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Communities affected by mining in the global South are collaborating with advocacy partners to sue mining corporations in foreign courts over harms caused at extraction sites. This paper explores the scope of this transnational tort litigation to facilitate justice from the communities’ perspective.

Paper long abstract

The urgency of the energy transition is increasing demand for critical minerals which are essential for clean energy resources. However, this is also increasing the risk of harms to local people and environments at the front line of resource extraction (Business and Human Rights Resource Centre 2024). In response, coalitions of actors from the Global South and North are employing transnational litigation strategies to sue the perpetrators of environmental and human rights abuses for damages in foreign courts (Bouwer 2021). While global regulatory capitalism typically protects the interests of private sector actors, this ‘transnational civil litigation’ is destabilising long held boundaries between parent and subsidiary companies and between jurisdictions in the Global North and South (Bertram 2022).

This paper draws on cases from mines in Zambia and Tanzania and asks how communities adversely affected by resource extraction experience the process of seeking remedy in foreign courts for the harms they experienced and what the litigation outcomes mean for them. Examining how regulations, campaign coalitions and corporations transcend political boundaries, this paper explores the power relations shaping transnational litigation strategies and questions whether this form of resistance increases corporate accountability or reproduces power asymmetries between the Global North and South. Taking a cultural political economy approach, the analysis considers how actors’ differing knowledge, identities and visions of mining and regulation may complicate the ability of transnational litigation to deliver justice for communities.

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I examine the nuanced meanings of 'justice' from diverse perspectives, showing how these views are shaped by one's position in the social system and highlight that justice dimensions are interconnected and dynamically influenced by cultural, political, environmental, and socio-economic contexts.

Paper long abstract

Western investors and donors frequently promote green hydrogen projects in the Global South as ‘win-win’ initiatives, promising decarbonization for the Global North and green industrialization for the Global South. However, critical scholarship has challenged this narrative, arguing that such projects risk perpetuating patterns of unequal exchange and fostering ‘green extractivism,’ while calling for a shift toward a ‘just transition.’ But what does ‘justice’ mean for those directly affected by these projects?

This paper explores subjective conceptions of a just transition in Namibia’s Hyphen Green Hydrogen project. Based on extensive empirical data—including 50 in-depth interviews and five participatory systems mapping workshops with stakeholders such as Hyphen, the Namibian government, civil society, traditional authorities, and local communities—the study identifies four counter-narratives that challenge the dominant ‘win-win’ discourse.

Adopting an understanding of justice as perception, informed by the psychology of justice literature, the analysis employs an integrated framework rooted in energy and environmental justice scholarship to map the justice dimensions relevant to diverse stakeholders. This approach is further enhanced by Systems Thinking, which moves beyond siloed perspectives by examining justice dimensions as dynamic and interconnected systems shaped by cultural, political, environmental, and socio-economic contexts.

By doing so, this study transcends the binary framing of ‘win-win’ versus ‘green extractivism,’ highlighting the multiplicity of ‘just transitions’ and providing a nuanced analysis of the tensions and opportunities embedded in green hydrogen projects. It underscores the importance of bottom-up, context-sensitive strategies to advance just transitions in the Global South.

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This paper problematises the just transition frameworks that have come to predominate in academic and policy debates and, inspired by Nancy Fraser, argues for a more radical approach centres on the unequal relations of power that generate injustice within green transitions.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, the concept of ‘just transition’ has become central to academic and policy discourse focused on the problematique of reconciling competing justice claims within efforts to address climate change and ecological destruction more broadly. A notable feature has been the development of just transition ‘frameworks, most notably the ‘JUST’ Framework, introduced in 2018 and actively promoted to international organisations and national governments as a way of evaluating their progress towards a ‘just transition’. This paper takes stock of the project of just transition framework construction and promotion and its implications. We argue that the often-abstracted nature of framework construction from the struggle(s) to advance just transitions, along with a related inattention to power, has led to frameworks that can obscure rather than identify and challenge the social relations that produce inequality and injustice. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, we argue this tendency leads to a strong emphasis on change through technocratic structures while circumscribing redistributive justice in such a way as to avoid challenging existing social and power relations. To counter these tendencies, we call for a more radical approach to theorizing just transitions, one that not only addresses questions of redistribution, recognition and representation but centres on the uneven relations of power that generate injustices within and across these three dimensions. Case-study evidence drawn from both the global North and global South helps to illustrate the potential of this new approach in analytical, explanatory and political terms.

