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，同时应对了向去工业化的结构性转变。随着苏格兰迈向替代能源、低温室气体排放和修复景观的“绿色”未来，我们如何确保这一过渡对于依赖化石燃料开采的劳动力和社区来说是一次“仅仅”的过渡？该项目关注的是前露天采矿景观面临的巨大社会和环境挑战，这些景观被广泛认为是耗尽和废弃的废墟，因此在这种过渡中没有当前或未来的“价值”。当然，作为有毒场所，以前的煤田得到了明确的跨行业回应，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，这种努力一直存在于土地管理战略中，例如退回牧场/松鸡沼泽和建造房屋。在抹去过去工业活动的迹象的同时，这些方法将此类地块由此产生的价值集中在少数已经富有的个人和组织手中，对为当地社区提供可持续就业几乎无济于事。随着苏格兰煤田社区继续遭受行业衰落带来的严重社会经济影响，近年来低碳/可再生能源的就业人数有所下降，需要从社会影响的角度对这些景观修复和管理战略进行批判性评估；需要探索社会“公正”环境/地球科学研究影响治理的新可能性。该项目与苏格兰政府设计“公正过渡”的努力结盟，这一点从2018年成立公正过渡委员会可见一斑。它将提供一条以政策为导向的新研究路线，以环境和地球科学家在采掘景观方面工作的零散研究项目为基础。它建立在苏格兰工人运动关切的基础上，以确保环境上可持续的过渡是在工人及其代表的中心投入下设计的，并能够确保高薪、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