%0 Journal Article
%T Just transition? Strategic framing and the challenges facing coal dependent communities
%A Sally A Weller
%J Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
%@ 2399-6552
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/2399654418784304
%X 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¨C2013, 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
%K Strategic framing
%K place framing
%K regional policy
%K Australia
%K decarbonization
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2399654418784304