Short Abstract:

How can state power be used to respond to climate change and ecological degradation in the Global South? If the state mediates capital's access to nature, under what conditions does the state act against capital? We invite reflections on using state power to battle the climate crisis.

Long Abstract:

How can state power be used to respond to climate change and ecological degradation in the Global South? With exceptions, theories of the state – postcolonial or otherwise – have rarely considered it as a mediating force between capital and nature (cf. Battistoni 2023, Wainwright and Mann 2018, O’Connor 1988). However, a large body of recent work on topics ranging from renewable energy to real estate draws attention to the state’s role in enabling and constraining capital’s access to nonhuman nature such as land, minerals, etc. Variation in (the often implicit) conceptualisations of capital-state-nature relations in these accounts is significant, as is variation in historical and geographic context. Both bear directly on how we imagine the limits and possibilities of state power in driving the move away from fossil fuels, and more ambitiously, eco-social regeneration.

It seems useful therefore to take a close look at actually-existing state practices across the South while becoming more conscious of our theoretical stance. The panel invites submissions from all relevant disciplines including political economy, eco-Marxism, geography, IPE, and others. In the interests of facilitating dialogue, we ask that all papers theoretically engage the state-capital-nature relation at some level. This need not be highly detailed; the purpose is to make explicit the major assumptions and understandings underpinning analysis of state power and the climate crisis in order to a) understand the analysis on its own terms and b) potentially dialogue across theoretical ‘black boxes’ at a time when action is more important than theoretical purity.

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