending on the automobile industry. Those jobs will exist, although we don't know how many of them will exist because the sector will go through an unprecedented transformation. We can talk about that maybe later, but now I skip the concrete cases because that we will do after. I would only like to mention one thing to finish this part, that trade unions and social partners role. It is absolutely important in this just transition process. Social dialogue is key at all levels, national, sectoral, and front level. At the same time, it is something new for social dialogue because social dialogue was normally focused on interests that were directly linked to work. They were focused on interests of those who were sitting at the negotiating table, but the climate is not sitting at the negotiating table. The future generations are not sitting at the negotiation table. The people in Africa are not sitting at the negotiating table in an industrialized society. In that sense, those interests need, to some extent, to be included in these negotiations. This is something really new and, of course, it's a challenge for social dialogue. It is also important that, well, for trade unions, it is a new situation as well because trade unions were used to defend their members' interests in various ways and also taking care for reorganization processes, changing work environments, so they had a vast experience in managing change. When managing change was dictated by the interests of capital, for example, globalization, supply chains, outsourcing, different ways of reorganization, they have vast experiences with that, how to defend workers' interests in these situations. But it was in the context of capital labor interest conflict. These occasions, trade unions were often questioning the purpose of change itself because the purpose of change, changing a work organization, was often just about getting more profit. Trade unions had a legitimate reason to say that, stop, stop, stop. We don't want that change, or at least not to that extent. And now with the climate policy and with the green transformation, it is again a new situation because now we have this change that is a common interest. It is not any more possible to say that the question is changed. At the same time, trade unions are also expected and actually they do it as well to push this change forward, more climate ambition. But at the same time at the workplace level, more climate ambition means more pressure. In the coal industry, if trade unions in the coal industry would go for more climate policy target, that would mean that they want to urge the process of that jobs are being vanished. And the automobile industry also, so higher emission standards for cars are putting more pressure on work and harder conditions. So that means in these cases it is not obvious that trade unions are supporting that change. In normally they do, but in a reluctant way. It is often mentioned in the literature that they have a hedging position, so kind of seeing what best can come out for their members under the current situation. So we also see a difference between higher level trade union, higher trade union organization levels like international or national that are clearly having a priority for climate change, climate policies and climate ambition, lower level and particularly unions in the sectors that are affected have a more reluctant position. So there is also a tension here and trade unions need new strategies. So I stop it now. I hope it was not too long and then let's go back to the screen at least. Oops, yeah. You were there. Okay. Okay. Many thanks. Thank you. Interesting introduction. We already have one question in the chat box. It's from Stefan Bosue. Stefan, I don't know what you, you could ask the question yourself as there are little questions. So if you want, you can put on your mic and ask the question. Yes, Bella, I'm a big fan of Kate Rios with her donut economics. Oh, yes. Yes. And a month ago, there was an article in the Guardian announcing that Amsterdam was going to use the donut economics to while embracing her theory. And in that article, Kate mentioned that before prior to the COVID crisis, she has spoken with the European Commission. And they were very interested, but afterwards, well, I don't know what the status is. I just wanted to know, because the goals of the donut economics are exactly the same. Oh, let's say 80, 90% the same of what the goals are of just tradition. And she has a toolbox. Is there an interest in to use that toolbox or collaborate with her? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. And we also had, yeah, collaboration with Kate Roberts. She was presenting her donut economic theory and practice at our conference that we organized here at the ETOI. And it was, yeah, very well attended. So like more than 100 people from many different trade unions around the ETOC and the ETOI. So we had a discussion. And it was very much very received. And it is because, of course, we also recognize that we are not only talking about climate change. Yeah. So that is kind of the most, well, wouldn't say the import most important, but at least most in the focus of attention. And certainly it is a big challenge, yeah. So to get down with the missions and control, at least control the climate change. But there are several other planetary limits. And this is where what are included in this donut that it is biodiversity. It is the food