Toward Just Transitions: Visions for Regenerative Communities in Appalachia - Paperback

by Shaunna L. Scott (Editor), Kathryn Engle (Editor)

Central Appalachia has long endured the exploitation of its abundant natural resources, like timber and coal, and suffered the ensuing fallout, including high poverty, low educational attainment, and persistent health and environmental problems. In Toward Just Transitions, editorsShaunna L. Scott and Kathryn Engle explore the regional damage wrought by extractive capitalism and outline the need for "just transitions."

A just transition is "a vision-led, unifying, and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy," which supports conservation and faces climate change head-on. The just transitions movement emphasizes locally based solutions and democratic decision-making, recognizing there are many perspectives on strategies that will help "provide dignified, productive, and ecologically sustainable livelihoods" for all.

Just as Central Appalachia follows global trends of predatory capitalism, so too can it become an example of how to rectify them. Toward Just Transitions offers solutions for wresting power from corporations and oligarchs and returning it to the communities and marginalized groups their actions have harmed most.

Author Biography

Shaunna L. Scott is associate professor emeritus of sociology and former director of Appalachian studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Two Sides to Everything: The Cultural Construction of Class Consciousness in Harlan County, Kentucky and coeditor of Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking. Kathryn Engle is director of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. She serves on the board of the Lend-A-Hand Center in Walker, Kentucky, and is a founding board member of the Knox County Farmers' Market. Engle is the editor of Madison's Heritage Rediscovered: Stories from a Historic Kentucky County.