Contribution short abstract

The study analyses the proposed 13 GW solar project in Changthang, exploring state and local narratives, stakeholder perceptions, and its potential impacts on Changpa livelihoods. It highlights tensions between renewable energy expansion and safeguarding pastoral rights and grazing landscapes.

Contribution long abstract

The global transition to renewable energy is widely regarded as essential for addressing climate change, promoting economic growth, and ensuring energy security. With mounting international pressure to decarbonize economies, the renewable energy sector has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Yet, despite being labelled “green,” large-scale renewable projects often carry significant environmental and social costs. Emerging research shows that such projects can lead to the exploitation of fragile ecosystems and the marginalization of communities whose livelihoods depend on them.

Against this backdrop, the study examines the development of large-scale solar projects in India, focusing on the proposed 13-gigawatt solar park in Changthang, Ladakh. It explores the complex interplay between state and non-state narratives that frame the project as a symbol of progress and national development, while also documenting local perceptions of the Changpa pastoralists whose grazing lands and migration routes may be directly affected.

By engaging with a range of stakeholders, the study challenges the binary of a “monolithic state” versus “powerless communities” and instead highlights the nuances of negotiation, resistance, and adaptation. It further questions the dominant discourse of “development for the greater good,” urging a closer look at how such narratives unfold in ecologically sensitive and socially unique contexts like Changthang. Preliminary insights reveal mixed responses—some stakeholders emphasize the project’s economic and energy potential, while others voice concern over its ecological and cultural impacts. The study underscores the importance of ensuring that India’s renewable energy transition remains socially just and locally grounded.

Contribution short abstract

Energy transitions in Kenya’s semi-arid drylands unfold amid water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and historical marginalization. This study shows how clean-energy adoption reshapes local energy-water-forest dynamics and argues for justice-centered, socio-ecological approaches.

Contribution long abstract

Across Africa's drylands, the idea of energy transition is often characterized by technological promises, such as solar parks, biogas systems, and water infrastructure. However, they remain entwined with past land marginalization and unequal resource distribution. Drawing on the insights from political ecology and environmental justice scholarship (Escobar 1996; Nightingale 2017), this paper explores how communities in Kenyan semi-arid landscapes navigate the challenges of energy poverty, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity within conservation frontiers. Although often excluded from classical definitions of “deserts,” Kenya’s semi-arid zones embody many of those characteristics: ecological fragility, scarce water resources, and narratives of emptiness that have justified both conservation and extraction. The paper repositions African drylands as socio-ecological spaces of innovation and contestation rather than ecological voids. It situates these geographies within the broader concept of desert imaginaries. Based on participatory spatial learning, household surveys, and GIS-based land-use analysis, it investigates how clean-energy interventions modify the local energy-water-forest nexus. The findings show that, while clean-energy adoption reduces fuelwood extraction and improves household well-being, its effectiveness is dependent on water availability, gendered labor, and institutional coordination among conservation and development actors. Energy infrastructures are thus more than mere artifacts; they are sites of negotiation for rights, knowledge, and ecological futures. The paper concludes that energy transitions in arid areas must be viewed as socio-ecological processes based on justice rather than efficiency by situating these local experiences within broader discussions of desert and dryland imaginaries. It therefore recommends a reimagined vision for dryland development.

Contribution short abstract

Between 2020 and now, U.S. industrial priorities have shifted from energy transition to AI. Regardless, semiconductor production is a priority. I investigate efforts to "make the desert bloom" — transforming Arizona into the Silicon Desert— and associated spatial rearrangements of labor and capital.

Contribution long abstract

In this paper, I analyze the transformation of the Phoenix metropolitan area into the Silicon Desert as an extension of "arid empire". This transformation ensures America's place in the global chip race with China. Historically, making Arizona's desert bloom was the focus of "arid empire". "Arid lands expertise" was utilized in imperial expansion westward, and later worldwide (Koch, 2022). I investigate the Southwestern desert as a geographical periphery 'ripe' for the necessary spatial rearrangements of labor and capital to best serve differing factions of the capitalist class.

