Topics: Extractivism; Mining; Energy Transition, Green Energy; Environment; Climate Crisis
Hydroelectric dams, power plants, batteries, pipelines, wind farms, hydrogen, lithium, graphite, corridors.
Angola, Mozambique, Mauritania, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Africa, Europe ENERGEO Participating Institutions FUNDING: FCT Host institution CRIA Associated institutions Kaleidoscopio (Mozambique) ISCED (Angola) RESEARCH PROJECT (2022.07881.PTDC):

Emerging Energo-Geographies and Political Mobilizations in the framework of the Green Transition: An Anthropological Approach scroll Down ENG PT

Slide In a moment of climate crisis and the overarching acknowledgement of the necessity of a transition towards a green energy paradigms, what kind of consequences can we map at a social and territorial level? read on Energeo

27 September 2023 Ruy Llera Blanes
Review of African Political Economy
2023 (online first) Keywords:

Infrastructure; Fatal architecture; Climate disaster; Angola; Mozambique Link chevron_left chevron_right Fatal architectures and death by design: The infrastructures of state-sponsored climate disasters in Angola and Mozambique Abstract:

This article addresses how African states respond to climate crisis, arguing that, beyond the agency and impact of climate phenomena such as drought and cyclones, they are active participants in the production of climate disasters and emergencies, mostly through infrastructural processes that affect land and resource use, and subsequently livelihoods. To demonstrate this, it uses the cases of the drought in southwestern Angola and cyclones in northern and central Mozambique, where such climate phenomena have exposed ‘fatal architectures’ that have dramatically raised the toll of climate victims and refugees. Both extractivist, agro-industrial and hydroelectric projects, as well as other, more deferred infrastructural designs (roads, communication networks, etc.) have challenged the traditional agency and resilience of local communities. Such new infrastructural projects also illustrate how certain perceived long-term solutions to address the climate crisis with industrial and energy reconversion towards greener energies can still become fatal architectures in the context of climate emergencies. 20 September 2023 Post from our PI Ruy Llera Blanes at the Energy Anthropology Network (EASA) blog Link chevron_left chevron_right Climate Colonialism and Green Transitions The concept of climate colonialism has recently taken prominence in environmental debates, in particular after the recent recognition, in the 2022 report of the IPCC, of colonialism as a historical cause for our present-day climate crisis (IPCC 2022). The formulation of the causality of the relation is in itself interesting, as in fact one could question to what extent the ‘colonialism’ of the report is a specific historical process or rather a more overarching formulation of the political economy of domination and extraction. In any case, while on the one hand it can be argued that climate colonialism is a term that remains somewhat ‘unsettled’, in the sense of referring to diverse empirical processes and epistemological routes, it is also a rich and productive entry point into current processes of social, economic and political inequalities stemming from our multifarious engagements with/in the environment. 10 July 2023 Luis Silva & Siddarth Sareen
The Extractive Industries & Society
2023, Volume 15
Páginas: 101308
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2023.101308 Keywords:

Lithium; Extractivism; Green transitions; Social movements; Resource frontier Link (Open Access) chevron_left chevron_right The calm before the storm? The making of a lithium frontier in transitioning Portugal Abstract:

A nation undergoing accelerating energy transitions with ambitious climate targets discovers lithium. In recent years, Portugal has made headlines inter alia for running on renewable electricity for over a month, setting world records at solar auctions, closing its last two coal-fired power plants, and investing majorly in green hydrogen for regional public transport fleets. Lithium extraction for battery manufacture can give it leverage in a sector where it has lagged: manufacturing for energy transitions. Bureaucratic machinery has begun whirring in this direction. Yet, extraction carries risks of environmental destruction, community displacement, and populist backlash. Hence, mapping extraction sites has evoked public opposition and triggered debate. Drawing on civil society publications, policy papers and reports, media coverage, field observations, and interviews with social movement representatives, we interrogate the emergence of a lithium frontier in this greening country. We analyse the human geography and social anthropology of mapped extraction sites, to discuss what social movements have emerged and how they are reflected in official political frames. We do not take a position based on technical assessment, but rather analyse available facts as energy social scientists familiar with the sociotechnical geographies of the Portuguese energy system. We conceptually engage literature on the making of resource frontiers and moments of transition, to foreground the sort of meaning being made and performed in this rapidly unfolding national low-carbon energy future. While unpacking exploration and licensing processes reveals tensions with social justice issues, how hybrid governance navigates these issues will define emergent extractive proclivities. 10 July 2023 Ruy Llera Blanes, Luís Silva, Francisco Freire, Antonio Maria Pusceddu, Antónia Pedroso de Lima, Paulo Mendes
Etnográfica Agora Blog Keywords:

