Format/Structure

Traditional panel with 4–5 presentations, followed by moderated discussion and audience Q&A to foster interdisciplinary dialogue.

Long Abstract

This panel explores environmental justice (EJ) within the ongoing realities of settler colonialism and environmental destruction. While EJ has traditionally focused on inequities in pollution and access to resources, such frameworks often underplay the colonial structures that produce environmental harm and dispossession. Settler colonialism is not a historical backdrop but an enduring structure that shapes land governance, extraction, and environmental policy, often under the guise of sustainability or conservation.

We invite contributions that critically engage with how Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities resist environmental violence through land defense, place-based knowledge, and alternative ecologies. What does justice look like when land is not property but kin? How do environmental struggles expose the intersections of racial capitalism, colonial governance, and ecological degradation? Themes may include Indigenous sovereignty and land defense, extractivism and green colonialism, conservation as colonial practice, more-than-human justice, and abolition ecologies. We also welcome reflections on art, narrative, and speculative approaches to imagining decolonial environmental futures. This panel aims to foster dialogue between scholars, activists, and practitioners committed to centering anti-colonial politics in political ecology. Together, we ask: how can environmental justice account for and challenge the enduring structures of settler colonialism?

This Panel has 4 pending paper proposals.
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