Presentation short abstract

Temporal justice (TJ) serves as an analytical framework for detecting how different temporalities are prescribed, resisted, and negotiated during the green transition. Through case studies from Extremadura and Vis, we demonstrate how time itself emerges as a site of inequality.

Presentation long abstract

Green transition is often presented as universally beneficial, but the current implementation of the infrastructures of low-carbon energy deepens social and environmental injustices. The European Union and member states fund energy infrastructure in peripheries, but often without addressing structural vulnerabilities, ecological limits, or local modes of life that contradict linear planning and technocratic urgency. Through two contrasting case studies, we demonstrate how temporal justice (TJ) serves as an analytical framework for detecting how different temporalities are prescribed, resisted, and negotiated during the green transition. In Extremadura, Spain, local activists resist the imposed corporate model of energy transition adapting to the imposed hurry, but at the expense of personal sacrifices. Complementary, in the self-sustainable island of Vis, people opt for slow living, the creation of convivial knowledge practices and self-sufficiency through dry-stone walling, rainwater harvesting and other sustainable practices as a rebellion against technocratic governing and market-based advancements. We show that sustainability is also about how fast, for whom, and on whose time we transition. TJ asks who sets the pace, who waits, who bears acceleration risks, whose rhythms are recognized, and how harms and benefits unfold across time. It highlights tensions between linear policy schedules and cyclical community rhythms, and between the accelerated tempo of green-growth agendas and slower local temporalities. Thus, it should be part of the just transition framework, complementing the pillars of distributional, procedural and recognition justice. Through this lens, time itself emerges as a site of inequality, linking TJ to the spatial production of peripheries.