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.