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- Convenors:
-
Asha Amirali
(University of Bath)
Ben Radley (University of Bath)
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Energy transitions and environmental justice
- Location:
- 8W 1.33
- Sessions:
- Thursday 26 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
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.
Description:
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.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 26 June, 2025, -Paper short abstract:
Given the centrality of states to socio-technical transitions and deeper transformations, this article makes the case for a richer and more rounded political economy account of the roles that states perform in sustainability transitions.
Paper long abstract:
The role of state in transitions towards a more sustainable society is receiving increasing academic and policy attention. Despite this, the focus often starts (and frequently) ends with the governance of transitions where the state is merely one actor among many and the tensions and contradictions between the range of roles it simultaneously performs often under-analysed. Given the centrality of states to the sorts of socio-technical transitions and deeper transformations required to live safely within planetary boundaries, this article makes the case for a richer and more rounded account of the multiple and often competing roles that states perform in sustainability transitions that goes beyond both narrower questions of governance and a predominant focus either on the ‘environmental state’ on the normative basis of a ‘green state’. Building on key strands of critical scholarship in political economy it highlights, in particular, the value of multiplicity, relationality and global and historical differentiation as being central to understanding the roles states currently play in sustainability transitions and to provide an analytical grounding for assessing the prospects of them playing more transformational and progressive roles.
Paper short abstract:
Off grid solar PV has become a new site of electricity capital, transformed into a cash flow, a financial asset and a conduit for consumer debt. I analyse relationships between key actors and institutions involved e.g mobile banking platforms, ‘next generation utilities’ and mobile network operators
Paper long abstract:
While the last decade has seen the rapid growth and deployment of off-grid solar, ten per cent of the world’s population, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa, still lack access to electricity. Meanwhile, off-grid solar home systems using pay as you go (PAYGO) mobile money have been proposed as a key solution to meeting the target of universal access to energy under Sustainable Development Goal 7 at the same time as realising further virtues of financial and digital inclusion. With this context in mind, I explore how through PAYGO, off-grid solar electricity in sub-Saharan Africa is being transformed into a cash flow, a financial asset and a conduit for consumer debt (Baker 2023). In so doing I analyse evolving relationships between the key actors and institutions involved in this process, including mobile banking platforms such as M-Pesa, ‘next generation utilities’ such as M-KOPA and BBOXX, and powerful mobile network operators such as Safaricom and MTN.
Theoretically I conceptualise energy access as a new frontier of ‘electricity capital’, drawing from a field of analysis that is firstly concerned with the reconfiguration of relationships between technological innovations in the electricity sector, and different institutions of the state, industry, finance, and users (Luke and Huber 2022); and secondly, how the structures and processes of finance and investment have influenced trajectories of technological innovation (Harrison 2022). This concept builds on work which conceptualises energy as a social relation that is intrinsically bound up with political, economic and social forces and historical processes (e.g Lohmann 2020).
Paper short abstract:
I aim to draw theory from peripheral places in Brazil, where large-scale MDB-funded interventions profoundly reshape urban geography and institutions. Manaus, in the heart of the Amazon, hosts Prosamim, IDB's longest-running project, with significant resource allocation and dramatic spatial impacts.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the reliance of local governments in Brazil on Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to fund high-cost urban interventions aimed at improving Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) services and climate adaptation. Whilst the federal government increasingly dilutes funding or devolves responsibilities to municipalities without adequate compensation, MDBs have become critical funding sources. However, this reliance raises questions about how local institutions balance autonomy with MDB-imposed conditionalities and the broader implications for governance and participatory planning.
While acknowledging the prominence of mainstream international institutions on policies targeting informal settlements in the Global South, I argue that under specific conditions involving structured governance, local institutions can proactively adjust proposals to meet funders’ criteria. They often seek multiple funding sources while pragmatically resisting complete adherence to external mandates. This study explores these dynamics through three case studies: Prosamim in Manaus (IDB-funded) and two initiatives in Recife (funded by the IDB and the World Bank, respectively).
This paper uses process tracing and case study analysis as methodological tools to investigate how interactions among local institutions, MDBs, and residents influence program design, implementation, and outcomes. Findings suggest that while local governments pragmatically adapt to MDB priorities, these adaptations often reinforce top-down governance, sidelining community-driven networks. However, local institutions demonstrate flexibility and agency, leveraging MDB conditionalities to align external funding with local priorities. This study aims to deepen the theory of conditionality compatibility as a standpoint for analyzing power relations, agendas, and advocacy in global planning policy, drawing theory from peripheral urban contexts in Brazil.
Paper short abstract:
What does the state in global South pushing for commodification of ecosystem services at the expense of its people signify? Analysing the issue of removal activities under Paris Agreement’s carbon trading regime, the state’s role as a facilitator for capital accumulation over nature, is highlighted.
Paper long abstract:
A relatively recent phenomenon in the history of monetising non-human nature relates to the efforts to commodify basic biophysical processes by attaching an exchange value to hitherto ‘freely’ available ecosystem services that nature provides. Although scattered endeavours towards the same have happened before, the regulatory framework being built through the international carbon trading regime under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations processes has given a fillip to such efforts, which deepen capitalist accumulation over the natural world. As a state-party-driven process, a closer look at these UNFCCC negotiations could yield insights into the state-capital-nature relations and the challenges therein in addressing the climate crisis.
This paper, by taking the case of the rule-making around removal activities — with natural processes that concern removing carbon from the atmosphere, such as avoiding deforestation, reforestation and soil carbon sequestration forming the bulk of such activities — within the Paris Agreement’s carbon market mechanisms, and analysing the political economy factors that contributed to key states in the global South pushing for such solutions that are latent with grave socio-ecological consequences for their own populations. The trajectories of India and Indonesia are looked at in an attempt to bring out the facilitating role being played by the state in the South for capital accumulation over nature, even at the expense of legitimate climate finance that is due from wealthy countries, apart from being prepared to forgo certain levels of sovereignty to allow for greater financialisation of their natural wealth.