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- Convenors:
-
Elisabeth Moolenaar
(Regis University)
Ana Isabel Afonso (FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa CRIA-NOVA)
Dorle Dracklé (University of Bremen)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Friday 24 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel locates environmental justice, human rights, and/or climate change within ethnographic research on energy production & consumption and resource extraction. It investigates these matters for populations affected, from the perspective of the researcher, and/or as they inform each other.
Long Abstract:
One of the goals of the "energy anthropology" is placing energy and the environment in cultural perspective, taking into account meaning (making), relationships, value, and agency. Using ethnography/ethnographic research on energy production can open up a dialogue on urgent matters such as environmental justice, human rights and climate change. This panel deals with struggles over energy production, debates over climate change, and the politics of natural resource extraction within broader socio-cultural contexts.
Energy landscapes are sites of power and control. These sites frequently face environmental degradation, ecological disasters, and/or social disintegration or upheaval. Sites of energy production are oftentimes located in less urban areas far away from the sites where most energy is consumed, turning the former into "sacrifice zones." Local (at times indigenous) populations are most vulnerable because they have acquired less entitlement to the natural resources, through law, economic and political systems, and/or processes of colonization. Energy production affects not only environmental quality but also human rights. Without a livable environment, human rights may become either unachievable or meaningless. Energy production intensifies challenges to populations who are unable to claim rights such as the right to self-determination, sovereignty, or mineral or traditional land rights.
We welcome papers that locate environmental justice, human rights, and/or climate change within ethnographic explorations of energy production & consumption and natural resource extraction. Papers might investigate these matters for populations affected by energy production, from the perspective of the researcher, and/or as they inform each other.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 24 July, 2020, -Floramante S.J. Ponce (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
This study explores the local dynamics and impacts of a Chinese Hydropower Project under the Belt and Road Initiative in Laos. In particular, I analyze how the forced relocation has restructured the resettled villagers' everyday experiences and views; connection to nature; and survival strategies.
Paper long abstract:
Since the Chinese government adopted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, there has been growing interest in studying the global dynamics of China's mega-infrastructure projects and its controversies among social scientists. However, there has been a dearth of ethnographic research studying local communities affected by these projects. Specifically in Laos, this is primarily due to the secretive nature of Chinese projects and the Lao state. This research thus aims to examine how the Nam Tha 1 Hydropower (NTha1 Project)—a Chinese dam under the BRI—has restructured the rural riparian villagers' lives due to forced relocation and promises of progress. Based on my 14-month ethnographic fieldwork between 2018-2019 in the Hardmoauk resettlement, Bokeo Province, Laos, I will analyze how new infrastructures—e.g., electricity, road, and internet—in the resettlement have altered the resettled villagers' everyday experiences of development, social relations, and views of modern-rural life. I argue that the forced relocation does not only connect the resettled villagers to modernity, but also disconnect them to former sources of income, nature, and worship places and ancestral graves in old villages. I will also present stories how the disconnection to nature of some resettled villagers, particularly the ethnic Khmu and Lamed people, has changed not only their livelihood, but also their practices of reciprocity and redistribution. Moreover, I will investigate how the NTha1's inadequate compensations have resulted in the villagers' further impoverishment and disillusionment. Beyond understanding the local dynamics of a BRI project, this research thus also assesses the NTha1's progress of promises.
Agnese Cimdina (University of Latvia)
Paper short abstract:
The paper is based on post-doctoral research on Nordic companies in the Arabian Gulf. Highlighting Norwegian and Emirate cases, the paper approaches oil as catalyst for identities, visions and perceptions that frame ideas of business success, development and sustainable futures.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is based on ongoing post-doctoral research on Nordic companies as they move to the Arabian Gulf to establish business in energy and sustainability sectors. Highlighting Norwegian and Emirate cases, the paper approaches oil as catalyst for identities, visions and perceptions that frame ideas of business success, development and sustainable futures for societies at large and the national economies alike.
Before 1971,the UAE did not exist as a country on the world map and its history, culture and people were known to few. Since the discovery of oil in the 1960s,the country's impressive oil and gas revenues have enabled them to build ultramodern infrastructure,to construct high level of welfare, to increase population and to attract entrepreneurs from all over the world. With sustainability challenges increasing rapidly, however, the UAE has started to focus on diversification of the economy, investing substantially in cleaner energy sources. Diversification of the UAE economy and energy mix present good opportunities for Norwegian technologies, along with the possibilities in the oil and gas sector. While clean energy is the promised future, the UAE alike Norway continues to accelerate the development of the oil and gas sector — the financial life-lines of their economies — that plays a crucial role in realizing countries' overall development agenda. Despite its relatively small size, the UAE houses most of the Norwegian companies in the Gulf, from Norway alone more than 200 companies are present in the UAE, mostly in the oil and gas sector.
Ian Simpson (Leiden University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper scrutinizes the limitations of environmental citizenship among citizens and non-citizens in the Arab Gulf states, and examines distinctions between citizens and non-citizens and the depoliticising of environmental claims and national industrial legacies.
Paper long abstract:
This paper scrutinizes the limitations of environmental citizenship among citizens and non-citizens in the Arab Gulf states, with a focus on the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There are particularly heightened concerns about water scarcity, food security, marine pollution, and dependence on oil and gas industries and how states can address these challenges in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Yet environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean's Arabian littoral remains poorly understood both in terms of theoretical and grounded questions. It considers anthropological studies to trace how labor relations and discourses relating to citizenship, environment and sustainability enable or foreclose environmental reform in GCC countries, and examines distinctions between citizens and non-citizens and the depoliticising of environmental claims and national industrial legacies.
Joohee Lee (University of Delaware)
Paper short abstract:
Building upon the growing literature of energy justice, I introduce an Energy Justice Gini Index as a new tool to evaluate the spatial unevenness in large-scale and high-risk energy production and its connection to socioeconomic strata.
