Since the launching of the European Green Deal and US discussions for a Green New Deal in 2019, the green transition agenda has taken decisive momentum. With the EU pledging to mobilise at least €1 trillion for its Green Deal, and solar and wind amounting to some 40% of new energy added globally (2023), countries such as Spain now claim that they produce almost 60% of their electricity through renewable sources.

Nevertheless, critical analyses have drawn attention to the colonial dimensions of green transitions. They have pointed out how the large-scale extraction of ‘transition minerals’ (Lang et al, 2024) and the installation of industrial-scale renewable energy production facilities (Hamouchene, 2023) in the global South for the benefit of decarbonising global North economies are a manifestation of green colonialism. And they have also highlighted links between green colonialism and the capitalist dimensions of the decarbonisation consensus that drives green transition (Bringel and Svampa, 2023), as well as violent dimensions of renewable energy development that reveal troubling continuities with historical colonial projects (Dunlap, 2017). 

Parallel to that, a literature that can be related to the idea of green sacrifice (Zografos and Robbins, 2020) has analysed adverse effects of the green energy transition by studying sacrifices as foregone assets (e.g. farmland), as sacrifice zones (Brock et al., 2021), and to a lesser extend by looking at sacrifice as a political practice (van Meer and Zografos, 2024). 

As new experiences of green sacrifice emerge with communities from the Lithium Triangle in South America, to central Morocco and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa, and Sapmi in Northern Europe encountering the green transition in their territories, we want to advance conversation between those two themes. Building on recent contributions that engage sacrifice zone-making and colonialism in the context of energy transitions (Sánchez and Mataran, 2023) and political ecologies of the Green New Deal (Andreucci et al, in press), we invite contributions that critically explore links between green colonialism and green sacrifice in the context of the green transition. 

Our aim is to advance those conversations through a mini-conference that will bring together a small number of participants in a format that will combine parallel sessions with roundtables and workshop-type of activities to allow for intense interaction, and so help discuss and advance current thinking, networks and collaborations. 

We are delighted to announce that the keynote for the conference will be given by Prof Miriam Lang of the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador. 

We invite long abstracts of maximum 800 words on the following topics (this list is not exclusive, we accept proposals also on other topics related to green colonialism and green sacrifice): 

• Green colonialism, extractivism and unequal exchange
• The political economy of green transition and green sacrifice
• Geopolitics of the green transition 
• Green colonialism as coloniality, imperiality and epistemological violence
• Green sacrifice zones, and the politics of green sacrifice
• Geographies of green colonialism; geographies of green sacrifice
• Empirical cases of green colonialism and green sacrifice: transition mineral mining, wind and solar farms, green finance, transport networks and green fuels, hydrogen, etc.
   

The deadline for abstract submission was the 7th of February 2025. 

Find the book of abstracts here. 


The conference is funded by the Spanish Research Agency (Agencia Española de Investigación - AEI) and EU Next Generation funds through the GRES research project. It is free of charge, but unfortunately we cannot cover participants' travel and accomodation costs. 

References:

Andreucci, Diego, Gustavo García-López, Christos Zografos, and Marta Conde. ‘Political ecologies of the Green New Deal: Critiques, contentions, and radical appropriations’. Political Geography (In Press)

Bringel, Breno, and Maristella Svampa. ‘Energy Transition and the New Shape of Green Colonialism: The Emergence of the Decarbonisation Consensus’. In Dependency Theories in Latin America. Routledge, 2024.

Brock, Andrea, Benjamin K. Sovacool, and Andrew Hook. ‘Volatile Photovoltaics: Green Industrialization, Sacrifice Zones, and the Political Ecology of Solar Energy in Germany’. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 0, no. 0 (22 February 2021): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1856638.

Dunlap, Alexander. ‘Wind Energy: Toward a “Sustainable Violence” in Oaxaca: In Mexico’s Wind Farms, a Tense Relationship between Extractivism, Counterinsurgency, and the Green Economy Takes Root.’ NACLA Report on the Americas 49, no. 4 (2 October 2017): 483–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2017.1409378.

Hamouchene, Hamza. Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Regio. Pluto Press, 2023. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/77035.

Lang, Miriam, Mary Ann Manahan, and Breno Bringel. ‘The Geopolitics of Green Colonialism’. Pluto Press, 2024. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349343/the-geopolitics-of-green-colonialism.

Sánchez Contreras, Josefa, Alberto Matarán Ruiz, Alvaro Campos-Celador, and Eva Maria Fjellheim. ‘Energy Colonialism: A Category to Analyse the Corporate Energy Transition in the Global South and North’. Land 12, no. 6 (2023): 1241.

van Meer, Dominique, and Christos Zografos. "“Take your responsibility”: the politics of green sacrifice for just low-carbon transitions in rural Portugal." Sustainability Science 19, no. 4 (2024): 1313-1326.

Zografos, Christos, and Paul Robbins. ‘Green Sacrifice Zones, or Why a Green New Deal Cannot Ignore the Cost Shifts of Just Transitions’. One Earth 3, no. 5 (2020): 543–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.10.012.

Te invitamos a participar en la Jornada sobre Transición Verde y Futuro Post-Crecimiento: Desafíos y Estrategias Colectivas”, organizada por el Departamento de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra, el Johns Hopkins University-Universitat Pompeu Fabra Public Policy Center (JHU-UPF PPC) en colaboración con el Centro de Estudios sobre Bienestar Planetario (UPF). Este encuentro surge con el propósito de vincular la investigación crítica sobre los impactos y la planificación de la transición verde, con las luchas y alternativas ofrecidas por  los movimientos sociales en sus territorios. La jornada busca dar  protagonismo a voces y  casos significativos del activismo y academia, que resultan fundamentales para comprender las complejas dinámicas de poder,resistencia y alternativas en juego.

Queremos reunir a personas comprometidas con una transformación eco-social que nos permita conectar las luchas e iniciativas locales con visiones transformadoras, tanto desde la universidad como desde los movimientos sociales, para crear un espacio de debate. Esta jornada será un punto de encuentro entre análisis críticos y experiencias desde el terreno, con la intención de aprender de los desafíos específicos y pensar conjuntamente en soluciones transformadoras.

¿Por qué participar?

• Comparte tus experiencias y aprende de otras iniciativas que trabajan la transformación ecológica en el estado Español y en otras partes de Europa;
• Contribuye al debate sobre las estrategias colectivas de respuesta a megaproyectos energéticos y los desafíos políticos de la crisis eco-social.

¿Cuándo y Dónde?

2 de Julio de 2025 en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra - Edificio Mercè Rodoreda (Carrer de Ramon Trias Fargas, 25, 27) Barcelona.

¿Qué gastos se cubrirán?
Si representas a un colectivo o movimiento de fuera de Catalunya, te ofrecemos alojamiento gratuito las noches del 1 y 2 de Julio (hostal con habitaciones compartidas - plazas limitadas), para facilitar tu participación.

¿Cómo inscribirte?
Si deseas participar, haz click en el botón de INSCRIBIRME  y registrarte antes del día 31 de Marzo de 2025. 

Las plazas son limitadas y se asignarán por orden de inscripción, ¡así que no te demores en apuntarte!