The tourism sector faces profound sustainability challenges including climate crises, socioeconomic inequalities, and biodiversity loss. While green transitions and net-zero initiatives have gained prominence, they often remain focused on technical solutions rather than addressing the political dimensions of change. This special issue seeks work that critically examines who benefits from transitions, who bears the burdens, and whose voices are included in governance processes.
The special issue advances the concept of Just Sustainability Transition (JST) to move beyond narrow carbon and labour-focused agendas toward interrogating fundamental questions about power, equity, and historical context. It recognizes that sustainability transitions in tourism are embedded in structural inequalities and shaped by global power asymmetries. The issue welcomes theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions using intersectional, decolonial, ecological, feminist, Indigenous, and multispecies justice perspectives to illuminate tensions and transformative potentials in sectoral transitions.