Presentation short abstract

Drawing from political ecology and agrarian studies, this paper develops, applies, and discusses an analytical understanding of what we term the ‘repertoire of resistance’ to large, technologically oriented environmental “fixes” centered on net-zero ambitions and renewable energy targets.

Presentation long abstract

While large, technologically oriented environmental “fixes” centered on net-zero ambitions and renewable energy targets dominate sustainability transition imaginaries, such endeavors have resulted in growing levels of opposition. Those resisting renewable energy projects and programs contend that, on the ground, these “fixes” are producing ecologically destructive and socially regressive energy futures. Drawing from political ecology and agrarian studies, we aim to develop, apply, and discuss an analytical understanding of what we term the ‘repertoire of resistance’ to such initiatives in terms of its vocabulary, forms, and effects. Based on seven person-months of qualitative fieldwork in Rajasthan and New Delhi, we analyze resistance to industrial-scale solar energy projects in the agrarian state of Rajasthan, India, then discuss insights using social regulation concepts of institutional change and accountability change. The first addresses shifts in norms and values that regulate legitimacy; the second explores how sanctions and incentives align actors’ behaviors in relation to justice, law, security, ecology and other ideals. Together, these concepts enable us to theorize what the myriad forms of resistance to large solar energy projects, and state and corporate responses to them, reveal about power relations and socioecological dynamics in the context of competing claims on land. This place-based empirical research illuminates dynamics of energy transitions, agrarian struggle, and resource governance at the nexus of climate change and contemporary capitalism.