The decarbonisation divide: Contextualizing landscapes of low-carbon exploitation and toxicity in Africa

Sovacool, Benjamin K.; Hook, Andrew; Martiskainen, Mari; Brock, Andrea; Turnheim, Bruno

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.102028

Cited by 168 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…This article acknowledges the proliferation of (unsustainable) energy infrastructure-high-voltage power lines, substations, control centers, smart technologies, and so on-justified in the name of the so-called "renewable energy" or "fossil fuel+" infrastructures (Dunlap, 2018d). Fossil fuel+ recognizes that "renewable energy" necessitates hydrocarbons to extract large quantities of minerals and hydrocarbons, to process metals, manufacture various components (Hickel, 2019;Sovacool et al, 2020;Zehner, 2012), as well as for its transportation and operation of-the "+"-energy-harnessing infrastructure: vital wind, solar, and water resources.…”

Section: Infrastructural Colonization: "Large Imposed and Useless" mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bureaucratic land grabbing for infrastructural colonization: renewable energy, L’Amassada, and resistance in southern France

Dunlap

2020

Human Geography

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Governments and corporations exclaim that “energy transition” to “renewable energy” is going to mitigate ecological catastrophe. French President Emmanuel Macron makes such declarations, but what is the reality of energy infrastructure development? Examining the development of a distributional energy transformer substation in the village of Saint-Victor-et-Melvieu, this article argues that “green” infrastructures are creating conflict and ecological degradation and are the material expression of climate catastrophe. Since 1999, the Aveyron region of southern France has become a desirable area of the so-called renewable energy development, triggering a proliferation of energy infrastructure, including a new transformer substation in St. Victor. Corresponding with this spread of “green” infrastructure has been a 10-year resistance campaign against the transformer. In December 2014, the campaign extended to building a protest site, and ZAD, in the place of the transformer called L’Amassada. Drawing on critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and human geography literatures, the article discusses the arrival process of the transformer, corrupt political behavior, misinformation, and the process of bureaucratic land grabbing. This also documents repression against L’Amassada and their relationship with the Gilets Jaunes “societies in movement.” Finally, the notion of infrastructural colonization is elaborated, demonstrating its relevance to understanding the onslaught of climate and ecological crisis.

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Section: Infrastructural Colonization: "Large Imposed and Useless" mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bureaucratic land grabbing for infrastructural colonization: renewable energy, L’Amassada, and resistance in southern France

Dunlap

2020

Human Geography

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“…The global political economy and life cycle of solar energy produces uneven labour geographies. From mining, to manufacturing, to generation and disposal, this paper illuminates a decarbonisation divide wherein low‐carbon energy transitions manifest social and environmental injustices throughout the supply chain (Sovacool et al 2020). The labour force manufacturing solar panels is routinely exposed to toxic substances (Mulvaney 2014b).…”

Section: Labour Geographies Of Solar Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like quartz miners, copper miners are also at risk of contracting respiratory ailments from exposure to silica dust (Ngosa and Naidoo 2016). Labouring in artisanal copper mines is labour‐intensive and dangerous work performed by an often poor and uneducated local workforce (Sovacool et al 2020). Artisanal copper miners frequently do not have proper equipment, formalised work contracts, nor representation by a labour union that affords them a safe workplace or access to healthcare in the inevitable event of an injury.…”

Section: Dialectic Of Solar Power: Value and Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The labour geographies of cobalt mining also reproduce patterns of gendered inequality, marginalisation and sexual violence (Cuvelier 2017; Rustad et al 2016). For example, Sovacool et al (2020) observed patriarchal cultural norms and legal frameworks in the Democratic Republic of Congo that formally exclude women from working as cobalt miners. They found that although women do work as cobalt miners, they must do so at greater peril and exploitation (Sovacool et al 2020).…”

Section: Dialectic Of Solar Power: Value and Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

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Praeclariat: Theorising Precarious Labour Geographies of Solar Energy

Stock

2020

Antipode

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Rapid development of solar energy is reconfiguring global labour geographies. Beneath the formal economy of solar exists a hidden infra‐economy of informal and marginalised labourers that toil in valuable yet precarious nodes of solar development (i.e. mining, generation, disposal). These labourers comprise a lumpenproletariat class (or solar lumenproletariats) that is defined by its informality, flexibility, precarity and disposability. Through political struggles and reflexivity, the lumenproletariats develop class consciousness. Although still precariously positioned in solar’s infra‐economy, they develop a praeclarus (Latin: “bright”) understanding of their shared class interests and become praeclariats resisting the reproduction of solar capital. Solar praeclariats unified in class struggle can alter the exploitative relations of production and usher in a truly “just” low‐carbon energy transition.

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“…This means that when socio-technical regimes are optimised, they tend to follow a particular path (Ghosh and Schot, 2019). Even when alternatives are proposed by regime actors, they tend to reaffirm the architecture of the system as it is, for example, proposals to decarbonise energy production via carbon capture and storage technologies or new business models, instead of radically new alternatives such as switching fuels, increasing low-carbon energy production, reduced energy consumption and improving energy justice (Sovacool et al, 2020;Martiskainen et al, 2018;Gaede and Meadowcroft, 2016;Geels et al, 2016). Rigidities in incumbent regimes become problematic when they hinder transitions towards sustainability and/or fail to respond to the dynamic and persistent societal challenges.…”

Section: Opening Up and Unlocking Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformative Outcomes: Assessing and Reorienting Experimentation with Transformative Innovation Policy

Ghosh

2020

SSRN Journal

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The impending climate emergency, the commitments made in the Paris agreement and the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demand significant transformations in the present economies and societies. Science funders, innovation agencies and scholars have been exploring distinctive new rationales and processes for policy-making, such as transformative innovation policy (TIP). In this paper, we address the question of how to orient the efforts of science, technology and innovation (STI) agencies to enable transformations and address societal challenges. We developed a more consistent and robust approach for assessing the transformative outcomes which may be accomplished through experimental policy engagements. We build on sustainability transitions studies and on a four-year co-creation process carried out by the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and present twelve transformative outcomes that can guide the activities of STI agencies in evaluating and reformulating their current or new projects, programmes and policies. We illustrate the transformative outcomes in two empirical cases: transitions towards intelligent transport and mobility-as-a-service in the Finnish mobility system, and the emergence of speciality coffee in Colombia. Our analysis demonstrates that the twelve transformative outcomes can guide STI agents and other change-agents to fundamentally transform their ways of thinking and operation in the course of unlocking transformative change in society.

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The decarbonisation divide: Contextualizing landscapes of low-carbon exploitation and toxicity in Africa

Cited by 168 publications

References 47 publications

Bureaucratic land grabbing for infrastructural colonization: renewable energy, L’Amassada, and resistance in southern France

Bureaucratic land grabbing for infrastructural colonization: renewable energy, L’Amassada, and resistance in southern France

Praeclariat: Theorising Precarious Labour Geographies of Solar Energy

Transformative Outcomes: Assessing and Reorienting Experimentation with Transformative Innovation Policy

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