Leslie Mabon
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Leslie Mabon
@ljmabon.bsky.social
550 followers 200 following 210 posts

Senior Lecturer in Environmental Systems, Faculty of STEM, Open University, UK. Sustainability science for resilient and just coastal places. Scotland - Japan - Taiwan. Future Earth Coasts Fellow. Big Raith Rovers fan.

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Leslie Mabon @ljmabon.bsky.social · Jan 5
New paper on just transition, policy knowledge + offshore wind in Nagasaki, Japan. I argue that whilst sharing best practice is valuable, it risks undermining just transitions elsewhere if we don't ask who benefits from this knowledge being shared and adopted:

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Abstract begins: Recent years have seen a proliferation of knowledge-sharing networks to support place-based just transitions among carbon-intensive regions. Yet, policy mobilities scholarship argues that policy knowledge from some places may be selectively promoted to propagate specific ideas about how regional planning ‘ought’ to happen. Exemplars of good practice circulated within such networks could therefore work against place-based just transitions, if they promote policies that perpetuate existing imbalances between industries and communities. In response, this study uses policy mobilities as an analytical framework to evaluate how the mobility of policy knowledge may enable or hinder a place-based just transition. This question is explored for offshore renewables in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. Nagasaki has up to 3400 power sector workers, including two municipalities where power sector workers are proportionally three to four times the Japanese average. An offshore wind capacity of ~440 MW over two sites is planned in Nagasaki. National governments, non-profit organisations and overseas regions all aim to influence offshore renewables policy in Nagasaki, whereas industry organisations promote the region’s success as an offshore renewables cluster. Document analysis, interviews and ethnographic observations are used to assess how circulation, localisation and resharing of policy knowledge may inform a just transition for Nagasaki’s workforce and communities. The study makes three contributions to place-based just transitions literature.