Paper long abstract:
Human society's perspective on energy is an embodiment of the social and cultural values of each era. In industrial societies, energy systems are understood as an essential enabler of material growth and prosperity. To fulfill the mission of providing affluent and low-cost services, modern energy facilities have become larger and technically more complex. However, such an industrialist energy landscape has created serious socio-ecological crises like climate change and social injustice. In recent years, the concept of 'energy justice' has seen explosive growth in the field, offering unconventional viewpoints on contemporary energy challenges. In hopes of adding further momentum to this endeavor, this study presents a new metric called the Energy Justice Gini Index (EJGI). The Index is designed to measure the uneven geography of large-scale and high-risk energy facilities and its relation to socioeconomic strata. The EJGI holds two useful features. First, it quantifies the unfair sharing of risks associated with energy production emphasizing the spatial dimension of energy injustice. Second, it is expressed in the same form as the Gini Coefficient (a widely used metric of income disparities) so it can be accessible to policymakers and the public. As a case study, I investigate the justice implications of South Korea's nuclear power network using the EJGI framework. The results show that risks of harm associated with the nuclear plants have been placed heavily on the shoulder of socioeconomically vulnerable communities while the benefit of the power network is enjoyed primarily by those living far from potential risks.
Ben Campbell (Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
How do informal settlers manage for cooking, lighting and heat? Interviews engaged with temporalities of displacement, post-conflict transition, and climate change-affected conditions in make-do, urban margins, and how to claim infrastructural services in precarious urban landscapes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper concerns making claims to belong in urban places as voiced in interviews with mostly women members of several informal settlements in the Kathmandu Valley between 2018-2019. The interview materials were gathered as part of a project to understand everyday energy practices by informal settlers (who are increasingly of interest given global policies of Sustainable Energy for All). How did they manage for cooking, lighting and heat? The project's research team recorded accounts of difficulties of gas supply experienced during the India blockade (2015/16) and of struggles to get electric grid connection without documents of property title, or to access other services that are normal to contemporary urban expectations. People tell of their involvement in temporalities of urban displacement, civil war, post-conflict transition, and climate change-affected conditions experienced in make-do, urban margins. Through research networks mobilised by the team of local investigators, a pair of consultative meetings helped to open out spaces for deliberative participation, and point to the value of dialogue in the formulation of citizenship and recognition of claims to infrastructural services in precarious urban landscapes. The paper's argument engages with disputed accounts of The Anthropocene by considering new urban/rural socialities of living as vital territories for understanding how people stake claims in places of geo-social marginality.
Manuel Ramos (ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon) Daniel Malet Calvo (ISCTE-IUL. University Institute of Lisbon)
Paper short abstract:
Lisbon European Green Capital 2020 celebrates a transition towards sustainable urban development but will also fuel the city's tourist industry and an energy bill with climate impacts. We'll show how authorities don't see a paradox between promoting international tourism and their greenifying agenda
Paper long abstract:
Lisbon is the European Green Capital for 2020. National and local authorities will celebrate the city's transition towards models of sustainable urban development, green energy, low-carbon mobility and waste management. All the while they continue fostering the city's touristic industry internationally undeterred by an energy bill with expected climate warming impacts, all of which could be prevented if it were not the very existence of the proposed events and activities. The slogan Lisbon Council chose for the celebration is "choose to evolve" in an attempt to implicate the population into the acceptance of more sustainable and green everyday practices. Today, Lisbon receives 10 million tourists per year, favouring a short-term rental urban economy that is deepening the housing crisis, while increasing considerably the city's carbon footprint. In spite of that, authorities avoid acknowledging tourism as a problem in their effort to make Lisbon greener: New sustainable interurban transport means intended for tourists (such as electric bikes and scooters) have been deployed throughout the city. However, planes and cruises (the most polluting transport systems) that continue to feed Lisbon with more tourists, seem to be perfectly acceptable for the agenda of Lisbon as a Green Capital, notwithstanding a recently announced mitigating agenda. We will try to make sense of this paradox by focusing on the pervasive disconnect between the population and their elected representatives.
Branko Banovic (Institute of Ethnography, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts)
Paper short abstract:
Despite the fact that Montenegro is constitutionally regulated as an ecological state, Pljevlja still remains one of the most polluted towns in Europe. The focus of research will be on the interweaving of historical and environmental narratives about the social and cultural exclusion of Pljevlja.
Paper long abstract:
Historically generated specifics and the contemporary environmental problems of Pljevlja, an industrial town in Montenegro, have created a fruitful terrain for analysing the correlation between environmental issues and attitudes toward nation, identity and international integration. Notably, in 1991 Montenegro officially declared the first ecological state in the world and this small Balkan state regulated itself as "a civil, democratic, ecological and state of social justice, based on the rule of law" (The Constitution of Montenegro, Article 1). However, despite the fact that Montenegro is constitutionally regulated as an ecological state, Pljevlja still remains one of the most polluted towns in Europe. Owing to its specific historical legacy and contemporary environmental pollution, the case of Pljevlja is an interesting example about how environmental issues affects identity problems. The main focus of ethnographic research will be on the interweaving of historical and environmental narratives about the social and cultural exclusion of Pljevlja from the rest of Montenegro. The hypothesis is that the carelessness of the state authorities and agencies regarding pollution in Pljevlja will be the central point in the environmental narratives. An additional hypothesis is that the carelessness as the central point in narratives will be closely associated with different historically generated specifics of Pljevlja. Culture plays an important role in human-environment relations and an anthropological approach to the above mentioned particularities can contribute to the analysis of environmentalism itself as well as to the broader understanding of the correlation between environmental problems and identity controversies.