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

Historical–environmental analysis of how Valsequillo became a contaminated hydrosocial territory throughout the 20th century, highlighting the impacts of hydraulic modernization, territorial reconfiguration, and inequalities in access to and control of water.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation outlines the progress of a doctoral research project focused on the historical configuration of a contaminated hydrosocial territory: Valsequillo, Puebla, throughout the twentieth century. The study reconstructs the area’s Environmental History through a Political Ecology lens, allowing for an examination of how hydraulic infrastructure, modernizing discourses, and power relations reshaped the territory and its relationships with water.

The research combines historical methods, analysis of local and national archives, QGIS-based cartography, ethnography, and oral history in auxiliary towns directly connected to the lake. The theoretical framework is built around the concept of the hydrosocial territory, understood as a multiscalar network of actors, infrastructures, knowledges, and water flows traversed by power. Four analytical axes structure the approach: hydrosocial networks and territorialization, scalar reconfiguration, governmentalization of territory, and territorial pluralism.

The period-based analysis shows that, beginning with the construction of the Manuel Ávila Camacho Dam in the 1940s, a model of large-scale hydraulic modernization reorganized the Atoyac Basin and subordinated local water uses to agricultural, industrial, and urban projects. In subsequent decades, industrial expansion, urban growth, and institutional neglect transformed the reservoir into a receptacle for wastewater, normalizing contamination and deepening socio-environmental inequalities.

The case of Valsequillo reveals how modernizing projects, framed as symbols of progress, produced fragmented, hierarchical, and environmentally degraded territories whose effects persist today. This research seeks to contribute a critical historical perspective that speaks to contemporary water-management challenges in Mexico.

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.

Presentation short abstract

In Gwanda and similar agro-based regions, natural resource extraction fuels economies but sparks conflict. Understanding this requires environmental pluralism, a lens acknowledging competing knowledge, values, and laws over nature.

Presentation long abstract

The ongoing extraction of natural resources remains a key economic strategy in the Global South, but its socio-ecological effects in rural, agriculture-based areas like Gwanda are increasingly disputed. This paper suggests that to truly understand these issues, we need to adopt an environmental pluralism approach. This approach recognises the coexistence of multiple, often conflicting, knowledge systems, values, and legal frameworks related to nature. Moving beyond simple conservation-versus-development debates, this view highlights the complex and diverse realities at resource frontiers. In the Zimbabwean context, state-sanctioned, corporate-driven extraction operates within a modernist framework that commodifies nature, framing it as inert matter for economic growth. This logic, however, collides with the plurality of environmental relations held by local communities, such as those in Gwanda. These include cosmologies that view landscapes as ancestral territories, sites of cultural heritage, and living ecosystems essential for their subsistence farming and spiritual life. The resulting conflict is not merely about the distribution of benefits but a fundamental clash over ontology, what nature is and for whom it exists. Examining extraction through the lens of environmental pluralism illuminates the Global South not as a passive site of resource depletion but as a vibrant arena of epistemic struggle and legal innovation. It highlights how communities articulate alternative environmental futures, asserting plural ways of knowing. This approach is crucial for developing more just and sustainable pathways that respect ecological and cultural diversity.

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

Mining in Vietnam’s northwest uplands has seized land and degraded water, eroding rural livelihoods. Rather than open protest, villagers practice “everyday politics" to negotiate outcomes. This paper explores adaptation, agency, and resistance beyond formal politics.

Presentation long abstract

Over the past three decades, resource extraction and commodification in Vietnam’s northwest uplands have deeply reshaped rural life, normalizing livelihood dispossession. In this region, losing access to land and water—whether through direct seizure or pollution—means losing the basis of subsistence. Mining has degraded forests and farmland, while compensation offered to affected households is rarely enough to sustain them. Yet, responses in mine-affected communities seldom take the form of organized protest. Instead, villagers engage in what Kerkvliet (2009) calls everyday politics: quiet, subtle acts of “embracing, complying with, adjusting, and contesting norms and rules regarding authority over, production of, or allocation of resources” (232). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in upland communities over the past more than two decades, this paper examines how villagers negotiate and collaborate, often reluctantly, with officials across multiple levels of government to shape outcomes. By foregrounding everyday politics, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of how people respond to mining beyond formal politics or visible resistance, highlighting the complex interplay between dispossession, adaptation, and agency in upland Vietnam.

Presentation short abstract

This study examines how state formation shapes grassroots collective action. Historical analysis reveals that agricultural frontier expansion systematically displaced communities and undermined collective management, creating institutional legacies that constrain food sovereignty.

Presentation long abstract

Grasslands and savannas cover 37% of terrestrial land and sustain diverse agricultural livelihoods, yet remain underrepresented in research on land governance and food systems. This study examines how national governance structures and historical state-building processes have shaped—and often constrained—the possibilities for grassroots collective action in managing these landscapes. Using Argentina, Colombia, and Paraguay as comparative cases, we analyze how different state configurations condition the capacity of rural communities to assert control over land use and production decisions. We apply historical institutional analysis, examining both formal governance structures and the political and administrative techniques through which states consolidated territorial control. Our methodology combines systematic literature review with triangulation through complementary data sources and validation with local stakeholders, reconstructing key stages of institutional development and their impacts on grassroots organizing. Our findings reveal that agricultural frontier expansion systematically displaced rural communities across all three countries and supported agro-industrial extractivism: through Argentina's agroindustrial consolidation without land redistribution, Paraguay's export-oriented model with highly unequal land tenure, and Colombia's state-sponsored colonization amid armed conflict. These processes transformed landscapes and undermined forms of collective land management and peasant autonomy. While contemporary policies sometimes create openings for community-led initiatives, they operate within institutional legacies that privilege large-scale production and centralized decision-making over grassroots-controlled food systems. Understanding these historical dynamics is essential for recognizing both the structural constraints facing grassroots collective action and the limited space that remains for building governance frameworks supporting community autonomy and food sovereignty.