Environmental justice analysis to advance rural landscape transformations in the face of climate change

气候变化正迫使欧洲国家在多个部门实施转型变革。虽然能源和工业生产系统主导了这些议程，但也有越来越多的人呼吁在农村地区进行变革，包括可能深刻地改变农村景观的用途。学术研究主要集中在这种重新利用的生物物理潜力上，包括植树造林和清除牲畜等行动，以减缓和适应气候变化。我们现在需要通过对农村转型的社会层面的研究来补充这种技术评估：确定潜在的社会不平等，了解我们如何支持农村转型议程的所有权和合法性，并探索克服社会冷漠和抵制的方法。“公正景观”项目将探讨在气候变化面前“公正转型”的意义和实践。我们将其定义为将环境目标（包括脱碳和保护生物多样性）与社会正义目标相结合的大规模和根深蒂固的社会生态变化。正义目标不仅与气候变化影响的分布有关，还与气候政策反应的影响有关。对社会正义的关注涉及挑战种族、性别、财富、信仰体系和代际等类别的不平等，并坚持联合国2030年议程“不让任何一个人掉队”。“公正转型”的理念将社会正义本身视为一个目标，但也有助于克服转型变革的愿景和实施中的“正义障碍”。这种障碍在整个欧洲越来越明显，一些气候政策被视为社会倒退，对低收入和农村家庭的影响不成比例（例如法国的黄马甲运动）。该项目采用跨学科和跨学科的方法，结合了新颖的人文科学和社会科学方法，以及来自地理学、心理学、政治学、未来研究和创意写作的环境专业知识。这使我们能够a)探索欧洲农村公民如何看待气候引起的潜在土地利用转型所产生的正义和不公正；b)在实践中概念化和推进以正义为导向的可持续转型。通过在捷克共和国、法国和英国的三个案例研究，我们的目标是找出不同的利益相关者如何看待气候正义，这些多元概念在特定地区如何受到质疑，哪些规范性问题成为共同愿景的障碍，以及哪些共同规范为集体行动提供了机会。具体来说，我们关注的是苏格兰以鹿为主的沼地景观、捷克共和国以脆弱的商业针叶树单一栽培为主的景观和法国大规模畜牧业的草原景观的转变。“公正景观”计划建议对这些景观中的多元正义信念进行实证调查，利用这些知识为共同规范和愿景的审议提供信息，并共同制定景观层面的宣言，以实现向低碳、有弹性和社会进步的乡村景观的“公正转型”。审议过程将嵌入跨学科和多利益相关者的“公正转型实验室”，这些实验室与景观和更广泛地区内的“真实”正在进行的政策磋商相关联。该项目的研究结果将有利于这些案例研究地点，但也将为拟议的农村土地利用气候行动的更广泛应用提供理解和方法。该小组还将利用其与学术网络和科学政策平台的联系，在国家和国际层面促进科学和社会影响。

Climate change is forcing European countries to implement transformative changes to multiple sectors. Whilst energy and industrial production systems have dominated these agendas, there are also growing calls for transformations in rural areas, including potentially profound repurposing of rural landscapes. Academic research has mainly focused on the biophysical potential for such repurposing, including actions such as afforestation and livestock removal, to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We now need to complement this technical assessment with research into the societal dimensions of rural transformations: to identify potential social inequalities, to understand how we can support ownership and legitimacy of rural transformation agendas and to explore ways of overcoming societal indifference and resistance.The Just-Scapes project will explore the meaning and practice of "just transformation" in the face of climate change. We define this as wide-scale and deep-rooted social-ecological change that combines environmental goals (including decarbonisation and protection of biodiversity) with social justice goals. Justice goals relate not only to the distribution of the effects of climate change but also to the effects of climate policy responses. This attention to social justice involves challenging inequalities across categories such as race, gender, wealth, belief system and generations, and adhering to the UN's 2030 Agenda to 'leave no one behind'. The idea of 'just transformation' views social justice as a goal in its own right, but also as instrumental to overcoming 'justice barriers' to the visioning and implementation of transformational change. Such barriers are increasingly evident across Europe, with some climate policies viewed as socially regressive, disproportionately impacting on low income and rural households (for example the Gilets Jaunes movement in France).The Just-Scapes project uses interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methods, combining novel humanities and social-science approaches and environmental expertise from geography, psychology, political science, futures studies and creative writing. This enables us to a) explore how European rural citizens perceive the justices and injustices arising from potential climate-induced land-use transformations and b) conceptualise and advance justice-oriented transformations to sustainability in practice. Through three case studies, in the Czech Republic, France and the UK, we aim to find out how different stakeholders conceive of climate justice, how these plural conceptions are contested within particular places, what normative concerns act as barriers to shared vision, and what shared norms provide opportunities for collective action. Specifically, we focus on transformations away from deer-dominated moorland landscapes in Scotland, landscapes dominated by fragile commercial conifer monocultures in the Czech Republic and landscapes of grasslands for extensive livestock farming in France. Just-Scapes proposes to empirically investigate the plurality of justice beliefs across these landscapes, to use this knowledge to inform deliberation of shared norms and visions, and to co-produce landscape level manifestos for 'just transformations' towards low carbon, resilient and socially progressive rural landscapes.The deliberative process will be embedded in transdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder 'Just Transformation Labs' that are linked into 'real' ongoing policy consultations within the landscape and wider regions. Findings from the project will benefit these case study locations but will also provide understanding and methodologies for wider application for proposed rural land-use climate actions. The team will use its links to academic networks and science-policy platforms to also promote scientific and societal impacts at national and international levels.