supply system. And there are many other elements. We have one planet. Yeah. So this is also, you cannot expand this planet. Yeah. And so we have to fit our welfare and our well-being into these limits. And it is possible. But it needs a very well coordinated and comprehensive policies, because it is not just climate policy. It is not only employment policy, it is social policy, a new welfare concept as well. Just transition is just around there. So between employment policy and welfare policy, or both, in a new framework. And then, of course, a further question is also to what extent do we need growth in order to keep these welfare. And that is, well, at least for developed economies. Because if we talk about no growth or de-growth, then we only talk about the developed world. Because we cannot claim for the whole. It is impossible for Indonesia not to have growth. It is impossible for India not to have growth. But so that is another debate. And it is certainly, it's an open discussion. And for trade union, it's also a difficult one, because the whole trade union movement and workers' rights were fought on the basis of a growing economy. So it was always a growing cake to be redistributed. And that was difficult enough. And even now it is very difficult. So to do that with a non-growing cake is much even more difficult. Or at least it needs a totally new concept. And that is still a debate further. I have to say, the no-growth agenda is not very popular among trade unions. Okay. And anyway, thanks for this answer. We see here another question is coming in from the UK. I will read it to you. In the UK, trade unions have supported very damaging projects, such as the expansion of hydro airports, but said a little about the loss of thousands of jobs in the solar PV sector, because these cuts of jobs were most in small companies. How can union support workers' rights, such as in the gig economy, rather than supporting the old, traditionally unionized sectors that need to go? A difficult question. Yeah. And there were many questions in one. So for example, about ESO, at least what I know that it is currently off the agenda, which is probably one of the very few benefits of the COVID crisis. Because coming back to that shortly, the benefits, so to say, benefits that we see now are not real benefits. They are not. I mean, in terms of course, that emissions are down and environment is clean now. These are not sustainable. So we will not stay like that. And also that normally we cannot expect radical policies like that, what we had now. So kind of a sudden stop of life. That would be certainly possible. So if we stop that, and if we stay at home, everybody, then we get to the zero carbon economy quicker, for sure, but that cannot work. So this is for ESO, because now at least in that, and in other air traffic related projects, there is at least some new thing coming up that could be also for having longer term effects. So that's about ESO. But in a broader sense, yes, it's true that, and it's a problem for trade unions as well, but many of the new emerging jobs and also those that are linked to the green economy are not necessarily good jobs. There is, of course, the gig economy. It is not really a result of climate policies. It is more a result of digitalization and technological change, but certainly a quickly expanding economy with very poor working conditions and often non-regulated activities. So our welfare state and employment policy framework is not yet up to date to cope with the challenges of this gig economy. And here there is an urgent action to be done to make sure that those, they have also employee rights and they are also well, good working conditions there. There are efforts, particularly in the UK, but also in other countries from trade unions to organize these workers. And there are some good experiences with that. That will also certainly be the way to more newly emerging jobs. But it is, of course, a big challenge because many of the old jobs were organized and that were the main strongholds of trade unions. So with economy shifting, trade unions need to rethink all that. I think this is a very clear answer if also the unions have to follow the changing economy. I would now propose, Bela, to the second, a shorter part of your presentation concerning the two examples. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, maybe I need, I don't know if I need the PowerPoint for that. If not, just go ahead. Yeah, because I think I only have tax there, so it's not, yeah, so at least at this point I wanted to mention two cases. The one is the call, phasing out call in the economy that is certainly extremely important because we shouldn't forget that still it is roughly 18% of European emissions are linked to coal. So it's a huge part. So that's why phasing out call in the energy system is absolutely crucial. How this happens is, of course, difficult. It takes time and it needs a just transition perspective and policies. And there are several ways. I would mention the case of Germany here, but that is of course a huge piece of experience because on the one hand you can talk about the rural region that was very much based on coal and steel. But it took them more than 50 years from the 70s until 2018 that the last hard call mine had been closed. And it was a very difficult process that had been lots of social dialogue there, industrial policies, regional policies for, in a way, there was