The green transition is reshaping economies, societies and territories, while also changing the knowledge, skills and capacities required to navigate structural change. Yet the ability to access, develop and use knowledge is unevenly distributed across people, organisations, sectors and regions. This has important implications for equality and inclusion, as participation in the green transition and the capacity to benefit from emerging opportunities increasingly depend on access to relevant knowledge and the ability to translate it into action.

From a just transition perspective, this makes knowledge a distributional issue. Climate and energy policies, technological change and changing skill requirements do not affect all social groups in the same way. Socioeconomic position, gender, employment status and other dimensions of vulnerability influence both exposure to transition costs and access to new opportunities. Differences in knowledge, skills and learning opportunities can consequently shape employment prospects, economic security and social welfare. Knowledge can therefore enable greater participation and inclusion, but unequal access to it may also reproduce or deepen existing disparities.

Similar differences arise across sectors and territories. Sectors face different pressures from decarbonisation and technological change and differ in their capacity to respond. Regions also enter the transition with different economic structures, knowledge bases, human capital, innovation capacities and institutional resources. Their ability to mobilise and develop these resources influences how they adapt to structural change and create new development pathways. In this sense, knowledge is closely connected to regional resilience and to the capacity of territories to respond to change without reinforcing existing social and economic disparities.

Artificial intelligence adds a new dimension to these questions by changing how knowledge is created, accessed, interpreted and used. AI can expand analytical and learning capacities and support responses to transition challenges, but these possibilities are themselves unevenly distributed. Differences in digital capabilities, data, infrastructure and organisational resources may generate new knowledge divides or reinforce existing ones. At the same time, the growing role of AI raises questions about whose knowledge becomes visible and influential, who participates in its creation, and whose experiences and needs are represented in decisions shaping the green transition.

Against this background, and in line with the IFKAD 2027 theme, “The Ecology of Knowledge in the AI Era,” this Special Track examines how knowledge ecosystems can contribute to a just green transition. It extends the discussion of knowledge ecosystems and human–AI interaction to their wider social, economic, sectoral and territorial implications, asking not only how knowledge creates value, but also who has access to it, who participates in its creation and use, and how the resulting opportunities and benefits are distributed. The track welcomes theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented research on social and economic equality and its gender dimensions, employment and skills, social welfare and distributional effects, sectoral transformation, regional disparities and resilience, knowledge access and participation, and the changing role of AI in knowledge creation and use. By connecting knowledge ecosystems with questions of equality, inclusion and distribution, the track brings a distinct socioeconomic perspective to the ecology of knowledge in the AI era. It seeks to advance understanding of the conditions under which knowledge can strengthen the capacity of people, organisations, sectors and regions to participate in, adapt to and benefit from the green transition without reproducing existing socioeconomic and territorial disparities.