{"id":2863,"date":"2025-12-23T16:46:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tocharwetlands.ie\/?p=2863"},"modified":"2025-12-23T16:49:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:49:45","slug":"finding-a-just-transition-for-people-places-and-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tocharwetlands.ie\/ga\/blog\/finding-a-just-transition-for-people-places-and-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding a Just Transition for People, Places and Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Helen Shaw<\/strong> \u2014  curator of T\u00f3char Stories<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we meet communities in the Midlands of Ireland and say T\u00f3char, <\/a>and its T\u00f3char Stories<\/a> project, are working under the Just Transition Programme in Ireland<\/a> we get mixed responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cIt\u2019s a transition<\/em>\u201d, community volunteers Sean Craven and Seamus Barron said, when we first met in Kilcormac, Co Offaly at the beginning of the year, and added: \u201cbut it\u2019s not a just transition \u2014 it\u2019s just a transition\u201d<\/em>. Often people can point to infrastructure or events that have been funded locally through the programme but ask \u2018what does it mean for us<\/em>?\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Photo: Community group in Kilcormac, with volunteer leaders Sean Craven and Seamus Barron in orange jackets, leading T\u00f3char Stories and Kilcormac Development Association guided heritage walk in September<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The idea of a just transition<\/em><\/a> itself means no-one should be left behind in the phasing out of fossil fuels and the decarbonisation of our economies. In the Midlands the focus is on a region that has had a proud tradition of generating energy and employment through industrial peat extraction from Ireland\u2019s ancient boglands. At its core, as an international mechanism, is the concept that a just transition<\/em> means climate action<\/em> +social inclusion.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s about seeing people, places and nature as interconnected relationships in this seismic shift to shape a sustainable, regenerative and thriving carbon neutral future for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Photo: Katie Smirnova guiding a T\u00f3char Stories bog nature exploration for local children on Ballydangan Bog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So finding a just transition is more than replacement economics \u2014 it\u2019s about seeding climate action in human rights and justice. As the former Irish President, Mary Robinson, a champion of climate justice and a member of The Elders<\/a>, said a few years back we should talk about just transformations<\/em> rather than just transitions <\/em>in that \u201ca truly just transition will not be just a transition \u2014 it should tackle the inequalities and injustices caused by and exacerbated by the climate crisis and lead us to a better future.\u201d<\/em><\/a> It is within that framework that we\u2019ve been using storytelling in communities to navigate a pathway, a t\u00f3char,<\/em> from our past, through our present into a shared reimagining of our future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Photo: Kilcormac community group with guest speaker artist Tina Claffey and T\u00f3char Stories Helen Shaw (in blue coat) at end of September storytelling event. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In late September we co-hosted an event \u2018Sharing our Past, Imagining our Future\u2019 <\/a>to explore those ideas in Kilcormac , a place long connected to industrial peat extraction, and facilitated a conversation with the community about its changing identity, needs and voice. In partnership with the Kilcormac Development Association <\/a>we brought together a community storytelling workshop around place and belonging, and to begin to name and describe what local people felt their place had lost and also what they hoped it could gain in the future. We came together to begin to reimagine the identity of a place which had for so long been defined by its thriving turf economy and its relationship with Bord na M\u00f3na<\/a> (now BnM) as an employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video entitled – A bird\u2019s eye view of Kilcormac and nearby Lough Boora (T\u00f3char Stories)<\/b><\/em>. To view click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Locals talked of a once vibrant, bustling town with thriving businesses, as people from across Ireland moved to work or set up shop there, when the Bord na M\u00f3na peat industry took off from the late 1940s. On the heritage walk afterwards they pointed to closed banks, derelict premises, locked up restaurants and hotels; a main street where retail shops suffer from a lack of footfall. We chatted with one of the mainstay retailers, Anne Coffey<\/a>, a dynamic lady in her seventies, who runs Coffey\u2019s Drapery on main