a learning experience in the sense that at least for two decades, 70s and the 80s, nothing happened. They were just moving around and around. They didn't really realize that there is, well, it is a lesson of its own. Also for social dialogue, because they made this moving around in social dialogue, everybody was supporting change. But then it moved on from the 90s on. And the concrete phase out of, well, almost to 20,000 jobs in coal mining, hard coal mining was based on an agreement with the German mining and chemicals union on the one hand and the employers and the regional government on the other hand. It was a comprehensive plan how to phase out. On the very early stages of this dialogue, it took 20 years until the last coal job disappeared. So that is too long for now. But after signing the agreement, it was 10 years. And they had a lot of employment policy tools. There was no forced layoff happening. Of course, early retirement was used as long as it was possible. For younger workers, the miners, they were massive training programs opened and also kind of active management of this change. There were special purpose societies put up to deal with the skills development and also job counseling of these people. It was also becoming a model case of how big company transformations, employment transitions can be managed. So that was one lesson, kind of the positive way how it happened. So this last phase, the last decades, the last decade of the rule was a positive case. It is also positive actually, but we have no time for that to see how the region changed itself because now it is the rural region, although it still has structural weaknesses, but it is actually a knowledge-based economy. It is a way from coal that is still there, but there is much environmental technology there, universities, and so new concepts and new economy. And in order that happens, investment programs were absolutely necessary. The other part of the case is the current phase out of coal from the German energy system that means closing down the coal-fired power plants and also delignant mining in other areas. That had been done last year, as you may have known. It was called the German Co-Commission. Well, first of all, it was an exemplary case for social dialogue because all the important stakeholders were included. And all the aspects of the transition were dealt with. So what is the future of the regions, how to manage the employment transitions, what investments would be needed to prop up the regions, particularly the regions that are heavily affected in the east of the country, in Eastern Germany, that are only depending on coal. And so this had been done in a very good way. So in terms of procedural justice, so participatory justice, it was an exemplary case. The only problem with that is that the result is rather disappointing. So 2038 as the end date for phasing out coal for a country like Germany is extremely unambitious. And hopefully it will still be revised, but this is how it is now. So this is a case where there is an exemplary social dialogue with everything related to the transition included. But the result is a little bit disappointing. So that was the German Co-Case. I would mention a company case quickly, the NL company in Italy. It's Europe's biggest energy multinational with 90,000 employees and half of them in Italy. And the company declares to become the first green energy giant or energy multinational. So they have set their own target for zero carbon. And they announced it. It is called the Future E Plan. That means the decommissioning and transformation of 23 power plants in Italy. So that is a total overhaul and including also a shutdown of the majority of these power plants. And yeah, so it is quite an ambitious. It's already ongoing. So I think it was four or five power plants that had already been shut down. And the last one will be shut down in 2029. So in a way, it is an ambitious project. The way they dealt with it at the very beginning trade unions were protesting that they were not consulted properly and they were not consulted on time. Finally, so, but then the NL management was having a framework agreement with trade unions. They were establishing a dialogue. They had been concepts by trade unions also taken into account or at least consulted. And finally, trade unions were signing up to this program with, well, a lot of schemes that are also partially can be seen as innovative. For example, how the employment change is being managed with internal company mobility schemes, how early retirement is being used, how training programmes are used, how apprenticeship programmes are used. For example, they had a program that is called the relay system where one apprentice and one older worker works together, kind of putting the rally over to the generation. So both are being employed, but the older worker is training the young worker. These kind of things and then what is also important there that they also take care about the afterlife of the closed power stations. That means that they were putting up tenders for investment projects after the commissioning. So those plants, the facilities will not disappear, they will be reused. There are very different activities that actually came up and yeah, so this also included the involvement of regional authorities and regional partners. So it was kind of a comprehensive approach and in a way, at least it is seen as a good case. Okay, thank you