Paper short abstract:

This paper studies the politics of anticipation at the interface of the energy transition and the extractive sector. It examines how EU policies that promote the use of electric vehicles trigger a corporate rush to mine graphite that contributes to the resettlement of local people in Mozambique.

Paper long abstract:

Policymakers have started to introduce plans to decarbonize their energy systems. Yet in the urgency of the global energy transition and the general sense of 'doing the right thing', certain struggles and dynamics go unnoticed, especially in mineral-abundant countries. This paper studies how policies that promote the use of electric vehicles in Europe contribute to displacements and resettlements of local populations in Mozambique, following a corporate rush to mine the little-known graphite - a mineral needed in the lithium-ion batteries of electric cars.

These cross-scale dynamics will be studied through the analytical lens of anticipation (Adams et al. 2009, Appadurai 2013, Weszkalnys 2014, Cross 2015, Bryant & Knight 2019). I will explore how differently-positioned actors anticipate the future in their practices, discourses and relations, and how these anticipations align, clash, change or connect. The focus will be on the narratives of EU climate and energy policies and policymakers - especially those that bear on the global electric vehicle market - and the anticipations that emerge from the interaction of mining companies, local people, and government officials during public consultations for resettlement and compensation in northern Mozambique. This paper will provide an analysis of the politics of anticipation at the interface of the energy transition and the extractive sector as global dynamics meet local realities. It will discuss how abilities to imagine and anticipate certain futures differ and are ambiguous; how power relations are expressed, enacted and productive of unequal anticipations; and what this means for the different (groups of) actors.