Just Transitions in Extractive Territories

Abstract

The energy transition will have profound impacts on extractive territories—those that currently produce fossil-based fuel minerals and those that will be transformed by production of the critical minerals and materials necessary for clean energy production. To fossil-fuel extraction regions, the energy transition may result in collapse of existing social and fiscal systems. Energy justice demands recognition of these harms, restoration of past environmental damage and underinvestment, and fair procedures to allow full participation and autonomy within a transformed and decarbonized energy and economic system. This must commence with restorative justice efforts that a mutualized with local priorities and are not conditioned on acceptance of new risks. Assuring fulfillment of the existing social contract in areas of fossil-based fuel and energy production is tantamount to a just transition and to building social license in emerging areas of resource production.

1 Introduction

Transforming the existing systems energy production and consumption demands both the unprecedented development and extraction of new resources and raw materials and the intentional abandonment of others. Doing so justly requires recognition of the profound impacts these changes will have on territories with economies that are dependent on extraction and export of the primary commodities that have sustained the current fossil-based system and enabled growth in core economic areas.¹ Primary energy extraction, and thus the people and places where coal, natural gas, and petroleum are extracted, is a critical component of modern day vertically integrated, socio-technical energy systems.² Advancing justice for and within these resource peripheries is complex and requires reconciliation of the entangled social-spatial relations that are embedded in the legacies of resource exploitation and extractivism.³

2 Justice in Territories of Fossil-Fuel Extraction

Energy development can embrittle coal and fossil-fuel production reliant regions, leaving them unique vulnerable to the energy transition. Often contested and “slippery” spaces, communities within these peripheries may, to varying extents, face deep-seated problems resulting of prior injustices in siting decisions and resource development, power imbalances, labor conflict, exposure to health risks and environmental pollution, and fiscal dependence.⁴ Despite having highly developed system of production along the energy supply-chain, these areas may concurrently be underdeveloped and lacking critical infrastructure and local capacity.

Some of these places may concurrently be impacted by climate change, straining existing infrastructure and further impeding progress toward development goals. These resource limitations and pressures, often in addition to political underrepresentation and marginalization, may render these areas unable to remediate past environmental harms or diversify their economies without external support. Transformation of the systems of energy production may generate distributional benefits by reducing environmental load and spreading the burdens of resource production more equally, but may concurrently result in deindustrialization including collapse of local economies and labor markets and fiscal rupture.⁵ Recognizing the impacts of prior energy development on extractive territories as a present issue in energy justice is essential to the development of robust strategies for inclusion in new energy systems.

3 A Move to a Just Transition

The energy transition must not only prevent new injustices in the production and consumption of energy but also must be reparative. Communities in areas of primary energy extraction have disproportionately shouldered health and environmental burdens for decades.⁶ Justice in extractive peripheries must include environmental reclamation of polluted and disturbed land and water. The energy transition has the potential to exacerbate these harms. Without sufficient planning, policy efforts to force early abandonment of fossil resources could leave significant unfunded environmental liabilities. Adequate financial assurances and intentional phase-out policies like those being applied to generation resources can help assure that there are adequate resources to address legacy environmental harms within these “sacrifice zones.”⁷

A just transition must also include support for green growth and economic diversification that provides realistic social and economic alternatives. Energy production communities may be appealing sites for new green-energy development due to existing infrastructure such as rail and transmission capacity. Policymakers may encourage new energy projects to locate in energy production communities as a way of supporting a just transition or to prevent new greenfield development.⁸ However, a focus merely on labor replacement is insufficient to achieve a just transition.⁹ Without structural changes and investments in capacity building and quality of life improvements, these areas will be unable to reconfigure their positionalities in the global economy. Green growth plans may only exacerbate existing inequities by concentrating new energy development—and associated environmental risks—within these communities, while reinforcing the periphery structure.¹⁰ This would eliminate any burden sharing distributional equity related to the energy transition. An equity-based approach instead requires investments in new business development, infrastructure, education, and culture, and programs for workforce retraining that are oriented toward community-driven priorities.¹¹

In addition, a just approach to transitions for extractive regions may also include efforts to decarbonize existing production activities or to develop new markets for existing resources. These investments allow for participation of extractive producing areas within transitioning energy systems. For instance, development of hydrogen production facilities that use natural gas could provide current peripheries with new value-added economic activities while also sustaining existing resource production. Similarly, technologies that use coal for non-combustion purposes may support prosperity and growth in coal territories, especially where new manufacturing facilities can be developed locally. Projects such as these may help overcome inclusionary bias.

Finally, transition planning must be locally driven. A purely technocratic approach is unlikely to achieve just outcomes. It is well recognized that procedural justice requires robust participation, inclusion, and incorporation of local knowledge in decisions related to new energy infrastructure siting.¹² Equally, communities within existing areas of primary energy production must be treated with dignity and cannot be ignored. Because the scales of resource territories and democratic and legal decision processes may be mismatched, a locally informed, bottom-up approach is needed. A justice-based approach to transition must allow these communities space to consider the appropriateness of new investments environmentally, socially, and culturally. Inclusive procedures may develop a sense of ownership in new projects, allowing communities to reconcile new development with well-established resource-based regional identities.¹³ A just approach will also promote the autonomy of people and regions, providing territories with an opportunity to consider whether to accept new energy sources and how new industries will develop. Relying on and incorporating local knowledge in new projects can inform investment and reclamation activities to assure mutualization of benefits across spatial scales.

4 Conclusion

Effecting justice in this area is essential to achieving a just transition to a low carbon economy. Misalignment between the spatial divisions of production and those of policies designed to accelerate the energy transition may give rise to energy transition resistance at the national or regional level.¹⁴ Without viable transition alternatives, regional or national actors may in fact support intensification of fossil resource production to counter the adverse impacts of industrial decline.¹⁵ Moreover, advancing justice and assuring that the social contract is fulfilled in fossil territories will be critical to building trust and social license within extractive activities in emerging areas of new primary resource production including for the critical minerals essential to the energy transition. Justice is, therefore, not only an end in itself, but also a means to securing support and participation in the energy transition.

Justice in extractive territories is as much about creating a new social contract as it is about fulfilling the existing social contract. This must begin with restorative justice that addresses the existing imbalances created by historic markets, patterns of production, and allocations of capital that have resulted in pollution and lack of diversification in extractive territories.¹⁶ Restorative justice requires remediating legacy environmental pollution and waste and addressing existing underinvestment in core infrastructure, education, culture, and capacity. These activities must be conducted without qualification, independent of a community’s willingness to accept new industrial or commercial risks. Doing so will position communities within extractive territories to renegotiate their positionality and engage in governance as equal partners within transformed energy systems.