The Place of Extractive Landscapes in a Just Transition: Assessing and Co-Designing Transdisciplinary Networks for Action

2019年，苏格兰政府通过了修订后的《气候变化法》，制定了2050年的环境目标，同时应对去工业化的结构性转变。随着苏格兰走向替代能源、低温室气体排放和修复景观的“绿色”未来，我们如何确保这种转变对依赖化石燃料开采的劳动力和社区来说是“公正的"？该项目的重点是前露天采矿景观的巨大的社会和环境挑战，广泛的问题是被耗尽和遗弃的破坏网站，因此没有当前或未来的“价值”在这样的过渡。当然，作为生态修复的场所，前煤田已经得到了明确的跨部门回应，强调利用一系列环境和地球科学领域的专业知识进行修复。然而，这些努力是在土地管理战略中进行的，例如恢复牧场/松鸡摩尔沼泽和建房。这些方法在消除过去工业活动的迹象的同时，将这些地点的最终价值集中在少数已经富有的个人和组织手中，并且几乎没有为当地社区提供可持续的就业机会。由于苏格兰的煤田社区继续受到该行业衰退的严重不利社会经济影响，而且近年来低碳/可再生能源的就业率下降，因此需要从社会影响的角度对这些景观补救和管理战略进行严格评估;和新的可能性，为社会'公正'的环境/该项目与苏格兰政府的努力结盟，旨在设计一个“公正的过渡”，这在建立一个2018年成立公正过渡委员会。它将提供一系列新的以政策为导向的研究，以关注从事采掘景观的环境和地球科学家的分散研究项目。它以苏格兰劳工运动的关切为基础，以确保在工人及其代表的核心投入下设计环境上可持续的过渡，并确保高薪和有保障的就业

In 2019, the Scottish Government passed an amended Climate Change Act that mapped out environmental targets for 2050 while responding to a structural shift to deindustrialization. As Scotland moves towards a 'green' future of alternative energy sources, low greenhouse gas emissions and remediated landscapes, how do we ensure that this transition is a 'just' one for workforces and communities that have depended on the extraction of fossil fuels?This project focuses on the formidable social and environmental challenges of former opencast mining landscapes, extensively problematised as ruined sites that are exhausted and abandoned, and hence of no current or future 'value' in such a transition. Certainly, as sites of toxification, former coalfields have been met by an explicitly cross-sector response that emphasises remediation, using the expertise of a range of environmental and geoscience fields. Such efforts have, however, been situated in land management strategies, such as a return to pasture/grouse moor and housebuilding. While erasing signs of past industrial activity, these approaches concentrate the resulting value of such sites within the hands of a small number of already wealthy individuals and organisations, and do little to provide sustainable employment for local communities. As coalfield communities in Scotland continue to experience significantly detrimental socio-economic impacts from the decline of the industry, and employment in low carbon/renewable energy has declined in recent years, these landscape remediation and management strategies need to be critically appraised in terms of their social impacts; and new possibilities for socially 'just' environmental/geoscience research to impact governance need to be explored.The project allies with efforts in the Scottish Government to design a 'just transition' evident in the establishment of a Just Transition Commission in 2018. It will provide a new line of policy-orientated research that picks up on the scattered research projects of environmental and geoscientists working on extractive landscapes. It builds on the concerns of the labour movement in Scotland to ensure that environmentally sustainable transitions are designed with the central input of workers and their representatives, and can ensure well-paid, secure employment