Lydia Jennings' forthcoming paper investigates the shifting interests of the American ruling class from energy transition to A.I. I use her work as a frame to interrogate how Arizona's 'empty landscape' is envisioned as a desert laboratory to produce faster and more complex chips for semiconductor onshoring efforts. Initially, onshoring was intended to support the green energy reindustrialization of the U.S. Now, the focus of Arizona's chip production is American success in the A.I. race.

Yet, the desert is far from empty. Workers — immigrants shipped in from Taiwan, refugees from Latin America, and Black and first-gen Latino youth — have been brought together in America's biggest foreign direct investment to date, a Taiwanese chip fabrication plant worth $168 billion, to serve onshoring efforts. Already, contestations have emerged between American workers and foreign management discipline. I analyze these efforts to investigate possibilities for global worker solidarity in the desert and the futility of organizing around the identity of the American worker.

Contribution short abstract

Reimagining southern Alberta as a “cold desert,” this paper examines how arid imaginaries shape water–energy governance and justice in Canada’s energy transition.

Contribution long abstract

Southern Alberta is increasingly defined by aridity, glacier loss, hydrological volatility, and intensifying wildfire regimes. This paper reframes the prairie–foothills region as a “cold desert” whose ecologies and communities are governed through imaginaries of emptiness, extractability, and infrastructural availability. Drawing on my Summit to Steppe project (a multi-scalar investigation of climate resilience and water–energy relations across the Oldman River watershed) I examine how current energy transition initiatives mobilize land and water through narratives of aridity to justify new infrastructures, including hydrogen production, pumped-hydro storage, solar development, and transmission expansion.

Building on political ecology scholarship that critiques deserts as socially produced spaces for resource capture, I argue that Canadian energy transitions risk reproducing familiar settler-colonial techniques: treating land as vacant, water as endlessly mobilizable, and rural and Indigenous territories as logistically open for renewable energy development. Yet emergent alternatives (e.g., community-based solar projects and watershed-scale approaches to climate resilience) offer more relational visions for socio-ecologically just energy futures.

Through fieldwork, visual documentation, and landscape analysis, this paper situates the Canadian Prairies within global desert imaginaries and highlights the need for governance models that centre water equity, Indigenous authority, and more-than-human wellbeing. In dialogue with the panel’s comparative focus, it contributes a “cold desert” story that expands how socio-ecological justice is conceptualized across diverse arid landscapes.

Contribution short abstract

This paper analyses Rajasthan High Court cases on wrongful allotment of common lands for solar projects in India’s Thar Desert, revealing how courts and the administration favour companies while also identifying laws and judicial precedents that communities mobilise to reclaim access to the commons.

Contribution long abstract

The study examines how colonial and post-colonial classifications of commons as “wastelands” in revenue records have incentivised the proliferation of solar energy projects in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, India.

Once dismissed as non-productive for tax purposes, these lands used for grazing, sacred groves, water catchment, village expansion, and other public purposes are now being leased to green energy companies as part of a new “solar gold rush.”

In the midst of this transition, local communities, including former pastoralists compelled to become settled agriculturists, have been alienated from their commons with limited legal recourse due to weak protective laws. Wildlife has not been spared either, as the proximity of solar plants to the ‘Desert National Park’ threatens the endangered Great Indian Bustard.

Through a close reading of legal documents and judicial decisions in the last five years, the study will highlight their struggles to assert rights over these lands, water bodies and other natural resources. It will also offer insights that can be a manual for future resistance and an equitable governance of desert commons.

Contribution short abstract

Solar power in arid Tunisia accelerates groundwater overexploitation. It mainly benefits wealthy farmers with private boreholes, challenging claims of a socially just energy transition. It also goes together with the grid or hopes of future connection, undermining the very notion of ‘transition’.

