Format/Structure

We will organise a seven-paper panel session featuring short 13-minute presentations, followed by a final Q&A with all participants.

Long Abstract

This panel explores the global trend of shrinking civic space through the specific lens of the extractive industries that fuel Global-North-driven climate change solutions. While the erosion of freedoms of association, assembly, and expression is occurring worldwide, it is particularly acute in resource-rich nations where struggles over land, water, and territory intensify. Adopting a political ecology framework, this panel analyses how power asymmetries and socio-ecological conflicts drive state and corporate actors to curtail public participation and dissent. We argue that the transformation of nature into commodities often leads to the securitisation of resources and the violent marginalisation of environmental defenders and movements.

The panel presents Southeast Asia case studies to dissect the strategies of civic space constriction. These strategies cultivate pervasive "atmospheres of violence," which encompass not only physical attacks on environmental defenders but also insidious non-physical assaults. It examines how powerful actors aim to shrink civic space by building alliances with certain community factions while spreading disinformation to fragment opposition. These tactics often exploit existing generational and gender divides, marginalising the voices of women and youth who challenge established hierarchies. This internal fragmentation is compounded by external legal pressures, such as strategic litigation (SLAPPs) and the criminalisation of protest, creating a comprehensive "political ecology of fear" for individuals and collectives.

The panel will illuminate the deep-seated connections between models of resource extraction and modes of authoritarian governance. We will assess how the rhetoric of a global "just transition" is deployed to legitimise and deepen familiar patterns of exploitation in the name of resource extraction and climate action, where the weight of decarbonisation is disproportionate and the impact of state-society-nature relations transitions is borne by the people living in the Global South. The panel concludes by exploring the opportunities for critical voices to persist in response to existing environmental violence.