Alexander Dunlap

Governments and corporations exclaim that “energy transition” to “renewable energy” is going to mitigate ecological catastrophe. French President Emmanuel Macron makes such declarations, but what is the reality of energy infrastructure development? Examining the development of a distributional energy transformer substation in the village of Saint-Victor-et-Melvieu, this article argues that “green” infrastructures are creating conflict and ecological degradation and are the material expression of climate catastrophe. Since 1999, the Aveyron region of southern France has become a desirable area of the so-called renewable energy development, triggering a proliferation of energy infrastructure, including a new transformer substation in St. Victor. Corresponding with this spread of “green” infrastructure has been a 10-year resistance campaign against the transformer. In December 2014, the campaign extended to building a protest site, and ZAD, in the place of the transformer called L’Amassada. Drawing on critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and human geography literatures, the article discusses the arrival process of the transformer, corrupt political behavior, misinformation, and the process of bureaucratic land grabbing. This also documents repression against L’Amassada and their relationship with the Gilets Jaunes “societies in movement.” Finally, the notion of infrastructural colonization is elaborated, demonstrating its relevance to understanding the onslaught of climate and ecological crisis.

At the root of techno-capitalist development – popularly marketed as “modernity,” “progress” or “development” – is the continuous and systematic processes of natural resource extraction. Reviewing wind energy development in Mexico, coal mining in Germany and copper mining in Peru, this article seeks to strengthen the post-liberal or structural approach in genocide studies. These geographically and culturally diverse case studies set the stage for discussions about the complications of conflictual fault lines around extractive development. The central argument is that “green” and conventional natural resource extraction are significant in degrading human and biological diversity, thereby contributing to larger trends of socio-ecological destruction, extinction and the potential for human and nonhuman extermination. It should be acknowledged in the above-mentioned case studies, land control was largely executed through force, notably through “hard” coercive technologies executed by various state and extra-judicial elements, which was complemented by employing diplomatic and “soft” social technologies of pacification. Natural resource extraction is a significant contributor to the genocide-ecocide nexus, leading to three relevant discussion points. First, the need to include nonhuman natures, as well as indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, into genocide studies to dispel an embedded anthropocentrism in the discipline. Second, acknowledges the complications of essentializing identity and the specific socio-cultural values and dispositions that are the targets of techno-capitalist development. Third, that socio-political positionality is essential to how people will relate and identify ecocidal and genocidal processes. Different ontologies, socio-ecological relationships (linked to “the Other”), and radical anti-capitalism are the root targets of techno-capitalist progress, as they seek assimilation and absorption of human and nonhuman “natural resources” into extractive economies. Genocide studies and political ecology – Anthropology, Human Geography and Development Studies – would benefit from greater engagement with each other to highlight the centrality of extractive development in sustaining ecological and climate catastrophe confronting the world today.

This article proposes a political ecology of resistance. This is done by putting forward insurrectionary political ecology as a lens of research and struggle, through the confluence of the complementary "political" practice of insurrectionary anarchism and the "ecological" method of "no-till natural farming." While seemingly different, the article argues that these practices are compatible, animating a political ecology of resistance around anti-authoritarian political and ecological lifeways. This direction, or compass, of insurrectionary political ecology is discussed in relation to other autonomous tendencies, as it complements and strengthens existing critical schools of thought heavily influenced by political ecology, such as (decolonial) degrowth, environmental justice and post-development. Insurrectionary political ecology deepens connections with scholarly rebels in political and ecological struggles outside—and rejecting—the university system. The article includes discussions of research ethics, various conceptions of "activism", autonomous tendencies and existing differences between the concepts of "revolution" and "insurrection", in order to debate notions of "counter-hegemony" and "duel-power." The overall purpose here is to offer a theoretical ethos for a political ecology of resistance that invigorates political praxis to subvert the ongoing socio-ecological catastrophes.

The Tía Maria copper mine situated above the agricultural Tambo Valley, southwest Peru, has sparked nearly ten years of protracted conflict. This conflict began in 2009, yet Southern Copper Peru or Southern, a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, has faced ardent resistance. This article explores the ‘political reactions from above’, examining how Southern and the Peruvian government have negotiated the popular rejection of the mine. Residents have organized a popular consultation, large-scale demonstrations, road blockades and general strikes, which has been met with violent repression. Reviewing the political ecology of counterinsurgency, which studies the socio-ecological warfare techniques employed to control human and natural resources, and relating it to social war discourse, this section lays the theoretical foundations to discuss the coercion and ‘social war component’ present in natural resource extraction. This leads to an overview of the relationship between Peruvian security forces and extraction industries, followed by a brief chronology of the Tía Maria conflict. The subsequent two sections offer a political ecology analysis of various ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ counterinsurgency techniques employed by the Peruvian state and Southern in an attempt to pacify social unrest and socially engineer acceptance of the project. The concluding section discusses the ‘whole-of-government’ counterinsurgency approach employed, recognizing how the present institutional arrangements and business imperatives are designed to override popular socio-ecological concerns. Supporting social war discourse, the article contends that the state apparatus and politics itself serve as an instrument of social pacification and ecological exploitation regardless of widespread ecological and climatic concerns.

