Dialogue + Design Associates has been delighted to work with a group of leaders from coal-impacted communities across the country to create the National Economic Transition Platform. With support and leadership from the Just Transition Fund, this group of community leaders, labor organizers, members of tribal nations, and practitioners worked for more than a year to develop the platform and its seven core pillars to build healthy, diverse, resilient economies. You can read more here https://nationaleconomictransition.org or download the PDF of the platform.
Through the NET effort, local and regional leaders from communities facing energy transitions joined forces to craft a Platform that outlines what’s needed at the national level to accelerate coal community transition. We envision a future where communities affected by the decline of coal have vibrant economies with thriving, local businesses and quality, family-sustaining jobs. To realize this vision, we’re asking America’s leaders to make a big, bold investment in our future and create an ambitious national community transition program.
Over the last year, a diverse planning team of transition representatives worked to draft this platform. With the facilitation of Dialogue + Design Associates, a community engagement and design firm, the platform was refined through an extensive idea generation and feedback-gathering process that first included a series of in-depth interviews with community leaders and members from coal-impacted communities. This feedback informed the first draft of the platform, which was reviewed in June of 2019 during an in-person meeting of coal community and transition leaders. Then, three regional stakeholder in-person meetings were held in Appalachia, the Midwest, and the West, as well as a digital engagement campaign to gather input from the broader public from coal-affected regions in the fall of 2019. Finally, the planning team reviewed the platform at each stage of its development, included deep dives around each of the seven points, and provided guidance on navigating the platform release with the COVID crisis.
Our comprehensive 7-Point Platform of integrated federal policy solutions is intended to help strengthen and diversify local economies undergoing transition. We’re asking the federal government to:
- Invest in local leaders and long-term economic development planning,
- Expand new sectors to help communities diversify their economies,
- Provide bridge support and pathways to in-demand quality, family sustaining jobs for workers,
- Reclaim and remediate coal sites to create jobs while cleaning up the environment,
- Improve insufficient physical and social infrastructure,
- Address the impact of coal company bankruptcies on workers and for reclamation, and
- Ensure coordination across programs and pillars to ensure communities have access to the resources they need.
The platform is intended to be ambitious, visionary, and pragmatic, with the goal of accelerating a just economic transition in a way that is equitable and inclusive. Our plan addresses the problems of economic distress and inequality that have again been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the demands for racial justice across the country, while also recognizing the urgency of the climate crisis. The platform provides for both immediate economic relief and sustained, long-term support to more broadly help communities rebuild local economies and plan for the future. While the platform includes a special focus on the needs of coal miners and power plant workers, we recognize that all community members are affected by these changes.