Just transition? Strategic framing and the challenges facing coal dependent communities
Date
2019
Authors
Weller, S.A.
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Journal article
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Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2019; 37(2):298-316
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Abstract
Policies designed to hasten the closure of high-emissions coal-fired power stations routinely include reference to the need for a ‘just’ transition in affected communities. But the detail of what a just transition might entail is rarely specified. This article examines how policy interventions in Australia in 2012–2013, as part of the Gillard government’s Clean Energy Future package,approached the problem of a just transition in the case of Victoria’s coal dependent Latrobe Valley. It describes how policymakers framed the issue as transition, adopted a regional scaling,and expanded the territorial arena of policy action. A stakeholder-based multilevel governance committee shrouded this top-down decision-making from public scrutiny. These moves made it possible to conjure a narrative of benign transition governed by market processes. The paper explains how these strategic framings sidelined local interests, misrepresented the issues, exacerbated local disempowerment, and enabled the redirection of re-distributional funding to communities that were not directly affected by the impending closure of coal-fired power stations.The perceived injustice of this process exposes the limitations of climate policy-related strategic issue, scale and place framing.
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Link to a related website: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2399654418784304, Open Access via Unpaywall
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Copyright 2019 The Authors