Policy mixes for just sustainable development in industrially overspecialized regions

Policy mixes for just sustainable development in natural resources rich and industrially overspecialized regions – the case of two Norwegian petromaritime regions
An NTNU Team Society webinar

About the webinar
In industrially overspecialized regions, i.e. regions that are dependent upon a single industry and often natural resources-based industries, the question of just transitions, i.e. ensuring an inclusive carbon-neutral regional industrial transition and growth, has become an all-important policy agenda. A just transition requires coherent national, regional and local innovation policies and legitimacy among key actors to address simultaneously, both the long-term and short-term climate, social and economic goals and ambitions of the regions.

Drawing on a longitudinal case study of two Norwegian Oil & Gas dependent regions, Verdal (Mid-Norway) and Stord/Haugalandet in Western Norway, this webinar will discuss the multi-scalar policy mixes and the underlying participatory political processes designed to shape just industrial transition in the two regions. While both regions are striving to advance the decarbonization agenda, the overdependence of these regions and that of the national economy on the petroleum sector means, however, that the regional restructuring and/or transition (notably the restructuring of the O&G related industry) has been a slow and politically complicated process.