Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the dynamics between embedding and localizing just transition away from carbon-based economic development based on the ethnographic study carried out in a small town in Southern Poland - Brzeszcze.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the dynamics between embedding and localizing just transition away from carbon-based economic development based on the ethnographic study carried out in a small town in Southern Poland - Brzeszcze. By reconstructing the narratives of local inhabitants and Kraków-based technical experts who arrive in Brzeszcze with ready-made revitalization projects, we argue that in order to offer new development pathways, just transition projects need to become embedded, i.e. originate in the hybridization of local materiality, values, and culture (Jasanoff 2015), rather than mere localization. Localization, we argue, lacks hybridization and stands for the implementation of various techno-fixes or blacked-boxed projects in a top-down process. Our study focuses on the transition of a community that is marginal in many ways. (1) Brzeszcze is a small mining town located outside Silesia, and thus without as much financial resources and political attention as the Silesian mining towns under the EU-subsidized national and regional just transition programs. (2) Brzeszcze is located at the margins of Poland’s carbonscape which results in several challenges posed to the ways in which the material, institutional and cultural manifestations of carbon-based energy systems (Haarstad and Wanvik 2016) are changing under the impact of post-mining revitalization programs offered by the experts from a nearby technical university from Kraków. (3) Gradual decommissioning of the mining sites and the subsequent decline of the city, leaves the inhabitants feeling deprived of agency and marginalized. Over the last years, Brzeszcze has become a demonstration site for landscape revitalization projects, which do not become embedded into the complex context of the marginal position of this town and tend to function as non-spaces for local communities. This gives little hope for leading the vulnerable communities of mine workers out onto a new path of economic development.