Contribution long abstract

Tunisia has pursued a policy to develop renewable energy, framed as a “socially just energy transition”. While early solar policies targeted residential consumption, the 2010s saw the rise of solar-powered irrigation outside state programmes, especially in arid regions where groundwater is critically overexploited. Yet the justice dimensions of this emergent solar energy–groundwater nexus remain largely unexamined.

This paper focuses on the agricultural region of Gabès Sud, where since 2015 solar energy has enabled new irrigated areas in spaces framed as empty but historically shaped by pastoral livelihoods. These expansions unfold amid declining groundwater tables and deepening inequalities, themselves the outcome of long-standing policies that produced and structured groundwater scarcity. The hydro-social territory is characterised by two coexisting models: (1) a collective groundwater management system in which smallholders (<1 hectare) share groundwater access via a collective borehole, and (2) a private system in which farmers (8 to 200 hectares) irrigate from private borehole.

We analyse the socio-technical and political conditions that enabled solar irrigation to develop and its consequences for groundwater. We show that solar investment drives the expansion of irrigation, benefiting wealthy farmers using private boreholes while excluding smallholders reliant on collective infrastructure. We conclude by questioning the very notion of “transition,” where solar functions as a stopgap or as an infrastructure of hydrosocial intensification. This contribution thus calls into question the Tunisian government’s narrative of a socially just, wealth-creating, and sustainable energy model.

Contribution short abstract

Solar pumps that are promoted as solutions to irrigation challenges in Ladakh create unequal access to water resulting in inequalities between and within villages. There is also fragmented implementation and governance, revealing gaps between technological promises and lived realities.

Contribution long abstract

In high-altitude cold deserts like Ladakh, glacier meltwater-fed irrigation networks are now increasingly prone to water stress due to environmental shifts produced by climate change. Technical solutions like solar energy-powered motors that pump up water from the Indus River, commonly known as ‘solar pumps’, are presented as solutions for irrigation challenges. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork done in 2025 in Phey and Takmachik, villages in Ladakh, and using a political ecology perspective, this research explores how solar pumps reshape access to and control over water. Preliminary findings show that socio-ecological inequalities and governance challenges are manifested in two ways. First, within villages, pumped water is distributed and accessed unevenly, leading to unequal outcomes regarding agricultural production. Between villages, benefits are limited to those villages that lie on the banks of the river, creating inequalities in agricultural productivity between villages lying upstream and downstream. Second, the installation of solar pumps is done through private donors, NGOs, and occasionally through government schemes, leaving the implementation fragmented with limited integration into existing policies. There are new systems of governance for the management of pumped water, separting it from the purview of traditional water governance. This study argues that there are significant gaps between the promises of renewable energy-powered technologies, meant to be cheaper, efficient, and help with irrigation, and the reality of inequalities that emerge from these technologies. With growing debates on large-scale solar projects and energy autonomy in Ladakh, small-scale renewable energy projects for irrigation form an important part of these debates.

Contribution short abstract

Case study of Atacama's Desert AtLAST observatory examines off‑grid renewables for the telescope and San Pedro de Atacama. Participatory analysis shows emission cuts, cost savings and procedural‑justice gains, but highlights political, financial and power imbalances.