street, a business her late father set up in 1947, and where Anne has worked since the 1960s. She loves her job and meeting people, likes to walk in the bogland nature park nearby, Lough Boora Discovery Park run by Bord na M\u00f3na, but sees the changes in Kilcormac itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSure it\u2019s a great community. I mean, it\u2019s the people that make it. Bord na M\u00f3na is a huge loss, because that\u2019s what my father would\u2019ve built his business on, would be Bord na M\u00f3na and all the workers that came in. The future of Kilcormac, it\u2019s difficult to know because without employment, it\u2019s lacking. I wouldn\u2019t like it to be just a residential town. I like businesses in the town. I think if there\u2019s people working in a place, it gives more sense of community\u201d \u2014<\/em> Anne Coffey<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video of Anne Coffey describing her love of place but marks the changes since the loss of Bord na M\u00f3na employment (T\u00f3char Stories)<\/em><\/strong>: To view click here<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sean Craven<\/a>, a volunteer leader with the Kilcormac Development Association and a former Bord na M\u00f3na worker himself, the sense of loss is personal. He says many of the former workers feel abandoned and forgotten \u2014 they understand the decarbonisation transition is essential and value the restoration of the bogs, but feel that their shared past, the industrial history and its story, is being erased. Sean, and his colleagues Seamus Barron and Cormac Nolan, would love to see their working lives remembered and to see the record of the industrial history from the 1940s included. For them a \u2018transition\u2019 needs to carry the heritage, culture and life stories of people and places so we know where we come from, what our roots are, as we change. They\u2019d like to see the archives of Bord na M\u00f3na preserved, digitised and made public as a national record and for the some remnants of the peat industry machinery to be restored and included in places like Lough Boora Discovery Park <\/a>\u2014 so there is a memory, a pathway from a shared past to a regenerative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to see that happening\u2026That there\u2019s some place, that while some of us are still alive, we could tell our story and pass it on<\/em>\u201d \u2014 Sean Craven<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video of Sean Craven on his sense of place and belonging in Kilcormac and what he hopes for the future (t\u00f3char Stories). <\/strong>To view click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decaying Bord na M\u00f3na (BnM) machinery at its old Boora workshop (T\u00f3char Stories)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sean, and many in the Kilcormac Development Association, the change has been so rapid they are still adjusting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Photo: rusting machinery and vehicles at the former Bord na Mona workshop near Lough Boora (T\u00f3char Stories).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bord na M\u00f3na stopped peat extraction in 2020 and said it was \u201cthe formal end to the company\u2019s association with peat harvesting\u201d and that, now rebranded as BnM, it was moving on to \u201ctackle the challenges concerning climate change, energy supply, biodiversity and the circular economy.\u201d Communities groups, like those in Kilcormac, often express the view they feel they were let go along with the peat harvesting when they would very much like to be part of meeting the new challenges and that body of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust transition\u201d\u2026in other countries where it worked, it was phased in terms of a number of years. What happened with Bord na M\u00f3na was \u2014 it was almost overnight. So Friday you were working, Monday you were looking for work. So there wasn\u2019t ample opportunity to upskill people. And the thing about Bord na M\u00f3na is that there\u2019s wonderful workers and so many skilled people able to adapt to a different process. Like there\u2019s probably huge opportunities now in terms of retrofitting and stuff like that. So we went from loads of jobs one day and all gone the next. You know, in a small community like this, what\u2019s missing are jobs and making the local economy turnover\u201d<\/em>. \u2014 Sean Craven.