The multiplicity of violent techniques employed to impose land control and extraction remains under acknowledged. This article reviews research conducted between the years 2014 and 2018 and draws on three case studies: wind energy development in Mexico, coal mining in Germany, and copper mining in Peru. The idea of 'engineering extraction' is advanced through counterinsurgency to acknowledge the extent of extractive violence, arguing that the term ‘land grabbing’ is indeed a more appropriate term than ‘land deals’. Engaging with the land grabbing literature, the three cases seek to advance discussions around ‘the political reactions “from below”’ by emphasizing ‘insurrectionary’ positions with resistance movements fighting land deals and extractive projects. This is followed by offering a typology of ‘hard’ coercive techniques and ‘soft’ technologies of social pacification that surfaced in each case. The conclusion reflects on the social technologies of resource extraction, recognizing how social discord, ecological and climate crises are engineered and enforced.

This article identifies an emerging faultline in critical geography and political ecology scholarship by reviewing recent debates on three neoliberal environmental governance initiatives: Payments for Ecosystem Services, the United Nations programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and carbon-biodiversity offsetting. These three approaches, we argue, are characterized by varying degrees of contextual and procedural – or superficial – difference, meanwhile exhibiting significant structural similarities that invite critique, perhaps even rejection. Specifically, we identify three largely neglected ‘social engineering’ outcomes as more foundational to Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and carbon-biodiversity offsetting than often acknowledged, suggesting that neoliberal environmental governance approaches warrant greater critical attention for their contributions to advancing processes of colonization, state territorialization and security policy. Examining the structural accumulation strategies accompanying neoliberal environmental governance approaches, we offer the term ‘accumulation-by-alienation’ to highlight both the objective appropriations accompanying Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and offsetting and the relational deficiencies accompanying the various commodifying instrumentalizations at the heart of these initiatives. We concur with David Harvey’s recent work proposing that understanding the iterative and consequential connections between objective/material and subjective/psychological dimensions of alienation offers ‘one vital key to unlock the door of a progressive politics for the future’. We conclude (with others) by urging critical geography and political ecology scholars to cultivate research directions that affirm more radical alternatives, rather than reinforcing a narrowing focus on how to improve Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and offsetting in practice.

Wind parks are widely propagated as ‘a solution’ or in many ways as ‘a gift’ to mitigate climate change and instigate economic growth, which should be ‘rolled inside community gates’ through new legislation enabling investments. This paper dissects two experiences of wind energy development in Crete, Greece and Oaxaca, Mexico, exploring key commonalities and differences. It demonstrates that land/green grabbing, but more specifically ‘accumulation by wind energy’, is taking place in both regions. The specific processes and outcomes of ‘accumulation by wind energy’ differ according to the socio-political and ecological context of each case. There are, however, various similarities in logics, methods and strategies facilitating accumulation by wind energy that reveal defining features and similar outcomes. Wind energy development in Crete and Oaxaca is continuing the existing trajectory of energy extraction companies, resulting in an intensification of existing income-inequality, ecological degradation and social conflict, whilst spreading coercive cultural change. Based on these cases and critical (wind park) literature, we argue, that in actuality wind energy development represents a ‘Trojan horse’ for capitalism’s ongoing growth intensifying socio-ecological crisis through ‘accumulation by wind energy’. Wind parks serve as ‘Trojan horses’ for, amongst others, corporate land grabbing and temporarily mediating capitalism’s key contradictions.

Renewing Destruction examines how wind energy projects impact people and their environments. Wind energy development, in Mexico and most countries, fall into a ‘roll out’ neoliberal strategy that is justified by climate change mitigation programs that are continuing a process of land and wind resources grabbing for profit. The result has been an exaggeration of pre-existing problems in communities around land, income-inequality, local politics and, contrary to public relations stories, is devastating traditional livelihoods and socio-ecological relationships. Exacerbating pre-existing social and material problems in surrounding towns, wind energy development is placing greater stress on semi-subsistence communities, marginalizing Indigenous traditions and indirectly resulting in the displacement and migration of people into urban centers. Based on intensive fieldwork with local groups in Oaxaca Mexico in 2015, the book provides an in-depth study, demonstrating the complications and problems that emerge with the current regime of ‘sustainable development’ and wind energy projects in Mexico, which has wider lessons to be drawn for other regions and countries. Put simply, the book reveals a tragic reality that calls into question the marketed hopes of the green economy and the current method of climate change mitigation. It shows the variegated impacts and issues associated with building wind energy parks, which extends to recognizing the destructive effects on Indigenous cultures and practices in the region. The book, however, highlights what to consider or, more importantly, what to avoid if one is working with industrial-scale wind energy systems.