• Date: 19th June 2025
• Time: 2PM GMT Time converter

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The GTA's Thematic Energy and Alternatives group is organizing a series of webinars addressing some of the socio-ecological implications of the so-called “energy transition.” As the climate emergency has sparked a push to transition the global energy system away from fossil fuels and towards so-called renewable energy sources and electrified alternative forms of transport, manufacturing, etc. This has fueled a rush towards mining of critical minerals needed for ‘renewable’ energy – much of it targeting ecosystems and human communities in the Global South, Indigenous lands, or other marginalized areas. The polycrisis — including the worsening of the climate crisis, the depletion of ‘cheap’ fossil fuels, geopolitical conflicts, and the reordering of global trade — threatens to accelerate what some are calling “green colonialism.”

The previous sessions focused on emerging sacrifice zones and the Geopolitics of Green Colonialism and Decolonising the Energy Transition in the Polycrisis. This session will turn to the so-called cold regions, including areas of the Arctic and Ladakh in India, to explore how the energy transition is reshaping these territories into new sacrifice zones, and to discuss the challenges and struggles emerging in response.

Neelakshi Joshi is an urban planner and architect interested in the social and spatial dimension of sustainability transformations. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development in Germany. Her research focuses on energy transitions and their socio-ecological impacts in India, Canada and Germany. Her talk will focus on the growing interest in developing renewable energy projects in the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, India and the need for constitutional autonomy in the region.

Tero Mustonen: Since April 2018, Tero Mustonen has led the restoration of 62 severely degraded former industrial peat mining and forestry sites throughout Finland—totaling 86,000 acres—and transformed them into productive, biodiverse wetlands and habitats. Rich in organic matter, peatlands are highly effective carbon sinks; according to the IUCN, peatlands are the largest natural carbon stores on Earth. Roughly one-third of Finland’s surface area is made up of peatlands.

Ksenija Hanaček: Researcher, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is the director of the Master Program in Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, and Degrowth at ICTA-UAB. She is an active collaborator of the EJAtlas project and member of the Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology. Her research focuses on the Arctic region, human-nature relationships, climate coloniality, the Belt and Road Initiative expansion to the Arctic (“Polar Silk Road”), nuclear supply chain and environmental justice struggles in post-Soviet spaces, and coal extraction conflicts in southwestern Siberia.

The session will be moderated by Carlos Tornel. Carlos is a researcher and activist. His work focuses on the pluriversal possibilities emerging from other energy relationalities and the struggles against the so-called “energy transition” and the expansion of extractivism/green capitalism.