Landscapes Podcast | The Afterlives of Coal
Adam Calo
Even as efforts to transition Appalachia out of coal receive broad policy support, the fate of the landscape is ultimately driven by incumbent actors used to getting what they want. Dr Lindsay Shade and Dr Karen Rignall discuss their research about how legacies of land ownership frustrate equitable and effective transition strategies. While an "Abundance" argument suggests that "the Democratic fetish for legalistic procedure has in so many places, made it impossible to get stuff done," the afterlives of coal provides a stark reminder of the deeper powers that control what happens on the land. Confronting the legacies of landownership may be the only path to meaningful landscape transformation.
Episode Links
- Dr Lindsay Shade
- Dr Karen Rignall
- Shade, L., Schwartzman, G., Rignall, K., Slovinsky, K., & Johnson, J. (2025). Afterlives of coal: land and transition dynamics in Central Appalachia. Environmental Research: Energy, 2(1), 015015.
- Also see: Shade, L., Rignall, K., Tarus, L., & Starr, C. (2025). The role of land in a just transition: the Appalachian Land Study collective. Environmental Research: Energy, 2(2), 025010.
- The ongoing Appalachian Land Study and the historic Appalachian Land Ownership Study
- Martin County solar project on the former Martiki mine
- The Cumberland Forest Project (The Nature Conservancy)
- Congressman Hal Rogers and prison development
- Carbon sequestration court case: Pocahontas Surfcae Interests and Forestland Group
- The Alliance for Appalachia
- The Appalachian Rekindling Project
- The Abundance critique of process
- The Heavens, by Sandra Newman
Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance and Politics
Radboud University, Netherlands
(2024). Transforming land for sustainable food: Emerging contests to property regimes in the Global North. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 12(1).(2024) New Entrant Farming Policy as Predatory Inclusion. Agriculture and Human Values.
(2022). Using property law to expand agroecology: Scotland’s land reforms based on human rights. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 1-37.
(2020). The Yeoman Myth: A Troubling Foundation of the Beginning Farmer Movement. Gastronomica 20, 12–29.