Paper short abstract:

Through an examination of the proposed onshore shale gas "fracking" industry in the Northern Territory, this paper explores how the techno-manoeuvres of modern environmental governance regimes configure place (by enacting particular climate futures) while simultaneously remaining "placeless".

Paper long abstract:

Despite widespread acceptance that their emissions accelerate climate change and its disastrous ecological effects, new fossil fuel extraction projects continue apace, further entrenching fossil fuel dependence and thereby configuring particular climate futures. In this paper, we examine how this is occurring in the case of a proposed onshore shale gas “fracking” industry in the remote Northern Territory of Australia. We argue that an enunciatory community of scientists, lawyers, activists, and policymakers in the Northern Territory participate in and produce what we call “divisible governance”. Divisible governance – enacted through technical manoeuvres of temporal and jurisdictional risk fragmentation – not only facilitates the piecemeal entrenchment of fossil fuel extraction, but also sustains ignorance on the part of this enunciatory community and the wider public about the impacts of fracking and the manner in which the gas industry is both facilitated and regulated. The hallmark of divisible governance is that its practices are at once decontextualised, or "placeless", and yet they also configure possible futures for the Northern Territory through their acceleration of climate collapse.