Energy Transition; territory; politics; infrastructures; Portugal; Europe Link (Open Access) chevron_left chevron_right Confusing Maps: on energy territorialities in Portugal and Europe Abstract:

In the current context of post-pandemics, climate crisis and armed conflict in Ukraine, the issue of energy, its production, access and consumption have gained prominence in the global geopolitical landscape. In this framework, countries like Portugal and the rest of Southern Europe are fully engaged in the energy transition process. What are the social and political costs of these processes? The text critically interrogates this new emerging geography. 20 April 2023 Luís Silva
Análise Social
2023, Volume 58 nº 247
Pages: 270-293
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31447/AS00032573.2023247.04
 Keywords:

Solar Photovoltaic Power Plants; Environmental Issues; Rural Areas; Portugal Link (Open Access) chevron_left chevron_right Discords around solar photovoltaic power plants in Portugal Abstract:

This article addresses the discords around solar photo-voltaic power plants in Portugal, in order to add knowledge to the scholarly literature regarding environmental issues in the country. Based on multiple sources of information, the article shows that despite the high public support for solar-generated electricity, the proposals for the construction of such energy infrastructures have been evoking increasing opposition from local actors and environmental organizations. The main rea-sons pinpointed relate to environmental, landscape and eco-nomic damages caused by prospective land use changes, as well as to procedural injustices in the planning and consultation phases. 16 June 2023 More on the event here chevron_left chevron_right Discussions on Renewable Energy and Post-Carbon Futures (EAN/FAN workshop, ISCTE-IUL) Members of ENERGEO participated in the international workshop on Renewable Energy and Post-Carbon Futures, organised by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) networks Energy Anthropology Network (EAN) and Futures Anthropologies Network (FAN), held in ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon from 15 to 17 June 2023. Antonio Maria Pusceddu was host, convenor and chair of the session on “Transitioning Justly", and Ruy Llera Blanes was chair of the session on “Climate Colonialism”. 17 June 2023 See Poster here chevron_left chevron_right A field trip to a High-Energy Sines In the framework of our team member Antonio Maria Pusceddu’s involvement in the organisation of the international workshop on Renewable Energy and Post-Carbon Futures, organised by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) networks Energy Anthropology Network (EAN) and Futures Anthropologies Network (FAN), held in ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon from 15 to 17 June 2023, ENERGEO co-sponsored a field trip to Cercal do Alentejo and Sines, where projects for large-scale photovoltaic parks and hydrogen projects are coexisting problematically with the region’s carbon-intensive energy pasts. The visitors met representatives from the civic movement “Juntos pelo Cercal” (Together for Cercal) which opposes the photovoltaic project, and then visited the premises where the old electric power plant will be replaced by green hydrogen plants and big data centres. 10 March 2023 Ruy Llera Blanes, Ana Carolina Rodrigues, Euclides Gonçalves
The Journal of Social Encounters
2023, Volume 7, issue 1
Pages: 4-25 Keywords:

Mozambique; Extractivism; Conflict; Community protests; Temporality Link (Open Access) chevron_left chevron_right The Multiple Paths of Extraction, Dispossession, and Conflict in Mozambique:
From Tete’s Coal Mines to Cabo Delgado’s LNG Projects Abstract:

When it comes to extractive processes, conflict, and peacebuilding, the case of Mozambique has recently taken center stage due to the emergence of an Islamic insurgency movement in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in its northern province of Cabo Delgado. This is but one part of a complex process of highly conflictual extractivist projects unfolding in the country. In this article, we argue that, beyond the specific case of LNG, there is a logic of continuity and accumulation regarding extraction-related grievances that, over the years, has generated community resentment in natural resource rich areas. Multiple accumulating forms of dispossession have accentuated community grievances in Tete’s coal mining areas and Cabo Delgado’s extractivist projects (LNG or otherwise), driving conflict associated with extractive industry projects. This paper is based on multiple rounds of field research conducted with residents and displaced people from extraction areas in the provinces of Tete and Cabo Delgado between 2012 and 2022. The analysis contributes to current debates on extractive politics, conflict, and peacebuilding. d. {{current_slide_index}}/{{total_slide_count}} News

