Short Abstract

Mountain areas across Europe are caught between green extractivism and visions of green growth by conservation. We invite contributions examining the recent expansion of such green frontiers centering on the environmental and social justice dimensions of this incorporation into green capitalism.

Long Abstract

European Union’s recent push for green transition revealed enduring tensions between green extractivism and nature conservation within the continent’s marginalized areas. While the two policies appear as polar opposites, they are both green capitalism’s attempts to solve the joint climate-biodiversity crisis without addressing its root causes. European mountain areas in particular, become sites of political contestation caught between mining for critical minerals or hydropower projects and climate-smart rewilding, ecological restoration, and the expansion of private wilderness conservation projects. While these visions are promoted as urgent fixes, they are also framed as solutions to land abandonment, the emptying of the countryside, and the erosion of rural livelihoods. Within this polarisation, alternative forms of land stewardship, such as commons, territories of life, and other convivial practices continue to struggle for recognition, advancing alternative ways to inhabit the highlands. This panel focuses on these multiple, polarizing forces and aims to advance anthropological inquiries into the social and environmental justice dimensions of incorporating the uplands into the EU’s green growth vision.

Keeping this geographical focus in mind, we invite contributions that critically engage with:

• Resistance and incorporation into the green growth visions;

• Recent expansion of green extractive and conservation frontiers;

• Green capitalism as a mode of re-organizing human-nature relations;

• Frictions between forms of green grabbing, loss, and rural transformations;

• Practices of environmental care and stewardship beyond green growth visions;

• Anthropological understandings of justice in green sacrifice zones;

The papers accepted for this panel will be considered for publication in a special issue supported by the ERC-funded GreenFrontier project. The presenters will be invited for a writing workshop organized at Wageningen University in early 2027.

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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