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This paper explores critically unpacking and reconstructing the dominant narratives of 'justice' and 'energy transitions' in the Global South by examining how utility-scale renewable energy projects reinforce socio-ecological inequalities and injustices.

Paper long abstract

At the heart of Olkaria, Kenya, amidst the captivating geothermal energyscapes, unfolds an ethnographic narrative of the Maasai community as rich and complex as the earth beneath them. The Maasai, Indigenous semi-nomadic pastoralists reliant on vast communal grazing lands, have faced the predicaments of the 'green' transition, which have left the community emotionally and psychologically destabilized and deprived of livelihoods and cultural identity—impacts that remain unseen and unheard yet deeply experienced. Therefore, this study critically unravels how deploying renewable energy mega-projects perpetuates and exacerbates socio-ecological inequalities and injustices. The study focuses on the overlooked duality of coexisting progress represented by unbalanced synergies and the consequences resulting from unaddressed trade-offs. Through a Critical Nexus-justice-oriented approach, the study reconstructs the on-ground realities of dominant 'just energy transition' narratives in the Global South. By tracing the roots and tracking the trails of injustices throughout the project lifecycle, this paper interrogates whether this case study reflects the "...often-disregarded dark side of the sustainable energy transition" (González et al., 2023, p. 2).

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Development banks can better promote socially-oriented green industrial policies, especially in (neo)extractivist economies, for energy transitions to serve as developmental opportunities, and to overcome a globally hegemonic green transition dominated by high-income countries and private interests.

Paper long abstract

For South America’s developing and fossil fuel-dependent economies, energy transitions create openings with the potential to transform (neo-)extractivist development models. Decarbonization can reduce hydrocarbon extraction and generate industrial capacity for more sustainable energy sectors to improve terms-of-trade and progress social welfare. At the same time, these openings pose risk whereby pursuing new energy sectors can entrench (neo-)extractivist challenges. Development financing institutions (DFIs) have an outsized financial and policy influence on whether opportunities outweigh challenges for South America’s hydrocarbon economies. They impact green industrialization approaches—critical to whether energy transition can serve long-term development goals and escape the existing trend of being concentrated in high-income countries and by private transnational corporations.

This article examines DFIs’ impact on energy transitions in Brazil and Ecuador, as two paradigmatic yet diverse sites of hydrocarbon (neo-)extractivism and energy transitions heavily leaning on predominantly United States- and Chinese-led DFIs. By advancing a critical international political economy (IPE) perspective to analyze patterns of DFI energy initiatives in Brazil and Ecuador, I made three key arguments. First, US- and Chinese-led DFIs strategies tend toward maintaining existing globalized capitalist dynamics of energy and financial networks. There is a particularly detrimental lack of focus on green and just industrialization. Second, Brazil and Ecuador are increasingly turning to regional and national DFIs to serve developmental goals, with varying degrees of success that can be attributed to their respective positions in the IPE. Third, this shifting landscape uncovers opportunities for a more productive reform of the existing DFI network.

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This paper disaggregates green energy transitions in India by showing that the proximity of private business interests and the state has not changed in the country’s implementation of its climate agenda, resulting in repeated cycles of social and economic disenfranchisement.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores questions of justice and green energy in India’s solar energy parks through focusing on the overlapping relationships between institutions, capitalism, the state, and the people most affected by the climate crisis. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Indian state of Karnataka at the Pavagada Solar Park, the world’s third largest solar installation, this paper analyses questions of justice and green energy through examining the business-state institutional arrangements which created the solar park and the variety of problems which have resulted since its construction.