very much. Very interesting that you also gave a case of a company not owned by the region. In the chat box, there's still one question here I can pose. The question is, what is your view on the future of global value change? A lot of us here too comes from global transport, but the future of developing countries also depends on this global value change. So I think this is a bit of a question on corona de-globalisation and what does it mean also for the developing countries? Yeah, I mean, it is not only the corona that is questioning some of these value chains, but they are heavily affected. So if we only look at the case of the automobile industry, that is, as I mentioned, a very big part of the European economy. And it is a sector that is extremely relying on international value chains in terms of suppliers, different level of suppliers, and also companies and facilities all over the world. When managing this transformation, for example, the automobile industry, the change into electrical cars and new mobility concepts is totally rewriting the work patterns, but it is affecting the entire value chain. So if you are scaling down the combustion engine, for example, the diesel technology, that affects the entire value chain, so that affects different countries and in different countries, many, many, many suppliers. How this can be managed in a well, fair way, it is still quite a big change because what we see is that in the core countries where the company headquarters are, normally there is good practice of dealing with these challenges. For example, at the German automakers, Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW, they had already massive consultations with trade unions and works councils, how to adopt the production system to the new realities and how to deal with employment, layoffs as well, but also qualification programs, future projects, and it was relatively well done in Germany, but they didn't really deal with the locations in Poland, in Czechia, in Hungary, in Slovakia, Spain. It was very much focused on the core location and this is still a challenge, how to make an international approach out of that. So this is one example for that and that is certainly the car industry now is in a total breakdown, also in relation to the current crisis. In many ways there is a rethinking of globalization, that globalization was running too far and there is a phase of de-globalization, certainly there will be some. Much of that is also very political, dependencies between countries and among countries. It will be a turbulent process and yeah, it also needs certainly guidance. Okay, thank you. There's one last question from our colleagues from Croatia. Nicolina, are you there? And maybe you can ask the question yourself. If not, I will do it. No. Okay, then I will ask a question. So she writes, thank you for emphasizing that green jobs should be good and unionized jobs. I'm very skeptical that this is possible in regions that have been heavily de-industrialized in the last 30 years. Do the unions have an idea how should just transition look like in the European periphery? If we know that institutional frameworks of our national states have so far been aligned with EU policies that dismantled possibilities for any industrial development, let alone the green ones. Where the investment for green jobs in the European periphery could come from? Yes, certainly the challenge is particularly big for more peripheral countries. Well, so first of all, the investment, many or a big part of the investment as in the past is coming from outside foreign direct investment. That was also that was boosting the central eastern European countries after they joined the EU, but even before they joined. So in the 90s and the 2000s, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary were benefiting on large scale foreign direct investments, new industries were built up. It didn't happen in an ideal way, but it was important. And there is, there are always policy tools these countries have to provide incentives for investments into, well, particular activities or branches. So if there is a positive incentive for green investment of foreign direct investors, then it would help. And there are also large scale European investment programs and we can hope that within the European Green Deal, the EU Invest Programme will also facilitate investments all over Europe and not only in the core countries. With the Junker plan, there was one shortcoming was that much of the investment was actually absorbed by the more developed Western European countries and not too many projects were successful in the east. So there are lessons to learn from there. And I would only point one initiative that at European level where there is an active promotion of help regions to cope with transition, there is the core transition platform. It is a consultative body that is dealing with concepts and projects, how regions can manage their transformation. There is not too much resource attached to this, but there are European resources from different funds that can be used. And this would be probably the other important element that the EU Cohesion Funds and Regional Funds would be better used for green investment projects. Okay, thank you for this answer. And I think indeed, let's hope that the Green New Deal and also the Just Transition Funds in this can provide resources also for the more periphery countries. So, of course, we only