Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This presentation examines the CNDP’s public debates on a proposed lithium mine in France. It argues that the futures of mine’s materiality—its boundaries, infrastructures, environmental impacts—is put to the test. As industrial promises of a mine “clean” project are challenged as public issues.

Paper long abstract

This presentation proposes to examine the public debates organized in France by the Commission Nationale du Débat Public (CNDP) in 2024 concerning the future opening of a lithium mine in the Allier. These debates have already been analysed in the literature to explore the controversies surrounding the notion of “energy transition”. I will develop the argument that the materiality of the mine, its boundaries, and its relationship to its environment are themselves matters of debate. The use of drones to monitor underground chambers for potential cracks caused by runoff water, and underground pipelines to transport the extracted material, are among the technological promises put forward by the industrial operator to deliver a clean and safe mine. I propose to analyze the CNDP’s consultation process as a site of problematization where the futures of the mine’s materiality are tested by different actors, and where they emerge “at the intersection of a singular social and economic history” (Zonabend, 2007). In particular, I will show how the argument of rendering the mine’s nuisances invisible, put forward by the industrial operator to justify the plant’s proximity to local residents, is transformed into a public issue by actors concerned with the possible “spillovers of the mine” (Cerceau and Laurent, 2023) and its risks of pollution. The consultation process also has long-term effects, as it structures the forms of opposition and the logics of public demonstration adopted by the actors who have engaged in the

debates.