Presentation short abstract

Focusing on internationalist fossil fuel divestment movements in India, Australia, and the United States, this talk discusses how land-based struggles have articulated novel methods to challenge the “toxic debt” through which global coal supply chains are financed.

Presentation long abstract

This paper analyzes the ways in which fossil fuel divestment movements have developed novel methods to challenge the “toxic debt” through which global coal supply chains are financed. Focusing on divestment campaigns to reclaim dispossessed lands in India, Australia, and the United States, I argue that fossil fuel divestment movements must engage with global debt markets to accelerate a just transition away from coal. Bond markets, in which fossil fuel corporations issue long term debt to generate fixed income for financial investors, have now eclipsed bank loans and stock markets as the primary source of capital for the coal industry. Through geographical and spatial analysis of coal mines, power plants, and ports across the Asia Pacific, the paper illustrates how fossil fuel divestment campaigns have put pressure on contingent relationships between fossil fuel corporations, bank underwriters, credit rating agencies, and investors across primary and secondary bond markets. While bond markets and their connections to fossil fuel corporations are often opaque, divestment campaigns have uncovered the ways in which overleveraged fossil fuel infrastructures present significant financial, environmental, and social risks for global investors.