touched upon different aspects of Just Transition, but Bella, I want to thank you for this introduction. You gave a clear overview from where it comes from the concept. It's much older, I think, than most people think, and it's, I think it only has grown in importance the last years, especially now. So, I want to thank Bella for your contribution. I want to thank everybody participating in different countries from Europe. And please watch the website of the Green European Foundation or Oracle's. We are in touch with some other people for the next inspiring talks. The plan is to have two extra talks on Just Transition the coming weeks. And besides, for people also interested in mobility, today at six o'clock we also have from the Green European Foundation the next green post-corner talk with two ministers. The minister, the Austrian minister responsible for climate and mobility and also the minister of the Brussels region. So, I would say, as I said on the radio, stay safe and stay tuned. Bye.


Hello and welcome back to my channel. My name is Jackie and I'm an aspiring fiction writer who is going to be revising a book in July for Camp Nenrymo. So today, as part of my prep, I want to go through the characters from that book and especially I want to get the antagonist, protagonist, dynamic right. And if you've been watching me for a while, you'll know that this is something I struggle with, but I love when I see good antagonists and protagonists in literature and films and so on. So I'd really love to nail it in this revision. So what I'm going to start with is looking at each of the major characters in the book, like the protagonist and the major secondary characters. And I'm going to ask myself, what do they want? What will they sacrifice to get it? What do they fear? Who do they care about? And what will they do for that person? And I'm hoping that'll help me get a bit clearer on their motivations, which I feel like I know in my head, who knows, maybe I don't, but I feel like I know them in my head. I don't feel like they come across clearly in the book. Following that, I want to look really closely at the antagonist and the protagonist, looking at their values as well as their goals and how the antagonist is a necessary opponent for our protagonist. These steps or ways of looking at this dynamic come from on Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy Hickson. And I think a lot of his discussion was originally based on The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. So I'll include links to both of those books in the description. When it comes to who these characters are, I'm not sure how much detail to go into on the video because I don't really want to spoil my own book. However, that book probably isn't going to be out until 2022, assuming I get a traditional publishing deal or 2021 at the earliest if I decide to self-publish. So maybe by then you're forgotten. So if you don't want to know who the characters are, please skip ahead. If you do want to know, here's the cast. So our protagonist is Hannah. Hannah is a 16-year-old girl who is the only non-superhero in a family of superheroes. Her siblings are Maria, MacLenn, Thomas, and Maxim. And if you're wondering where these names came from, I live in Estonia at the moment. These are Estonian names because I want the world in which this takes place to be loosely based on Tallinn Estonia. So Maria is the oldest. She is the closest to Hannah. She has fire powers. Maxim is a creep. He has the power to project his pain onto others. So a lot of what he does is like slide into my own arm and make someone else feel that. MacLenn is the youngest. She is 12 and she can basically disintegrate whatever she touches. And Thomas, he's 15, no, he's 16 as well. Yeah, he and Hannah are the same age. And he has super strength. Their father is Artem, which I cannot say properly. So maybe I should change it. But he is a very smart, very powerful, wealthy geneticist who originally discovered the superhuman gene and he's actually been behind most of the research towards this gene and these people as well as behind a lot of the laws restricting their rights in this world. So the first group of characters is really Hannah and her family, so the supers. Then we get the Russian mafia because why not? So in the Russian mafia we have Liza or Liza Veta. She is the granddaughter of the current mob boss. The mob boss is Evgenia. I don't really have much more to say about her. And then there are the goons, I guess, but that doesn't really do them justice. But we have Dmitry or Dina, Mikhail or Misha, Alexei or Alex and Dennis. So those are the major characters. When it comes to motivations and how well I know them, I think Hannah, Maria, Naksim, Marlen, Liza, I think I know all of them quite well. So I'm not too worried. When it comes to the more minor mafia characters, I don't know. I know that I haven't really thought that much about their motivations. I'm also not sure if I need to. So please give me your thoughts on this in the comments. Like, do you come up with what everyone cares about even if they're secondary characters who don't actually influence the plot that much? Or do you just do it for the major characters? In my case, I'm going to think about it but realistically I think I'll probably stop after I get through the main ones. So I've now done those questions for each of the major characters on my list. So Hannah and her siblings, except