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- Convenors:
-
Ben Eyre
(University of East Anglia)
Oiara Bonilla (University of Bologna)
Marc Brightman (Università di Bologna)
Aneil Tripathy (University of Bologna)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the overlap and tension between different conceptions of conservation and development revealed by ethnographic attention to 'green' mega projects. Drawing on multiple perspectives it critically explores entanglements between global finance and green promises
Long Abstract:
Green finance has grown enormously in the past thirty years through an array of global experiments including REDD+, green bonds, and insurance-based derivatives. Translating environmental emergency to amenable concepts and instruments created by or for financialisation and financial institutions, such as risk, and built on competing systems of accounting, climate change and environmental management has become core to global finance and its moral turn. Part of this movement has seen a move to 'mega projects' built on green (and blue) promises. Many of these projects work in and expand protected areas and impact communities that have very different attitudes to 'development'. In these projects, there is often overlap and tension between conceptions of conservation and development that are not always compatible. In particular, local and indigenous perspectives are frequently sidelined. This panel reflects on the complex relationships that such initiatives rely upon, bringing together different perspectives for a critical reflection on how global finance is entangled in 'green' mega projects. These entanglements could be approached in a variety of ways including (but not limited to):
• Infrastructure
• Conceptions of scale
• Accounting for impact
• Innovation and experimentation
• Divestment movements, and activism
• Local and indigenous perspectives
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Through the case of the Ferrogrão railway project, I'll analyze how the language of conservation is distorted to promote the project as 'green', and combined with legal tools to force its implementation, contrasting with the concepts mobilized by indigenous people in the struggle against the project
Paper long abstract:
The objective here is to describe and analyze the railroad infrastructure project known as Ferrogrão (EF-170). The railroad will cross the cerrado (Mato Grosso) and part of the Brazilian Amazon (Pará) to transport agribusiness production to the northern ports (of the Arco Norte). The planned path crosses a sensitive area of the Amazon region, which is already marked by land conflicts and intense deforestation, and will impact preservation areas and indigenous lands. However, the project is being certified for the issuance of 'Green Bonds'. I will first analyze the use of the language of environmental conservation and climate change and its 'degeneration' or 'distorsion' by the agencies promoting the project to make it viable as a 'green' project. Second, in light of work done by various authors on the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River, I will attempt to show how this distorted language is allied to the various legal instruments used by the agencies involved to make such projects viable and unavoidable. And how this language contrasts with with the concepts of land and good living mobilized by the indigenous movements involved in the struggle against the project.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores an Italian oil major's attempt to obtain a large slice of the EU pandemic recovery fund, raised through centrally issued green bonds, for the production of ‘blue’ hydrogen and the stocking of CO2 emissions under the Adriatic sea.
Paper long abstract:
Conservationists and environmentalists have long protested against drilling platforms in the Adriatic (including one called Theodoric after the Gothic emperor) for the exploitation of gas reserves beneath the seabed. The reserves are largely depleted, and this extractive activity has been blamed for subsidence beneath the coastline, exacerbating erosion of the historic and iconic pine forests and dunes of the Po Delta, rich in biodiversity. Protests returned with renewed vigour when the Italian oil major, ENI, began lobbying the government to use part of Italy’s allocation from the EU pandemic recovery fund, raised through centrally issued green bonds, for a highly ambitious programme of blue hydrogen production, using methane from existing reserves, with emissions to be abated by carbon capture and storage. The proposal raises questions about the nature of sustainability: if EU institutions and national governments are to use private capital to achieve a ‘green recovery’, should methane be seen as part of the solution or part of the problem? Is ‘blue’ hydrogen sustainable? Is it morally acceptable to bet on the efficacy of unproven CO2 storage technologies at large scale? How should threats to coastal ecology be taken into account? What weight should be given to local protests? The European Commission’s decision in June 2021 to exclude ‘blue’ carbon dealt a severe blow to ENI’s plans, but the way in which it reached this decision was largely through calculations over CO2 emissions rather than local livelihoods and ecologies. What does this tell us about problems of governance at scale?