Abstract
In response to the accelerating impacts of climate change, urgent action is required to decarbonise our socio-technical systems based on coal and oil. Frequently, these shifts involve decisions made in distal capital cities, or distant countries, that have significant impacts on resource-based communities In this paper we focus on temporal justice; the disjuncture between the timeframes of urgent decisions about transition options to meet policy objectives, and the timeframes experienced by residents of regions affected by the impacts of those decisions, and how those impacts fit within trajectories of change in resource-extracting regions. Here we draw on six case studies of regions located in Australasia (Hunter Valley, Latrobe Valley, West Coast New Zealand) Canada (Alberta) and Africa, (Ghana, Zimbabwe). Each of these is at a different point in the mine lifecycle, from places where residents mourn the past glory days, regions in where closure is imminent and regions wary of the rush to start new mines for 'energy transition minerals'. Collectively, our case studies demonstrate the complexity of transitions and how multiple forms of justice (environmental, procedural, recognition, restorative, distributive and intergenerational) shape the key issues and required responses to transition challenges. The capacity for local communities to respond to these changes is impacted by factors of embedded identity, agency in the transition process and legacy of past injustices. Each of these factors take time to work through. Thus, there is a disconnect between the urgency of transition and the time required for host communities to become effective participants in their own transition.