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the T\u00f3char Stories and KDA workshop in Kilcormac on September 25th we first explored the stories we would like to carry forward from our shared past. Local people named meitheal<\/a> \u2014 that powerful sense of community in Ireland where volunteerism underscores action, where people come together to help each other. They talked about Kilcormac\u2019s ancient archeological heritage, of St Cormac<\/a> himself, the once vital milling trade that showed industry, enterprise and innovation long before Bord na M\u00f3na, the tradition of crafts, of the rambling house <\/em><\/a>storytelling tradition, where people came together in an evening, they remembered the magic of fair days and how the dance floor in the Fiesta Hall <\/a>when it was a \u2018ballroom of romance\u2019 was Maple all the way from Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fiesta Hall, with its echoes of music, big bands and romance paid idle for years but has now been restored, using green building methods, as a new community enterprise and cultural hub, under the Offaly Local Development Company, and frames that pathway from past to future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video of the Fiesta Hall stop as captured on the community walkabout in Kilcormac<\/strong>. To view click here<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we imagined the future, we went beyond the losses and the described stripping out of the place in recent years, and began to connect the past with future potential. What if that milling industry history and heritage could point us to new enterprises for food or regenerative agriculture, what if hemp crops, for a biomaterial like hempcrete, could see local land used to build carbon neutral homes? What if reimagined tourism made Kilcormac a destination rather than a drive-through, for its history, heritage, archaeology as well as its wildlife and nature? What if we began to see and promote Kilcormac and its surrounding region as an ideal place for remote working, or green entrepreneurship, attracting young families to come and set up home \u2014 just as others did from the late 1940s? What if we began to see the challenge as an opportunity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagining needs practical enabling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Photo: Linda Kelly, KDA at the community mural at the end of the community walk in September ( T\u00f3char Stories)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Anne and Sean, and Linda Kelly at the KDA, there\u2019s often a question of connecting the dots and putting in the infrastructure to let the community thrive and become as it’s already called \u2018The Gateway to Lough Boora\u2019<\/em>. Kilcormac is an ideal place to imagine a bike hire hub, a cafe where you could get a tasty packed lunch, and take a family cycle to enjoy the Lough Boora nature park, with its birdlife and art sculpture walkway. The problem is the road up from Kilcormac is not safe for walkers or cyclists \u2014 it\u2019s a single car road. What they need, the community says, is a safe access way to both Lough Boora ( just over 2 kilometres up the road) with low speeds to the entrance to the park, with a designated cycling and pedestrian path, connecting not just to Lough Boora but to the new Greenway along the Canal; being delivered with significant public investment. Sometimes a road can connect potential and show how a bike hub business and a cafe could become viable \u2014 providing jobs but also that idea of Kilcormac as a destination with footfall for shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Just Transition Commission<\/a> has been established to support a more holistic socio-economic climate and energy transition. Ali Sheridan, the Commission\u2019s Chair, wrote, in its first report, <\/a>that we in Ireland \u201chave a huge opportunity now to not only approach just transition as a process to manage the potential negative impacts of the climate transition, but as a wider lens to inform a new vision for Ireland. To look beyond solely emission reductions towards transforming our society and economy to thrive while meeting social needs and respecting planetary boundaries\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That \u2018wider lens<\/em>\u2019 of envisioning a society and economy where people, places and nature thrives takes imagination but it\u2019s an imaginative process that is empowered by memory and shared stories, by meitheal and participation. We can\u2019t begin to imagine a better, shared future for all until we first come together and understand who we are, how we got here and what we value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We build then upon foundations of solidarity where it\u2019s not only about \u2018leaving no-one behind\u2019 but where everyone is invited to become part of the design team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*******<\/p>\n\n\n\n

T\u00f3char Stories will be co-hosting another community storytelling event in Carbury, Co Kildare in late January – if you and your community are in the Midlands and close to bogs, fens and wetlands and would like to know more about T\u00f3char Stories and its work contact Helen on tocharstories (@) gmail (dot) com.  A version of this story<\/a> by Helen was published on Medium on November 25th 2025. Follow the work on Instagram @tocharstories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Helen Shaw \u2014  curator of T\u00f3char Stories When we meet communities in the Midlands of Ireland and say T\u00f3char, 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