Project Description In the framework of the current global debates regarding climate change, sustainability and energetic transition, the shift from a carbon-based to a green energy industry seems inevitable. While calls and resolutions towards ending fossil fuels slowly and irregularly make their way into the global diplomacy (e.g., COP26), the shift towards the electrification and digitalization of industrial, communication and transport sectors is creating an increasing global dependency on the extraction and processing of new resources. This is the case, for instance, of lithium (often dubbed the ‘oil of the future’) and graphite, essential components for the manufacture of batteries for cell phones, computers and electric cars, for instance. At the same time, ‘clean technologies’ such as green hydrogen, liquefied natural gas or renewables are presented as safe paths towards decarbonization and reduction of GHGs.
However, the study of the social, political and environmental consequences of the transition is still incipient. Such transformations, while they are generally positive steps towards energy sustainability and climate change adaptation, are generating new industrial sites, new complex economic relations and political mobilizations with socio-environmental consequences that need to be charted and studied from a social scientific perspective. Read Further Project Description We are talking specifically about environmental impacts of the new energy industry, its material and infrastructural articulations, conflicts over land property and use, political (public-private) articulations, labor and commercial opportunities, etc. In this framework, a new, energy-related geography is unfolding, complexifying the traditional cartographies of power based on North-South, postcolonial distinctions. This illustrates the increasing political centrality of such industries, both in terms of transnational diplomacies – the role of Nord Stream pipelines in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict being a case in point – and of creating new conflict zones due to the social and environmental impacts of the industry in local populations, as well as the unequal distribution and access to energy. It also explains the growing attention on behalf of climate change activism – from environmental justice movements to Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion – regarding the environmental consequences of the emerging energy economy. This project is therefore an invitation to deepen the study of socio-political consequences of the new global sites of the energy industry, by focusing on current cases of installation and development of energy industries in the framework of the Green Transition. We ask the following questions: What are the local environmental impacts of the ‘green energy’ economy? Read Further Read Back Project Description What kind of spatio-territorial redistributions are emerging as a result of the energetic transition? What are the infrastructural and material unfoldings of such industries? What are the consequences at the local level in terms of land rights and use? What kind of economic and livelihood developments are these processes entailing at the ground level? What kind of political mobilizations are emerging in response, for instance in terms of energy and environmental justice? In response, we propose the concept of ‘Energo-Geographies’ as a framework for tackling the complexity of territorial, material, economic and political articulations of the global energy industries. We believe this will imply a significant contribution in the anthropological and sociological studies of energy, through an innovative socio-spatial analysis of energy systems as infrastructures. We congregate a team of anthropologists with accumulated expertise on research in socio-environmental issues in Southern Europe and Africa, and propose to research empirical case studies in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Mauritania, Angola and Mozambique, where we will develop in-depth accounts of different energetic resources – from graphite, lithium and green hydrogen to solar and other renewables. Read Further Read Back Project Description We also have significant experience in long-term ethnographic research methods, which we believe are the best equipped to approach the infrastructural complexity and local consequences of the emerging green energy industry. Our goal is to provide a systematic, in-depth description and analysis of the new geographies and infrastructures of the energy transition, beyond the more traditional sites; to advance scientific knowledge in the anthropology and social sciences of environment, infrastructures and energy, with the conceptual contribution of "energo-geography"; and to provide insights for the formulation of public policies that allow for a fairer and more just transition in the framework of the Agenda 2030 and global commitments towards a sustainable future. Move On Read Back vertical_align_top vertical_align_bottom

Kini Ruy Llera Blanes is Principal Researcher at the Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) at ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon. He has conducted empirical research in Angola and Mozambique, and has recently coordinated research projects on the drought in Southern Angola and on the impact of the LNG industry in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique. PI Silva Luís Silva Co-PI Mendes Paulo Mendes Researcher Freire Francisco Freire Researcher Pusceddu Antonio Maria Pusceddu Researcher Gonçalves Euclides Gonçalves Researcher Bahu Helder Alicerces Bahu Researcher Antónia Pedroso de Limahu Antónia Pedroso de Lima Researcher Mardones Felipe Campos Mardones is a PhD researcher with a focus on environmental anthropology. He comes from Southern Chile, where he acquired expertise through social intervention and applied research in indigenous and intercultural contexts. In the academic sphere, he has worked in the field of conservation anthropology, heritage, and sustainability. His interests lie in critical studies of conservation and energy transition, territoriality, and local governance from a socio-environmental perspective. His ethnographic experience covers Chile and Andalusia in Spain. PhD Researcher Palacios Alejandra Tapia Palacios Intern vertical_align_top vertical_align_bottom Team Members

