Presentation short abstract

By taking temporality as a frictional mode of governance in decarbonization policies, this paper argues that Europe’s green transition operates as chrono-colonialism—a temporal abstraction that erases and extracts place—and advocates for transformations rooted in place.

Presentation long abstract

Europe’s green transition is a future-oriented political project, projecting a linear accelerated path toward a greener future. This temporal regime—defined by urgency, measurable horizons, and the expectation of constant progress—is grounded in a modern, linear conception of time. The transition is therefore not only about which future is being built, but how life is temporally organised, and how time functions as a mode of governance. This paper examines how such dynamics unfold in Covas do Barroso, where Savannah Resources plans to develop Portugal's first “green mine.” For the past eight years, inhabitants have opposed the project, insisting that “green is Barroso.”

Drawing on a five-year collaboration with this struggle, a yearlong ethnographic fieldwork, and an embodied method of gardening-as-grounding, I conceptualize this clash of “greens” as a confrontation between divergent temporal regimes. The mining project's arrival has shattered local's sossego (peace and quiet), forcing slow rhythms to coexist with urgent and constant external demands. Its twelve-year lifespan is experienced as dispossession overwriting ancestral place-making practices. This accelerated temporality collides with the slower, cyclical rhythms through which inhabitants are-with their place.

I argue that decarbonization operates as chrono-colonialism: a temporal abstraction that empties and extracts place. The green future imagined by transition policies is abstract and placeless—a view from nowhere that erases situated forms of life. In Barroso, by contrast, seasonal practices, transmitted across generations, anchor people to place, entangling time with place. By showing how competing temporalities (un)make place, I argue for transformations rooted-in-place, beyond linear transitionism.