Presentation short abstract

Drawing on seven months of ethnography, this paper shows how diverse groups in Sibuyan, Philippines, rooted in anti-extractivism, faith networks, and middle-class place-based claims, forge a contingent coalition against nickel mining, revealing plural environmentalisms in the Global South.

Presentation long abstract

In the Philippines, Sibuyan has become an emblematic site of anti-extractivist struggle for the archipelago. Sibuyanon are recognized for their courage, having maintained a barricade for more than two years against Altai Philippines Mining Corporation. Drawing on seven months of ethnography and 200 interviews conducted during my doctoral fieldwork, this paper examines the plural and evolving struggle of Sibuyanon against large-scale nickel mining over two decades. Sibuyanon Against Mining (SAM) is a grassroots coalition rooted in long-standing anti-extractivist traditions, connected with ecologist priests, and advancing a holistic political vision grounded in environmental and social justice. Their deep ties with other movements across the archipelago embed them in wider advocacy networks and trans-scalar solidarities. However, triggering events have reshaped the anti-mining landscape. In 2023, a violent confrontation with the police catalyzed the formation of new groups. Among them, Bantay Kalikasan Sibuyan brings together middle-class residents with stronger financial resources and a “not in my backyard” yet pro-development perspective. Despite their differing political visions and strategies, their profound relation to the island and strong sense of identity allow Sibuyanon to form a plural front of resistance. The paper conceptualizes community resistance as a political field composed of heterogeneous actors with distinct legitimacy claims, resources, and environmental imaginaries. Rather than treating communities as a unified actor, it shows how divergent and sometimes competing forms of environmentalism coalesce into contingent coalitions shaped by historical trajectories, extractive violence, and affective attachments. This reframing contributes plural environmentalisms and environmental justice in Global South extractive frontiers.

Presentation short abstract

Based on ethnographic research in Ghana, we examine how people resist the harms of gold mining. We argue resistance and care are co-constituted and entangled with geologic and socio-technical conditions. We suggest ways researchers can enact feminist environmentalisms in extractive landscapes.

Presentation long abstract

Ghana has become Africa’s leading producer of gold through proliferation of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). While ASGM offers income, livelihood, and pride among miners, the unregulated and highly mobile nature of mining makes various aspects of production – employment, contaminant use, gold quantity extracted – difficult to assess. While lack of regulation directly benefits elites and political parties, ASGM is profoundly destructive to land-use, food security and human and ecosystem health. ASGM has become a significant source of environmental injustice, in Ghana and globally. Based on fifteen years of ethnographic research across various sites in Ghana, this paper examines myriad forms of resistance to ASGM’s deleterious, exploitative dimensions. Drawing from feminist theory and political geographies of the subsoil, we examine gendered everyday forms of resistance that emerge in ASGM sites. From collaborative miners who savvily underreport production, to grandmothers who create farm protection patrols, to young women who organize collective care to reduce children’s contamination exposure— Ghanaians strategically navigate ASGM and its socio-environmental implications. We argue that agency, care, and resistance are co-constituted, multi-dimensional, and shaped by intersecting geo-environmental and socio-technical factors. Finally, this paper explores how political ecologists can practice research that supports local people on their terms, including everyday forms of resistance described in the paper. We ask, how can researchers enact feminist environmentalisms with and for local people in extractive landscapes?

Presentation short abstract

This paper discusses anti-extractive everyday practices of being-in-the-world rooted in South American sites of colonial and neocolonial extraction. It questions the managerial reductionism of mainstream environmentalism rooted in extractive principles that perpetrate sacrifice and injustice.

Presentation long abstract

The idea that societies will transition from a temporarily self-destructive to a permanently self-sustaining mode of living shows its incongruity through the specular languages of apocalypse and salvation. The transition model, with the 1.5C climate ceiling set not by climate scientists but by an economist, promises to double down on morphing the earth to an unprecedented scale in line with the green growth agenda. (1) Is the transition paradigm yet another iteration of the same extractivist model that has perpetrated a corrosive way of life? (2) What alternative configurations of being-in-the-world are there to help us imagine non-extractive planetary futures? This paper will first flesh out the extractive principles of contemporary ecological thought by tracing a thread from German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s theory of dwelling as saving, which is a philosophical cornerstone of contemporary environmental thought, to English maverick scientist James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, which has increasingly informed twentieth and twenty-first-century scientific and sociological understandings of humans’ relationship with the earth. It will then develop as a counterpoint a cultural-linguistic analysis of Aymara everyday conceptual practices of being-in-the-world from South American sites of colonial and neocolonial extraction to question the managerial reductionism of mainstream environmentalism, which perpetrates sacrifice and injustice, and propose a non-extractive eco-social way of being-in-the-world based on principles of interdependence and unpredictability.

Presentation short abstract

Aluminium plays a dual role in environmental discourse: very damaging environmentally, but deemed essential for the energy transition. At COP 30 in Belém, industry narratives, community resistance, and workers’ demands revealed the tensions intrinsic to the metal’s expanding production.

Presentation long abstract

Aluminium production accounts for 2–3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet the metal is simultaneously classified as a “critical mineral” for the energy transition. This dual status places the sector in front of a paradox, as it is pressured to drastically reduce its socio-environmental impacts while expanding production by roughly 150%.

This contribution examines global aluminium production networks through ecological, social, geopolitical, and economic lenses. It analyses how aluminium uproots communities wherever the sector is represented, while industry actors adopt a green, modern, and inclusive narrative.

The discussion focuses on the 2025 Climate Conference (COP 30) in Belém, Brazil. The aluminium sector featured prominently at COP 30, hosting its own pavilion with panels and exhibitions, with representatives participating in several national delegations. Yet the conference unfolded at only a short distance from Alunorte, the world’s largest alumina refinery. Communities living around this facility organized events at the parallel People’s Summit and led visiting journalists on a “Toxic Tour,” highlighting long-standing environmental injustices. At the same time, unionized aluminium workers mobilized around COP 30 to demand a fair share of the industry’s growing profits.

Drawing on several years of research on the aluminium industry, this contribution relies on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the diverse spaces shaped and created by aluminium in and around COP30. It illuminates how at this moment in November 2025, the conflicting scenes of the aluminium paradox - and the plural environmentalisms that challenge it - were staged simultaneously in the single setting of the climate negotiations.