Blanes, Ruy Llera, Carolina Cardoso, Helder Alicerces Bahu, and Cláudio Fortuna. 2020. “Angola’s Persistent Drought.” Africa Is a Country (blog). 2020. Blanes, Ruy Llera, Carolina Valente Cardoso, Helder Alicerces Bahu, and Cláudio Fortuna. 2022. “Drought Terroirs: Debating Anthropological Territorialities in the Study of Climate Change and Environmental Disasters.” Kritisk Etnografi 5 (1–2): 115–32 Blanes, Ruy Llera. 2023. “Fatal Architectures and Death by Design: The Infrastructures of State-Sponsored Climate Disasters in Angola and Mozambique.” Review of African Political Economy 0 (0): 1–15. Blanes, Ruy Llera, Ana Carolina Rodrigues, and Euclides Gonçalves. 2023. “The Multiple Paths of Extraction, Dispossession, and Conflict in Mozambique: From Tete’s Coal Mines to Cabo Delgado’s LNG Projects.” The Journal of Social Encounters 7 (1): 4–25. Delicado, Ana, Elisabete Figueiredo, and Luís Silva. 2016. “Community Perceptions of Renewable Energies in Portugal: Impacts on Environment, Landscape and Local Development.” Energy Research & Social Science, Energy Transitions in Europe: Emerging Challenges, Innovative Approaches, and Possible Solutions, 13 (1): 84–93 Delicado, Ana, Luís Silva, Luís Junqueira, Ana Horta, Susana Fonseca, and Mónica Truninger. 2013. “Ambiente, paisagem, património e economia: Os conflitos em torno de parques eólicos em Portugal.” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 100 (1): 11–36 Selection Relevant project member publications Freire, Francisco, ed. 2022. State, Society and Islam in the Western Regions of the Sahara: Regional Interactions and Social Change. London: I.B. Tauris Effantin-Touyer, Rachel, and Francisco Freire. 2016. “Les ‘Guerriers’ Taghridjant du Delta du Fleuve Sénégal : Identité et politiques de conservation dans le Parc National du Diawling (Mauritanie).” Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 31 (1): 17–40 Gonçalves, Euclides. 2020. “Agricultural Corridors as ‘Demonstration Fields’: Infrastructure, Fairs and Associations along the Beira and Nacala Corridors of Mozambique.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 14 (2): 354–74 Hoffman, Susanna, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Paulo Mendes, eds. 2022. Cooling Down: Local Responses to Global Climate Change. Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books Leonardsson, Hanna, Annica Kronsell, Erik Andersson, Anders Burman, Ruy Blanes, Karen Da Costa, Malin Hasselskog, Olga Stepanova, and Joakim Öjendal. 2021. “Achieving Peaceful Climate Change Adaptation through Transformative Governance.” World Development 147: 105656 Selection Relevant project member publications Lima, Antónia Pedroso de. "Care as a factor for sustainability in situations of crisis: Portugal between the Welfare State and interpersonal relationships." cadernos pagu (2016): 79-105 Mendes, Paulo. 2020. The Sea Commands: Community and Perception of the Environment in a Portuguese Fishing Village. Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books Pusceddu, Antonio Maria. 2022. “Southern Chronicles: The Political Ecology of Class in the Italian Industrial Periphery.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 33 (4): 37–55 Pusceddu, Antonio Maria. 2021. “Political Ecologies of Value: Austerity and Socio-Environmental Conflict in the Italian South.” In The Political Ecology of Austerity. Crisis, Social Movements, and the Environment, edited by Rita Calvário, Maria Kaika, and Giorgios Velegrakis, 156–74. London & New York: Routledge Pusceddu, Antonio Maria. 2020. “Grassroots Ecologies of Value: Environmental Conflict and Social Reproduction in Southern Italy.” Antipode 52 (3): 847–66 Selection Relevant project member publications Pusceddu, Antonio Maria, and Andrea Filippo Ravenda, eds. 2022. Il laboratorio oltre la metropoli : antropologia pubblica della provincia industriale italiana. Roma: editpress Silva, Luís, and Siddharth Sareen. 2023. “The Calm before the Storm? The Making of a Lithium Frontier in Transitioning Portugal.” The Extractive Industries and Society 15: 101308 Silva, Luís. 2023. “As discórdias em torno das centrais fotovoltaicas em Portugal.” Análise Social 58 (247): 270–93 Silva, Luís, and Siddharth Sareen. 2021. “Solar Photovoltaic Energy Infrastructures, Land Use and Sociocultural Context in Portugal.” Local Environment 26 (3): 347–63 Silva, Luís. 2018. “Exploiting Water Courses Sustainably: Seeking a Synergy of Hydropower with Environment.” In Renewable Energy and Landscape Quality, 160–61. Berlin: Jovis Selection Relevant project member publications Slide scroll down scroll to top energeo 0{{current_slide_index}} / 0{{total_slide_count}}

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image Wind Power (Ardales, Ronda, Spain , 2022) ENERGEO click
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image Mining Company (Namibe, Angola, 2020) ENERGEO click
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image Solar Power (Namibe Desert, Angola, 2020) ENERGEO click
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Participating Institutions ISCED
(Angola) Return to Top Kaleidoscopio
(Mozambique)