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Contribution short abstract

The Mekong faces climate vulnerability and geopolitical tensions, with competing development visions reshaping livelihoods. Our paper analyses how climate justice discourses, from “green growth” to resilience, are contested, mapping power asymmetries and marginalised communities’ resistance.

Contribution long abstract

The Mekong Region stands at the crossroads of climate vulnerability, energy transition, and geopolitical contestation. Competing visions of development advanced by state, military, corporate, and civil society actors reshape livelihoods, resource governance, and regional cooperation across the region. This paper examines how climate justice in the Mekong is negotiated through both governance structures and the narratives that legitimise them, with particular attention to energy transition in the era of the critical minerals rush. Employing a mixed qualitative approach, the paper integrates key stakeholder mapping with discourse analysis. First, it maps key stakeholder and power asymmetries in climate and energy decision-making, highlighting how authority is distributed across national institutions, regional bodies, corporate actors, and local communities. Second, it examines dominant and countervailing narratives of energy transition such as “green growth,” low-carbon development, and sustainability to analyse how these discourses frame policy priorities, justify extractive practices, and shape what forms of development are rendered politically feasible. Bringing these analytical layers together, the paper shows how governance arrangements and discursive framings mutually reinforce one another in the context of the Mekong’s energy transition. Narratives of a necessary and inevitable green transition are mobilised to legitimise expanded extraction of critical minerals. We argue that climate justice in the Mekong requires addressing not only the material impacts of energy and infrastructure development, but also the narrative and institutional conditions through which costs and benefits are unevenly distributed. Putting affected communities centre, the paper explores alternative futures grounded in participatory governance and cross-border solidarity.