for Thomas. And on the mob side, I've done Liza and the boss. This went pretty well. It was interesting because there are some things I came up with that I went, oh, I can add that to the book or maybe I should think about like not just what the motivation is but why they have that motivation. So for the boss, I was thinking maybe her main motivation is she is ready to hand over. She's looking for the best successor. She wants to make sure the mafia organization is in the best possible shape and as invulnerable as possible before she hands it over. And then I thought, well, why? And now I'm thinking that maybe she's dying but we'll see. I'm going to keep playing with that and see how it goes into the plot. One of the things I struggled with though is that and I always struggle when doing like individual character sheets is that I see each character as this unique separate person and then I forget about the role they play within the story and how they interplay with the other characters. And I think this is both a strength and a flaw of mine because in my life in general, I am very laser focused. Like when I'm doing something, I'm doing that one thing. I don't get distracted. And I think that can almost be to my detriment with writing because like let's take having a romance B story for instance. I really struggle to figure out how to work that into the main book because I'm focused on this one main plot and that feels like a distraction. So when it comes to looking at each of these characters in isolation, I'm looking at them in isolation and I got to the end of that exercise and I felt like, well, I know who all of these people are now but I don't know how to bring that into the story or I don't know how that affects each of them. So then I decided to try doing a map of how the characters interact with each other so what their relationships are. So Hannah obviously is directly connected to each of her siblings and her father. The siblings are all also connected to the father and as connected to Lisa and each of the mob people she's met directly. Lisa is connected to each of the mob people but other than that, there's no real crossover from one world to the other. And I don't know how much this helped but as I was writing this out, like I started doing little notes. So notes about the primary emotion between them. So like Hannah and Maria, it's a lot of love and self-sacrifice. And then minor characters, I was also thinking about their goals. So Maria's wondering how to escape from this family and from her superhero duties but she doesn't want to leave Hannah behind. How can she save Hannah at the same time? Between Hannah Marlène, her little sister, there's a lot of resentment. Marlène feels a lot of superiority towards Hannah because Marlène has powers but Hannah does not. But at the same time, she wants to bring Hannah down because there's this fear that well what if Hannah developed powers someday and what's that going to do to Marlène's status. So that was interesting. It's all stuff I felt like I already knew but just going through the exercise was fun. However, the page isn't the most beautiful. I couldn't find a pencil so I had to do it in pen. So I might try and create like a more aesthetically pleasing one. What I did realize though is that my mafia goons, I'm just going to keep calling them that because it's a fun word. I don't think I need individual motivations for them when it comes to the story itself and what they're trying to achieve but I think it would be interesting to explore what their reason for being a part of this mafia family is. Like how did they join? Why did they stay? What do they get out of it? And that might help me figure out just their relationship with Lisa more because these are Lisa's favorites basically in the whole family. So I want to know why they're her favorites. All in all, that was a really interesting exercise. So now I'm going to look at my antagonist-protagonist dynamic. The protagonist is Hannah. The antagonist is her father, Artem. And I'm going to look at a couple of different things from on writing and well building. The first is what are each of their values? So I can see both how they reflect each other and how they differ. Then what's the scale of those values? What does it motivate them to do? This is similar to the question before about what do they want and what are they willing to sacrifice for it. Then there are a number of elements in Tim's book that I don't think are necessary for this story. So things like, you know, the villain being the hero of their own story. I think that a lot of us recognize we're shades of gray. I think it's possible for people to have motivations that they recognize aren't the best ones, but they still have those motivations or even they are motivated to do something that they realize that they're probably sacrificing more than what they should for it, that they're still willing to sacrifice that. So I feel like a lot of people are just they have their goal. They're doing what they need to do to achieve it. They don't particularly think of themselves as heroes.  