Toward Just Transitions

Visions for Regenerative Communities in Appalachia

Shaunna L. Scott, Kathryn Engle

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781985903197, 9781985903180
• eBook ISBN: 9781985903203
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

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, editors Shaunna 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Democratization and Equity: Meaningful Participation for All
• Regeneration: Land, Food, and Health
• Strategies for Advancing Just Transitions
• Conclusion: Strategies for a Regenerative Region and World
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Index
• Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies