Paper short abstract

The path to a greener future places significant pressures on land, water, and the whole ecosystem, especially for Indigenous peoples. Finland and Canada are trying to redefine relationships between governments, industry, Indigenous communities, and the ecosystem to foster the green transition.

Paper long abstract

The accelerating impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and non-renewable resource depletion have created an urgent need for a fundamental transformation of global energy production and its governance systems to support a green transition. In Western countries, the green transition has emerged as a global response to the escalating climate crisis, representing an urgent shift away from fossil-fuel dependence toward cleaner energy systems and more sustainable economies.

Nevertheless, the pathways toward renewable energy, critical minerals, and “green” infrastructure place significant pressures on land, water, and the whole ecosystem, especially for Indigenous peoples. Internally, the green transition may pose a burden to socio-economically disadvantaged groups and Indigenous peoples, whose lifestyles can be compromised. Globally, the green transition risks widening the gap between the so-called Global North and the Global South, with the latter being obliged to adapt to new industrial and economic policies without having the time and resources (financially and materially) to adjust to them.

As countries seek to align with international climate agreements and respond to intensifying environmental risks, new regulatory frameworks have become central tools for guiding and governing this transition. Finland and Canada are among the countries that have adopted specific frameworks to foster the green transition; thus, reshaping how states manage land use, energy planning and production, environmental permitting, and industrial development. In doing so, both countries are trying to redefine relationships between governments, industry, Indigenous and local communities, and the ecosystem.

Paper short abstract

How does powerful resistance to offshore wind become articulated? And why are proponents ineffective in doing so? Ethnographic research finds that opponents successfully articulate material interests and disinformation with place-attachment, creating internally contradictory yet unified resistance.

Paper long abstract

Transitioning away from fossil fuels requires the rapid build-out of renewable energy. Numerous U.S. coastal states consider offshore wind key to meeting emissions reduction targets and bolstering energy reliability. However, development is increasingly resisted by locals and decentralized movements across the country—recently emboldened by a White House that cut subsidies, withdrew funding, and issued stop-work orders. While existing research has documented factors shaping local perceptions of offshore wind, we ask: what is the relation between local grievances, disinformation, and offshore wind opposition? How do local concerns about offshore wind become articulated with the climate countermovement to form a powerful coalition? And why are project proponents unsuccessful in doing the same? We conducted an ethnographic study of resistance to offshore wind on the eastern shore of Maryland. The state has passed several acts pressing for the development of offshore wind since 2013. Yet, no turbines have been placed off its coast to date. By joining and extending Hallsian theory of articulation with theory of place, we argue that offshore wind opponents successfully articulate diverse material interests and disinformation with place-attachment, creating internally contradictory yet unified resistance. In contrast, proponents’ focus on information and science—and their dismissal of local concerns as NIMBYist—lead to a failure of articulation. Embarking on the just development of renewables demands understanding the relative ability of the climate movement versus countermovement to articulate with everyday subjectivities. We point towards the critical potential that ethnographic analysis offers in illuminating emergent—and unrealized—politics of energy transition.

Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research with Taiwanese fishing communities affected by offshore wind development, this paper engages Miyazaki's critical analysis of compensation and fishers' relational ethics to reframe compensation as ongoing responsibility and sustained conversations.

Paper long abstract

The rapid expansion of offshore wind in Taiwan's central-western coastal waters has created spatial pressure on traditional fishing grounds. Current compensation models rely on one-time monetary payouts to settle conflicts. Yet despite receiving substantial compensation, fishers do not feel justly treated. Such transactional approach fails to address the socio-ecological complexity of the sea and the relational ethics within the coastal fishing communities.

Drawing on ethnographic research with coastal small scale fisheries navigating offshore wind development, this paper interprets how fishers articulate what just compensation should mean. Their accounts reveal that adequate compensation is not merely about money, but must accord with local relational ethics, which center on reciprocity, sustained connection, and ongoing responsibility to respond to one another. Engaging with Hirokazu Miyazaki's reframing of compensation as responsibility in his research on Fukushima nuclear disaster, I argue that fishers' critiques offer an alternative vision: compensation as an opening of continuing conversations over unfolding changes rather than their closure.

Informed by Miyazaki's framework, I suggest an anticipatory and participatory approach: establishing forums before development that position fishers as partners, implementing long-term environmental monitoring where fishers can track changes in their waters, and developing adaptive structures open to uncertain futures. This paper contributes to energy justice scholarship by centering fishers' own ethical frameworks, and proposes that responsibility and relationality should guide compensation scheme in energy transitions.

Paper short abstract

Driven by the EU Green Deal, the expansion of renewable energy triggers “eco-frictions.” This paper examines an Italian photovoltaic project, showing how anthropological input in impact assessments can challenge “wasteland” narratives and advance multispecies justice.

Paper long abstract

The EU Green Deal’s decarbonization drive is accelerating renewable energy deployment, reshaping landscapes and communities, and generating intense socio-ecological “frictions” (Benadusi 2019) across Europe. Southern Italy has seen a surge in projects that frequently exceed regional targets, amplifying these tensions. This paper ethnographically examines the contentious reconfiguration of land, value, and expertise around a large-scale photovoltaic project in Sardinia.

Drawing on the submission of “Anthropological Observations” within an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)—combined with long-term ethnography of EIA documentation—I argue that current assessments are biased toward a narrow biophysical focus, reducing both human and non-human actors to vague elements. Further, adopting a multispecies perspective, I analyze how non-human agency is represented in project documents.

The paper illustrates how anthropological knowledge reveals the complex human and non-human dynamics that constitute local environments, thereby challenging the reductionist “wasteland” rhetoric often deployed by green energy corporations to justify their projects. Initially dismissed as “merely personal research,” the anthropological input ultimately pressured the project applicants to commission “voluntary” expert reports on flora and fauna—reports that inadvertently confirmed the complex multispecies assemblages of ecologically significant species.

This case reveals how EIA procedures can become sites of contestation, where standardized sustainability visions risk enacting “green grabbing” by erasing existing socio-ecological relations (Schweitzer et al. 2017). Anthropology does not inherently oppose energy projects but can expose the sacrificial logic embedded in biased assessments. Finally, I argue that engaged anthropological practice offers vital tools to challenge extractivist narratives and promote multispecies justice within energy transition governance.

Paper short abstract

Murcia’s sun is both hazard and asset. Tracking toldos, climate shelters, and PV parks, I show how the renewable transition remakes land and value: comfort and exposure meet leases, access disputes, and “green” justice claims, yielding polarized local futures.

Paper long abstract

In the Region of Murcia, Spain, the sun is a condition to be mitigated and a resource to be captured. This paper develops an elemental ethnography of the sun to examine how the renewable energy transition reshapes land, value, and everyday life through two interlinked infrastructures: urban shade and cooling dispositifs, and large-scale photovoltaic parks. In the city and towns, heat is governed and lived through mitigation practices—toldos and arcades, timed routes, improvised shade, and the designation of “climate shelters” that recast libraries and public buildings as refuges during heatwaves. In rural and peri-urban Murcia, photovoltaic expansion reconfigures landscapes and access, intensifying disputes over what land is for, who can inhabit and traverse it, and how “green” development distributes benefits and burdens. Recent research on Murcia documents land-use change associated with photovoltaic parks, including new configurations linked to self-consumption and solar installations connected to irrigation and desalination infrastructures.

Drawing on initial fieldwork around Murcia, I follow the sun across these domains as a value-making medium: from the sensory choreography of avoiding exposure to the contractual and moral economies through which radiance is translated into leases, compensation, maintenance labor, and contested landscape futures. I argue that the solar transition cannot be understood only through targets or technological promise; it must be approached as a struggle over land and valuation, where comfort and risk, heritage and livelihood, and visions of “clean energy” become entangled in localized negotiations—producing polarized destinies in which some gain viability while others face enclosure, devaluation, and intensified exposure.

Paper short abstract

This entry focuses on assessing the establishment of a “green” & “smart” industrial, technocratic, and military system in Sines, Portugal, while exploring contested views on “security” and “sustainability”, as well as socioecological impacts and grassroots resistance.

Paper long abstract

This study delves into the deceptive hegemonic narratives of decarbonization, “sustainability,” and continuous economic growth as political strategies that re-establish industrialization patterns while reviving militarization efforts. Drawing on hegemonic narratives for “peace”, “sustainability”, and “security”, this study explores the socioecological consequences of low-carbon infrastructure expansion associated with the continuous growth of one of the largest Industrial Complexes in Portugal under Europe’s Just Transition Mechanism. This study will, on one side, assess the geophysical dimension of cumulative (green) sacrifice brought by the vast (and sometimes illegal) large-scale low-carbon infrastructure projects in the region. On the other side, this entry will highlight how, from notions such as sacrifice zones or socioecological collateral damage, local grassroots resistance emerged and proliferated. Furthermore, by utilizing qualitative approaches (documentary research and thematic coding), the analysis identifies key aspects of the current state and modus operandi of the Portuguese “green” transition, while linking it to the “smart” industrialization and defense strategy. It also emphasizes that achieving a socially just energy transition remains a significant challenge, as labor continues to be precarious and several forms of green grabbing emerge.

In contrast to the hegemonic, bottom-down development, civil society, grassroots organizations and activist networks continue to grow in strength and advocate for the right to rural spaces and livelihoods, community-based energy projects, with a focus on the themes of decentralized energy governance, energy justice, inclusivity, and the role of energy commons as an alternative sustainable pathway for the region’s rural energy transition.

Paper short abstract

Energy and extractive industries are reshaping land, value, and livelihoods across much of the world. Based on fieldwork in the Thar Desert, this project examines how “green” infrastructure polarizes land use, dispossession, and resistance around sacred groves and agrarian lifeways.

Paper long abstract

Across much of the world, energy and extractive industries are reconfiguring how land is inhabited, valued, and governed. While framed as pathways toward sustainability, these transitions often intensify socio ecological inequalities, polarizing destinies between actors who benefit from new “green” economies and communities who experience dispossession and livelihood insecurity. My project examines these dynamics through an ethnographic study of large scale infrastructural expansion in the borderlands of the Thar Desert across India and Pakistan. Drawing on feminist, queer, and postcolonial political ecology, I analyze how land takeover reshapes agrarian livelihoods, social relations, and moral economies of land. I focus in particular on community conserved sacred groves (orans), which function as sites of subsistence, care, and more than human relation, yet are rendered expendable within state led and modernist visions of green development. While developmental projects generate new forms of land use polarization, producing conflicts between energy production, grazing, ritual practice, and survival, communities contest these transformations through everyday resistance, legal challenges, and prefigurative practices.