I don't, I, he's not the hero in his own story. He's a man who's going after what he wants and he doesn't really care who gets in his way. Then the other thing I want to look at is the necessary opponent moment. So this is a moment when basically the antagonist attacks the protagonist in a way that no one else can. And I think it will work for this book just because they have a father and daughter relationship, like they've known each other for 16 years. He should know all of her weaknesses and know how to hit her where it hurts. Then the final thing I want to look at is any similarities that Hannah and I can share. So the reason my understanding is the reason you look for similarities between your villain and your hero is because that helps highlight how they're different. So in the series Sherlock, for example, Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty are quite similar. They're both highly intelligent. They both dress in similar ways. They both are played by actors who bear a resemblance to each other. And one of them is a consulting detective, while the other one is a consulting criminal. So having all of those similarities makes the points where they're different in terms of morality far more stark. So I'm going to do this now and I will let you know how I go. I've now looked at Hannah and Uhtem side by side. So basically I did one person's values, then I went to the next person's one. And then I looked at the scale for one person. So what would they do? Then the scale for the next one. And then I looked at the necessary opponent moment, which was sort of combined because it's both of them. And after that, I looked at similarities. So what was interesting here is that Uhtem, I need to do more work on him because I feel like I know what he wants, but I don't know the why behind it. It's like what happened with the mafia boss earlier, where he's like, well, I know she's looking to hand over, she's looking for the best successor, but why? In this case, I know he wants power, respect. I know he wants to be the best. I know he wants to extend his influence. He hates being undermined. He wants to basically control his world. But I don't know why. So I'm starting to play with that a little bit. But I mean, on one hand, like, yes, I should play with it. I should know my character. On the other hand, is it relevant? Because it's not going to feature in the book at all. He's not a sympathetic character. It's a single point of view book. So it's all from Hannah's perspective. So maybe I could do something. I don't know. He was picked on at school or no one at university appreciated his research, who knows. And now he's determined to prove himself and get his revenge. Do I need to know that in order to make it clear what he wants and what he's after and what he's willing to do for it? So here's another question for you for the comments. When it comes to your villains, how deep do you go into their motivations? And one of the examples I keep going back to is the Batman and Joker in I think it's the Dark Knight Rises. And that is one of those like hero and villain dynamics done really well where the villain continually pushes the hero to become basically more and more of themselves and to push their limits and to decide what they will and won't do. However, we don't know. In fact, I need to rewatch this because I watched it once when it first came out, but I was working night shift at the time and I kept falling to sleep. So I haven't actually watched the full thing when I've been conscious. But from memory, I don't think we ever find out the Joker's backstory in that film. I remember him saying like a bunch of stories for how he got the scars, but I don't think it's ever confirmed. I think it's left open. And that doesn't make him less scary as a villain. That doesn't make him less compelling, not knowing why he wants what he wants. So let me know in the comments how far you go with your villains. Do you absolutely have to know why they want what they want or is knowing what they want enough? Anyway, if we get back to my book. So I have their values. And what was interesting is that Hannah's values and what she wants actually changes throughout the book because at the beginning of the book, and this is where I started when I was doing my preparations in preptober, was she wanted to prove herself to her father and she felt like she needed to develop powers in order to do that. But in the book, she actually switches basically at the midpoint. So she gets kicked out of home because she doesn't have power. She's determined to develop powers so she can go back. Then she gets tangled with the mafia. She starts to learn more about the bad things her father's done. And she agrees to work with the mafia to help bring him down. So it goes from I need to prove myself to my dad, I need to be accepted by my dad to I need to stop this man who is basically going to wreak havoc on the world through various things that I won't get into detail about now because spoilers. And this is interesting because that then affects scale. So something I didn't realize was that Hannah actually betrays her sister at the beginning because her sister Maria, who's the closest person in the world to her, Maria, she knows that Maria does not want to be a superhero. And she knows Maria would love to be free. And the truth is Maria could be free. She has been planning and saving and building resources for ages, but she doesn't want to abandon her. And because Hannah so focused on proving herself to her father, she is actually like demoting Maria in her level of in her hierarchy of priorities because she's prioritizing proving herself to her father over valuing what her sister wants and needs. So I didn't realize that but yes she betrays her sister for her father. Later she attempts to betray the mafia for her father. So in order to gain his acceptance she is willing to sacrifice things that on the surface she says are important to her.  