Presentation short abstract

This article analyzes conservation frontiers in the Italian Alps as political battlefields over how life should be in the mountains. Examining growth-oriented and care-based approaches to conservation, it shows that claims about protecting nature are also claims about how mountains should be lived.

Presentation long abstract

This article investigates the frictions between the expansion of conservation frontiers in the Italian Alps and the emergence of localized, convivial forms of conservation from groups of mountains neo-rurals. I do so by highlighting the political dimension of such encounters, that is I investigate how different conservation narratives and practices signal alternative visions of development and life in mountain regions. First, I theorize the current growth-oriented expansion of conservation frontiers as part of the ‘neoliberalization of the mountains’, that is a political project that re-organizes human-nature relations in the mountains unevenly, in pursuit of economic growth. Alongside other capitalist changes (abandonment and touristification), I argue that growth-oriented conservation enacts and reproduces visions for Europe’s peripheries centered on wilderness and leisure, while foreclosing others. Second, drawing on ethnographic research with neo-rural communities of farmers and shepherds in the Western Italian Alps, I interpret their labour with/through nature as a form of convivial conservation (Büscher & Fletcher, 2020). I argue that this approach to conserving nature reproduces a way of living in the mountains that pursues care instead of growth, and that is mediated by labour and connection rather than leisure and separation. This analysis shows that Europe’s peripheries are far from ‘empty’ spaces that simply await for the roll out of growth-oriented conservation frontiers. On the contrary, they are political battlefields where alternative ideas for how to conserve nature can represent different struggles for how to live in Europe’s marginalized areas.

Presentation short abstract

How can the labour that pastoralists perform to enhance the ecological health and resilience of rangeland ecosystems be better accounted for? How does framing coexistence as a material practice and a form of labour change how we think of conservation justice?

Presentation long abstract

This talk aims to reflect on how the labour that pastoralists perform to enhance the ecological health and resilience of rangeland ecosystems can be better accounted for in conservation research and policy. It seeks to push beyond studies that have focused on attitudes and subjectivities in relation to rewilding processes, to propose an understanding of coexistence as a material practice—mediated by wider political economies of rural livelihoods and implicated in issues of conservation labour justice. The framing of this work rests on literature that theorises different facets of conservation labour carried out by rural communities: from notions of ‘alienated labour’ (Cepeck, 2011) performed by communities enrolled in conservation science projects, and more recent discussions of the ‘eco-precariat’ (Neimark, 2023) employed in generating conservation commodities under the guise of local participation, through to notions of affective labour (Singh, 2013), consisting of everyday acts of care that communities extend to the natural environment they depend on and from which they derive a sense of belonging. Specifically, the talk will interrogate: Who is doing the labour of coexistence, and what axes of social differentiation are involved (age, migration history, gender, multispecies collaborations)? How is this labour mobilized or hidden by different state/ conservation/ local actors? How is it transformed under neoliberal conservation regimes, structural agrarian change and processes of technological intensification? The aim is to reflect on the conditions under which rural communities can lead processes of knowledge and practice creation, and the changes necessary for pastoral knowledge to gain greater legitimacy.

Presentation short abstract

In a European periphery marked by wildfires and lithium open-pit mining projects for the Green New Deal, the new residents of Gonçalo, through Ação Floresta Viva, promote collective ecological restoration practices and call for eco-social justice and democratic participation.

Presentation long abstract

This abstract emerges from an ethnographic master's research situated at the intersection of cultural anthropology, energy studies. Grounded in fieldwork with the framework of energopower (Boyer 2017) and engaged anthropology (Cepek 2020), the research examines how energy transitions and conservation initiatives reshape social, political, and ecological relations in the Portuguese peripheries.

The study focuses on the village of Gonçalo, an area strongly affected by recurrent wildfires linked to long-term depopulation, land abandonment, and post-dictatorship migration. Recent repopulation following the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new dynamics in local land management. Despite these demographic changes, communal lands -Baldios- were never appropriate after the Revolução dos Cravos, unlike in other cases such as Covas do Barroso. Today, they remain under municipal ownership, contributing to the decline of agro-pastoral livelihoods and facilitating the historical expansion of extractive mining industries (Antão 2019, Silva 2016).

Within the broader framework of the European Green New Deal, Portugal’s interior regions have become emblematic of a shifting notion of "periphery": not just the Global South, but also Europe’s internal margins deemed sacrificable for green growth. This tension is visible in the discrepancy between regional reforestation plans and the grassroots initiatives of Ação Floresta Viva, a collective composed largely of new young European residents. Their engagement combines resistance to neo-extractivist projects, such as open-pit lithium mining, with efforts to promote conservation, reforestation, and socio-environmental justice (Svampa 2009, Tsing 2015).

Overall, the research highlights how energy transition policies intersect with local struggles for land, identity, and ecological futures in contemporary Portugal.

Presentation short abstract

The paper examines Pantelleria, a Mediterranean inland island turned national park without a marine protected area, to analyse how green-frontier conservation produces conflict and resistance across land–sea boundaries in Europe’s marginal areas.

Presentation long abstract

This paper uses the failed marine protected area (MPA) of Pantelleria, a small Italian island in the Sicilian Channel, to explore conservation justice at Europe’s green frontiers. Between 2007–2016, Pantelleria was transformed into a National Park covering most of the land, promoted as a climate-smart conservation fix and engine of sustainable tourism, while the long-discussed MPA remained on paper. In 2024 a local referendum initiative on the Park’s possible extension to the sea was declared inadmissible, and the pro-referendum committee re-founded itself as a Civic Council for the Park.

