8 A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR APPALACHIA: ECONOMIC TRANSITION, COAL RECLAMATION COSTS, BOTTOM-UP POLICYMAKING (PART 1) By Betsy Taylor, Mary Hufford, and Kendall Bilbrey A key challenge of the twenty-frst century will be to combine post-carbon economic transition with socioecological healing of the legacy damages concatenating from the fossil fuel era. What political and knowledge structures do we need to create integrated solutions to both of these challenges? In this paper, we draw lessons from grassroots social and environmental justice movements in Appalachia that seek post-coal economic transi- tion. This article is in two parts. The frst part analyzes participa- tory action research on regional economic transition conducted by the Economic Transition team of the Alliance for Appalachia (a regional coalition of sixteen grassroots organizations) from 2013 through 2015. Part 2 of this article looks at the Alliance’s work from 2016 to the present (and will appear in a future issue of this journal). We analyze post-extractive transition as a triple challenge to build (1) macrostructural support systems for re-localizing economies; (2) knowl- edge systems for complex socioecological reclamation of legacy costs; and (3) democratic governance structures open to diversifying economic and social interests. Grassroots citizen movements in Appalachia face a com- plex political ecological terrain that requires them to tackle these three tasks simultaneously. First, a post-coal economy is already springing up in Betsy Taylor is Executive Director of the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN). She has worked with the Alliance for Appalachia’s Economic Transition team since 2013 and is the author (with Herbert Reid) of Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place, and Social Justice. Mary Hufford is a folklorist with the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN), a link-tank for policy-relevant research to steward place, culture, and land. She writes about cultural dimensions of environmental crisis in West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, and urban neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Kendall Bilbrey is a native of Southwest Virginia and is the coordinator for the STAY (Stay Together Appalachian Youth) Project. Kendall served as Appalachian Transition Fellow for the Alliance for Appalachia and co-coordinated research on the federal Abandoned Mine Lands program. JAS 23_1 text.indd 8 3/23/17 6:09 PM