INDIAN researcher Sabir Ahamed took a linguist's help to translate the term "just transition" into Bengali for his new study on the impact of coal mine closures on local people, as countries start to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy.
Ahamed settled on the somewhat poetic "kalo theke aalo", which means "from darkness to hope", after consulting the language expert for a phrase his target audience of coal communities in India's state of West Bengal, would understand.
"It's catchy. It is not a direct translation but people do associate 'kalo' with coal so it gives an immediate context," said Ahamed, 45, who explained that there is no equivalent of "just transition" or even "climate change" in the Bengali language.
"Besides, I wanted to show there is hope, that there is a way out (of coal)," added Ahamed, based in Kolkata in eastern India and works with Pratichi India Trust, a research and advocacy group.
The concept of "just transition" is complex, even in English.
The United Nation's International Labour Organisation defines it as "greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind".
Ahamed's research is among just a handful of efforts to make jargon-heavy climate change and energy transition dialogue — so far restricted to English-speaking think tanks and experts in India — accessible to people who will be impacted the most.
"What is the purpose of doing research if we cannot communicate the findings or the analysis to the communities or stakeholders?" Ahamed added.
India is the world's second-largest coal producer and at least 13 million people in the nation depend on the industry for a living, said a 2021 report by the National Foundation for India, a philanthropic organisation focused on social justice.
Many are at risk of losing jobs and incomes as India builds its renewable energy capacity, just transition experts warn.
However, communication about the country's future move away from fossil fuels — and what this might entail — has yet to reach the people whose lives will be most affected, analysts and activists warned.
"The dialogue around just transition is limited to echo chambers," said Mayank Aggarwal, who heads the just transition vertical for Indian consulting firm Climate Trends.
Aggarwal has this year launched a podcast on just transition in Hindi and used social media platform X — formerly known as Twitter — to host debates about it in the language.
"We want to reach out to people who actually matter, who don't know what just transition is. We want them to understand the issue and be an important stakeholder in the discussion."
Even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has tried to make its global findings easier to understand after criticism from scientists about jargon being a barrier.
In recent months, think tanks have enlisted comics, poets and musicians to better communicate climate change threats to the public, with a broader aim of making the issue more accessible and widely understood as many people remain unaware.
Apart from spreading the knowledge that extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts and cyclones are fuelled by climate change, using local languages will also encourage people to demand political action, campaigners said.
Efforts are now being made to break down and translate technical terms.
In Bangladesh, activist group YouthNet for Climate Justice has started posting Bengali commentary on social media about the reports of the IPCC, for example.
The activists want community radio stations to discuss climate and energy issues in local dialects of Bengali.
"Climate-related information hardly ever seeps into the community and we are working to bring it close to the people," said Sohanur Rahman, executive coordinator of YouthNet.
In a bid to reach more people in India's coal regions, the Just Transition Research Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, rolled out four fellowships last year — with one in Hindi, one in Bengali and two in English.
Ahamed was awarded one of the fellowships — which aimed to assess the impact of mine closures on coal communities.
The next leg of the programme will focus on renewable energy — and with new projects coming up in India's western and southern states, fellowships will be offered in languages spoken in those regions — Gujarati and Tamil.
* The writers are from the Reuters news agency