Drawing on an extended political ecology of conservation, environmental and climate justice, and data justice, the paper reads Pantelleria as an inland island where agriculture is central to identity, and the sea is emotionally present but socially marginal. It reconstructs the institutional history of the Park–MPA nexus and analyses qualitative interviews, documents and civic materials to trace conflicts along three axes: vertical (state/region), horizontal (institutions/communities), and local (land/sea users).

The paper argues that the failure of the MPA results from a constellation of factors: the negative institutional legacy of the National Park, weak and tokenistic participation, limited recognition of local ecological knowledge, internal community fractures, opaque data practices, and the lack of a shared narrative that frames conservation as a legitimate collective response to the climate crisis. In doing so, it uses Pantelleria to show how marine conservation at Europe’s margins can reproduce unequal territorialisation, while also pointing to the need for more relational, justice-oriented and convivial approaches to land–sea governance.

Presentation short abstract

In this paper, we set out an agenda for convivial conservation along the urban waterfront—the blue frontier of conservation (in)justice—focusing on the practices of NGOs working to preserve urban coastal wetlands and their societal role along Europe's southern and eastern periphery.

Presentation long abstract

In this paper, we set out an agenda for convivial conservation along the urban waterfront—the blue frontier of conservation (in)justice. Amidst calls for green and blue growth, coastal communities especially along the shorelines of Southern and Eastern Europe increasingly find themselves losing ground in favor of a range of blue economy projects: tourist resorts, large-scale nature-based solutions, or speculative investments in alternative energy. The interests of nature conservation, along with the vital significance of traditional livelihoods and the natural areas that sustain them, are frequently left behind in these dynamics.

While convivial conservation has recently gained popularity in scholarly circles as a paradigm that can offer pathways towards conservation justice, as a pragmatic conservation strategy the approach still needs to engage significantly with the everyday conservation efforts occurring on the frontlines of societal change. In this paper, we focus specifically on existing practices NGOs across Europe deploy to preserve urban coastal wetlands while navigating the challenges, limitations, and opportunities ingrained in global calls for urban biodiversity and nature-based solutions. We especially foreground the types of collective and diverse economic practices through which NGO experts reemphasize the symbiotic role that lagoons, lakes, and marshes play in coastal cities along Europe’s southern and eastern periphery.

Presentation short abstract

Rangers of Eastern Serbia and the Mlava Army lead self-organised, holistic nature conservation, defending ecosystems, local livelihoods, and community wellbeing against extractivist corporate mining in eastern Serbia.

Presentation long abstract

In recent years, Serbia has become a key site of extractivist expansion on the European periphery, where international and domestic corporations pursue intensive mineral exploration. These activities often exceed legal boundaries, bypass local consultation, and generate serious environmental degradation. Eastern Serbia, rich in gold, copper, and lithium deposits, has become one of the main frontlines of this conflict between corporate extractivism and local communities. In the Homolje Mountains, Dundee Precious Metals has conducted exploratory drilling and announced plans for gold extraction in ecologically sensitive areas around the Mlava River. These incursions have provoked strong community responses, leading to the emergence of the grassroots groups The Mlava Army and Rengers of Eastern Serbia. Their activism combines public documentation of illegal corporate operations, legal advocacy, and direct protection of local ecosystems. Through patrols, and public awareness campaigns, they expose unregulated exploration practices and mobilize solidarity networks across Serbia. I will look at this initiatives employong the concept of holistic nature conservation. This concept emphasizes the interdependence of ecological, social, and cultural systems in environmental protection. Unlike traditional conservation approaches that focus narrowly on protecting individual species or habitats, holistic conservation integrates multiple dimensions of sustainability: ecosystem integrity, community wellbeing, and cultural heritage. These initiatives exemplify a bottom-up model of conservation that connects ecological integrity with social justice. By resisting extractive corporate power and building autonomous frameworks for care, solidarity, and accountability, they demonstrate how communities on Europe’s periphery are trying to reclaim ecological sovereignty through self-organised nature conservation.

Presentation short abstract

This study explores, from a socio-environmental justice perspective, hunting practices in Italy's Subequana Valley and the local Natural Park, as they highlight conflicts between conservation policies and local livelihoods while reshaping human–non-human relations in contested mountain futures.

Presentation long abstract

This contribution examines how hunting practices in the Subequana Valley, within the Sirente Velino Regional Natural Park in Italy’s Central Apennines, reveal the socio-environmental conflicts that are currently shaping mountain futures. Drawing on political ecology and decolonial mountain studies, the study analyses how diverse and often competing conservation and development paradigms — ranging from species protection and tourist-oriented planning to eco-territorialist and convivial approaches — reconfigure relations between humans, non-humans, and mountain territories. In this framework, hunters emerge as a controversial yet pivotal group whose land-based knowledge is increasingly mobilised by institutions while remaining marginalised in public discourse and governance.

Methodologically, the research combines multispecies ethnography of hunting practices and participant observation during Park-organised training courses for hunters involved in wild boar control and selective deer culling. It also draws on semi-structured interviews with institutional actors, including personnel from the Park Authority, the Abruzzo Region, and the local ATC, as well as document analysis of hunting regulations and training materials.

The findings reveal how hunting activities expose tensions between external "ontologies of nature” — often shaped by picturesque, recreational, or neoliberal conservationist visions — and local understandings rooted in everyday multispecies interactions. As the Park redefines its identity around tourism and local products, hunters become simultaneously an indispensable yet "sacrificed" group, revealing conflicts between privileged and subaltern socionatures. The study argues that effective mountain governance in Italy should involve heterogeneous local knowledges and the co-constitutive agency of human and non-human actors in shaping ethical, ecological, and economic futures.