The Fitness and Economic Complexity group at CREF leads the project in partnership with Scuola di Studi Superiori Sant’Anna of Pisa. Representatives from organisations participating as an International Research Network (IRC) and Civic Action Network attended the meeting in person or online.
Download the Meeting Programme here.
Project Summary
Triple T aims to identify the capabilities and policies needed to steer economies towards a just twin transition, combining and reinforcing digital and sustainable transitions. To achieve this goal, Triple T aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the asymmetries across sectors, countries, and regions that the transition may entail in knowledge generation, labour markets, and environmental and socioeconomic inequalities. The complex nature of societal transformation, where geographical, structural and institutional elements interact, requires an appropriate complexity perspective to analyse a scenario characterised by interlinkages, feedback loops and trade-offs. The project approach involves various methods, including econometrics, big data analysis, natural language processing, neural networks and machine learning. We use diverse fine-grained datasets at different geographical scales, covering patents, exports, sector and occupational labour market outcomes, toxic pollution at the factory level and various socioeconomic variables.
This approach goes beyond the current state of the art by adopting an economic complexity perspective of the transition, focusing on the sectors and technologies with the highest green relevance and on the combination of productive and technological capabilities required by regions/countries to develop new green technologies and initiate the sustainable transition. It examines the potential labour risks associated with climate change mitigation technologies and the impact of green labour-saving technological change on occupations, sectors and local/national labour markets. Furthermore, in contrast to much of the evolutionary geography literature, it develops a comprehensive framework for identifying the structural and environmental characteristics that contribute to the creation of ‘left-behind’ rather than ‘winning’ places and proposes a policy toolbox to address the stratification of environmental and social inequalities.
This approach can also provide new analytical and empirical insights into a transition that promotes growth while guiding inclusive and sustainable development. Finally, Triple T plans to maintain an ongoing dialogue with civil society and policy institutions by establishing a civil society network and an international steering committee.