This paper provides three levels of analysis. First, it historicizes and contextualises the region, proving that the various institutions used to create the solar park strategically “prepared” the land and people undergoing green transitions to best support the interests of private capital. The second segment examines the contemporary inequalities which have been generated by the park and how such issues are intentionally obscured by the business-state relationship. The final level explains that India’s future green transitions lie in the continued subjugation of its rural areas, and that the inequalities observed in Pavagada will become omnipresent across the country should India not attempt to change its approach. This paper situates critical political economy and climate justice literature and fieldwork across the past, the present, and the future of the solar park while connecting approaches ‘from below’ to the institutions which work in tandem with private capital. This unique approach and analysis provides novel insight into the state of justice and green transitions in India.

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I investigate the drivers of onto-epistemic exclusion of peripheral communities in Colombia's energy transition agenda. It examines how relational and dialectical asymmetries within institutional arrangements and political discourses underpin the agency and political sovereignty of these communities

Paper long abstract

As global efforts to combat climate change intensify, consensus-driven approaches to decarbonization have become dominant frameworks shaping energy transition policies. However, in countries like Colombia, this approach has marginalized peripheral communities—particularly ethnic and campesino groups—whose livelihoods and ontologies often conflict with state- and market-driven renewable energy initiatives. Drawing on an intersectional and decolonial lens, this research critiques the onto-relational dimensions of policymaking in Colombia’s energy transition. It argues that institutional arrangements and dominant discourses perpetuate epistemic and procedural exclusions, sidelining alternative ways of knowing and living that challenge the technocratic framing of decarbonization.

The study examines how Colombia's institutional architecture reinforces asymmetric power dynamics through policies that prioritize extractive and large-scale renewable projects while undermining community sovereignty and participation. Using a multi-method approach, including institutional analysis, critical discourse analysis, and fieldwork, this research aims to explore how relational and dialectical interactions between competing knowledge systems shape the energy transition discourse. By investigating the intersections of race, class, gender, and historical memory, it reveals the deep entanglement of epistemic exclusion with broader questions of justice, equity, and political sovereignty.

Ultimately, this study seeks to illuminate the possibilities for a more inclusive energy transition, grounded in the recognition of relational ontologies and the lived experiences of peripheral communities. By challenging state-centric and technocratic narratives, it contributes to broader debates on environmental and epistemic justice, offering pathways toward more equitable and transformative climate action in Colombia and beyond.

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Paper short abstract

The energy transition means more mining, increasing private sector presence in frontier areas. This paper examines grievance mechanisms in South Africa’s platinum belt, revealing how they 'restrict' and 'constrict' access to justice, creating systemic barriers to fairness for affected communities.

Paper long abstract

The energy transition will drive unprecedented mining activity, bringing increased private sector presence into rural, peasant, informal, and indigenous territories. Concerns of looming injustices are quelled with assurances that corporate responsibility practices will be implemented and that remedies will be accessible through grievance procedures should infringements occur. This paper examines these operational-level grievance mechanisms and claims for environmental justice in mining territories. It draws on data collected in platinum-producing regions in Limpopo, South Africa, through interviews, observation and extensive engagement with mine representatives, aggrieved community members as well as various other actors involved in efforts to address disputes in the area. The analysis is anchored in Environmental Justice (EJ) and political ecology literatures, which reveals how the distribution of environmental costs is maintained through distinct modes of resource governance – often codified in law. The case study illustrates how company-administered grievance mechanisms 'restrict' and 'constrict' access to justice at major points of the grievance management process. Restriction is defined as deliberate limitations or controls imposed on the process, whereas constriction describes the gradual narrowing of access through practical barriers or systemic inefficiencies. For the aggrieved, grievance procedures are perceived as “barriers”, designed to put time and space between the operation and those affected by it. Organisational limits furthermore have a notable bearing on procedural and epistemic aspects of justice. The study builds on existing literatures of the failings of operational-level grievance mechanisms, highlighting their role in the increased juridification of socio-environmental relationships in extractive territories.