So ultimately what she's doing is then betraying her father instead of the others, but she's willing to do things like break the law in order to do it, in order to bring him down. When it comes to the necessary opponent moment, I actually already have that in the book. So I was thinking about what is the worst thing he could do, how could he attack her in a way that no one else can. And he actually already does in the climax. So I think I can keep what I already have. I just need to build it up more in order to make sure it really has that hit. And then when it comes to how they're similar, they're both geneticists fascinated with examining the super gene. Both of them are willing to sacrifice other people in order to achieve their goals. So I just explained that Hannah sacrifices Maria and her friends. Artem basically isn't going to let anyone stand in his way so everyone is expendable. At the beginning of the book at least, they both believe in the necessity of the current laws. So the world that we're in actually has a lot of restrictions on superhumans and their movements and they all need to be registered and so on. And Artem set that up. So he obviously believes it. He wants to have power over this group of people and overall the research and so on that happens in that space. And Hannah believes it at the beginning of the book, but gradually changes throughout the book. What is interesting about this is that none of this is new. I mean some of it's new, like asking why to get behind the surface level motivations is new. But the motivations themselves, how the characters relate to each other, I already knew all of this. Like I'd already thought about all of this. I don't think it's in the book though. And what I'm stuck on is I'm not sure how to put it in there. Like I don't know if it means I need extra scenes that we don't currently have. I don't know if it means some of the scenes that I have need to work a different way or need to be cut. I don't know if it means just making more passing references within the existing plot. So I'm not sure how valuable this exercise was after all of that. Yeah books are hard. Like so think of real life as a comparison. You have your friends and your family and you know what they're working towards or what motivates them, probably if you're close to them, that you don't spend every interaction talking about it. And most of the time you're just focused on what you're doing and if you're catching up, you're focused on catching up and if like whatever the plot is of your life, that plot's moving forward. You're not actually talking about everyone's motivations and desires and so on. That's all underneath and it contributes to how people act and what they value but no one's actively communicating that. So when you translate that into a book, well you've got a bunch of people who are all living their own lives and for the purpose of this plot, they've all run into each other and they're working towards a common or in the case of antagonist-protagonist like contradictory goal. You know how do you do the same thing? Because I see these characters and I know all of this stuff about them but I think someone who didn't and was reading this book would not get the message and I don't know how to put all of it into the book. So yeah, books are hard. I don't know what I'm doing. This is probably not news to anyone who watches my videos but that's where I am. So from here I think I'm going to continue playing with this. I want to look at the mafia goons and figure out what their backstory is, why they ended up in the mafia. I want to... I don't know if I need to play with that damn more. In any case, I think this is going to be a circular process. So from here, for my next couple of videos I'm going to be looking at different things like the next one I want to look at the overall plot, what I currently have and what the ideal one should look like and I think that when I start looking at the plot and the events in the book, then I'm going to have to come back to this character work and go okay, how is this demonstrated by the plot and what needs to change in order to make all of this clearer. So ultimately, I think anyone who writes knows that one single exercise or even a couple of exercises aren't going to clarify everything at once. Each thing you do is a step that gets you towards writing the best book you possibly can and sometimes you make big strides forward and sometimes you need to step back in order to pick something up before you can move forward again. So I think I'm going to call this a day in terms of this video. I hope you liked this. If you did, please like, subscribe, hit the notification bell and do all of those good things and in the comments below, please let me know how deep you go with character motivations and how deep you go into how many characters you do this sort of work for. Is it just you a couple of major characters, secondary characters? Is it every character in your book? And again, how deep do you go with those motivations? So is it enough to know what someone wants or do you also need to know why they want it and why they want that and so on? Please let me know. Other than that, I'll see you next time. Bye.


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