After Coal: Climate Forest Governance and Uneven Development in the Appalachian Region

Keywords: Coal, deindustrialization, energy transition, forests, climate change, Appalachia
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 33

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the political ecology of deindustrialization in the rural region of the central Appalachian coalfields. Building on the work of Doreen Massey (1995; 2007), I examine how processes of uneven development bring novel forms of investment and disinvestment to the region as the coal industry collapses. Focusing on forest politics, in this paper I trace how declining coal rents have driven land companies that own much of Appalachia’s vast coalfield forest to seek investment from carbon forest offset markets, biodiversity conservation and all-terrain vehicle tourism development. Based on regional policy research and several dozen interviews conducted in a rural valley along the Kentucky-Tennessee border, I analyze how discourses about and policies for the region’s so-called ‘economic transition’ drive these land use changes in post-coal landscapes. I find that this current regional economic development regime builds on long legacies of rural disinvestment to drive depopulation of the coalfields. I also consider community responses to climate forest governance regimes, tourist development, and disinvestment in social services, local employment, and community development efforts. Drawing on geographic scholarship on development and regions (Woods 2017a; 2017b), I argue that grassroots community development and organizing efforts, many of them with origins in the region’s environmental justice movement, present an alternative regional development agenda. Through the prefigurative politics of providing mutual aid, housing, and medical care, this development agenda demands state-supported provision of high quality of life in rural areas.