Fighting Science with Science: Counter-Expertise Production in Anti-Shale Gas Mobilizations in France and Poland

Abstract

Between the second half of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, the prospect of shale gas extraction in Europe at first prompted fervent political support, then met with local and national opposition, and was finally rendered moot by a global collapse in the oil price. In the Europe-wide protests against shale gas and the main technique employed to extract it, hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), counter-expertise played a crucial role. This kind of expertise is one of the main elements of “energy citizenship,” a concept recently developed in the field of energy humanities which describes the empowerment of citizens in decision-making processes related to energy issues. This paper provides a socio-historical analysis of the co-production of counter-expertise and energy citizenship in the two European countries endowed with the largest shale gas reserves: Poland and France. In my analysis, concerns over the disruption of the food-water-energy nexus due to possible pollution emerge as particularly important. I argue that the exchange of information between activist groups and NGOs, as well as between activist groups from distant European locations, allowed for the creation of a genuinely transnational and science-based anti-fracking movement.

“Do you Know What's Underneath your Feet?”: Underground Landscapes & Place‐Based Risk Perceptions of Proposed Shale Gas Sites in Rural British Communities☆

“…Our findings support this, as residents relied on their own experiences and the relevant expertise of community members past and present, to develop place‐based risk concerns connecting the potential underground and surface impacts of shale exploration. Similarly to residents facing shale development in France and Poland (Cantoni 2022; Chailleux 2019), interviewees relied on local expertise to challenge existing industry narratives and the processes through which scientific knowledge becomes privileged (Landström et al 2011; van Zwanenberg 2020). Residents saw industry efforts to downplay uncertainties and unknowns about the impacts of underground intervention (particularly potential seismicity and subsequent surface damage) as contradicting information from their own experiences and trusted sources.…”

“…Further, when there was a lack of expertise amongst community members, campaign groups in each community would raise funds to hire experts within the broader region to conduct further studies (i.e., on ecology, traffic, and noise), thus fostering their own spaces of knowledge exchange and creation. Essentially, local residents produced "counter-expertise" (Cantoni 2022), through experiential, place-based knowledge of the local underground landscape. This was crucial in shaping community risk perceptions around the impacts of shale gas interventions.…”

Exploring the energy informatics and energy citizenship domains: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Thus, prosumer-based energy cooperatives produce more positive local effects [99]. Researchers have evaluated different tools [105] and have used frameworks [150] to analyze different energy projects with a view of political ecology and environmental con icts [124], some to understand the reason for failure or resistance from local communities [111,125], and some for their success [153], others have used data-driven platforms for stakeholder engagement [108]. Researchers have also investigated authoritative regimes indulging in colonial energy con ict, leading to hostile citizens [132], and government schemes of distributing renewable energy units in remote locations, to realize that such initiatives may not be perceived just by the recipients [136].…”