Contribution long abstract

The remote location and prime astronomical conditions of the Atacama Desert in Chile make it an ideal location for building observatories. However, the reliance on fossil fuel power generation raises concerns about climate change and fuel price fluctuations. As a result, there is a growing need to power off-grid telescopes with renewable energy sources. This paper employs a participatory multi-criteria analysis to examine the energy justice implications of a renewable energy (RE) system for the planned observatory AtLAST in the Atacama Desert. The observatory also seeks to provide "clean" electricity to the neighbouring San Pedro de Atacama (SPA) community, making it the first astronomy site to investigate alternative energy supply options for the population. The results propose a renewable energy system that could reduce astronomical emissions in the area by 17-23ktCO2eq while lowering energy costs for SPA. Furthermore, involving the community through workshops and considering their energy needs when designing renewable energy scenarios may contribute to procedural justice. However, findings also highlight the challenges caused by different ontologies, financial constraints, political interests, and power imbalances, which hinder efforts to achieve energy justice. The study further reveals that the scientific community often overlooks the well-being of nearby communities where research is conducted, which can exacerbate climate change-related inequalities and neglect the voices of these communities. The paper, therefore, aims to provide a nuanced example of how scientific research activities can benefit from low-carbon energy transitions while also contributing to recognising their responsibilities towards the communities where their research is carried out.

Contribution short abstract

I explore the desert as a vertical field of sensitivity, where ground, infrastructures, and sky form a political continuum. From a vertical political ecology, this lens unsettles the notion of emptiness and opens new ways to think socioecological justice amid energy transitions.

Contribution long abstract

This work explores a reading of the desert as a vertical assemblage (soil, ruins, infrastructures, and sky) to examine how the energy transition reconfigures the arid territories of Chile’s Norte Grande. While critical literature has dismantled the colonial fiction of the “void,” a perspective that attends to the vertical dimension of the desert as a field of sensibility where the continuum between soil, infrastructures, and sky becomes a space of value and dispute, aligned with a vertical political ecology is still lacking.

The first scene unfolds in María Elena, a company town shaped by successive extractive cycles (nitrate, copper, lithium, photovoltaics). Here, the community mobilizes a patrimonial language that re-inscribes the desert as industrial archive and cultural horizon, challenging its reduction to disposable spatiality and opening alternative modes of inhabiting aridity.

The second scene emerges in Taltal, where the INNA green hydrogen megaproject seeks to locate near major astronomical observatories. This attempt reveals a conflict that goes beyond the ground: industry projects the occupation of desert atmospheres through luminance and infrastructure, while astronomers and Changa communities defend the darkness of the firmament as a common territorial and spiritual good.

Understanding the desert through verticality and political continuum illuminates how the energy transition not only transforms the surface but also intervenes in cosmological and affective horizons. This perspective offers a pathway for rethinking socioecological justice in desert regions, showing that what is at stake is not only the land but also the skies that sustain and make it thinkable.

Contribution short abstract

Utility-scale solar PV developments in Western Rajasthan, India are riddled with serious socio-ecological implications: fostering land-conflicts & disruption in rural livelihoods. With empirical work in Rajasthan, I explore the emancipatory potential of alternatives- agrivoltaics and RE cooperatives

Contribution long abstract

Utility-scale solar PV projects in Western Rajasthan, particularly the districts of Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Jodhpur, and Barmer, have been marked by a wide range of socio-ecological harms, inter alia: the loss of common pastures and Orans (vegetation-rich, culturally sacred, community-protected lands); the dispossession of communities dependent on government owned land; the erosion of agro-pastoral livelihoods; the encroachment of water-catchment areas and intensified competition over already scarce water resources; the destruction of habitats for local fauna and epistemic violence against place-based ways of knowing and being. These negative socio-ecological implications of utility-scale solar PV projects are spearheaded by a range of political-economic factors. There has been substantial scholarly work on the policy, legal, social, and onto-epistemological challenges surrounding the rapid roll-out of solar PV in Rajasthan. However, much of the empirical work has focused solely on one district – Jaisalmer and the literature fails to offer alternative imaginaries of renewable energy development in the region. Drawing on empirical fieldwork, involving interviews, focused group discussions and participatory envisioning, in Western Rajasthan and existing scholarship, I explore community-based alternatives to large-scale solar energy developments. Specifically, asking What alternative energy futures do communities in Western Rajasthan imagine? and What potential and challenges do alternatives - such as agrivoltaics, decentralised ownership models, and renewable energy cooperatives - offer in this context?