Decolonizing energy justice: Identity politics, attachment to land, and warfare

Commentary Article Decolonizing energy justice: Identity politics, attachment to land, and warfare Progress in Human Geography 2023, Vol. 0(0) 1–3 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/03091325221149553 journals.sagepub.com/home/phg Dunlap Alexander University of Oslo, Norway Carlos Tornel’s (2022) recent review article, “Decolonizing energy justice from the ground up,” finally holds energy justice accountable. Energy justice, by emphasizing energy, creates its own niche and avoids the criticisms and self-reflections made on environmental justice. Critical (Pellow, 2016), decolonial (Álvarez and Coolsaet, 2020; Rodriguez, 2020; Temper, 2019), and anarchist (Dunlap, 2023) critiques of environmental justice thereby reinforce Tornel’s (2022) concerns. Liberal academia— prioritizing modernist lifestyles and ignoring recalcitrant political tensions in environmental conflicts (Dunlap, 2021a)—along with the Sustainable Development Goals (Menton et al., 2020), among them Goal 7 that aims to “[e]nsure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all,” makes Tornel’s (2022) article highly valuable in energy, geography, and political ecology research. The article reviews the important features of energy justice, such as a greater focus on “whole energy systems” and injustices within “different lifecycle stages and spatial scales” (pp. 4–5). Tornel (2022: 3–5), then, shows that even with great selfreflection by energy justice scholars (e.g., Sovacool, Jenkins, Newell, and Heffron) that “[w]ithout decolonial critique, energy justice tends to reproduce rather than transform hegemonic power relations.” In approximately five points, Tornel (2022: 2–6) shows how “[a]cademic formulations of energy justice (EJ) often rely on Western and universalistic notions of justice” (p. 2), which tends towards reproducing “a Western system of thought.” Energy justice, secondly, fails to account for other ontologies and epistemologies when understanding the function and harm of energy development, which—thirdly— stands on ontological assumptions that reinforce specific knowledge hierarchies. Energy justice, as it stands, implicitly engages in “epistemic discrimination” (Dunlap, 2022b: 342–3). Fourthly, EJ remains a statist and policy-centric, assuming “that energy justice can be delivered through state energy policy, often underplaying the underlying conditions in which energy policy operates” (p. 6). Energy Justice, Tornel (2022: 2) reminds us, ignores “how energy systems are based on principles of colonial occupation” (p. 2). Finally, drawing on the work of Daggett (2019) and Lohmann (2021), energy justice ignores the ideological subjectivities and reductive simplifications of thermodynamics. Overall, Tornel (2022: 6) makes the cogent point that “concepts like recognition, distribution, participation, cosmopolitanism, and restorative justice often affirm, rather than transform, the underlying conditions of social and environmental injustice embedded in the energy system.” These are urgently important criticisms, not only for holding the operations of energy justice accountable but also for working towards total liberation and post-development practices (Kothari et al., 2019). The strict emphasis on “indigenous peoples,” for example, “the clash of Western and indigenous cosmo-visions” (p. 5) or “that modernity has eroded the vital conditions for indigenous people’s wellbeing” (p. 8), while completely correct also limits how modernity erodes the vital conditions of the planet, all ecosystems and peoples, even if the 2 intensities of erosion are uneven and varies among peoples. Capitalism, industrial development, and genocidal–ecocidal trajectories concern everyone to various degrees of urgency, but especially all the fighters taking a position of permanent conflict against extractive development (Dunlap, 2021b). Cultural studies, or academic decolonial theory (Dunlap, 2022a), as opposed to anti-colonial struggle on the ground, tend to portray a simplistic dichotomy of Indigenous people good versus non-Indigenous people bad, viewing the former as exterior of colonialism/ statism/capitalism (Wilson, 2022). This influence from academic decolonial theory generates two problematic effects on Tornel’s (2022) article: essentializing identity and reducing the complexity of conflict. Identity politics fail when recognizing Indigenous (and nonIndigenous) peoples who embrace capitalism, various authoritarian politics (fascism, Leninism, Stalinism, etc.), and/or monotheistic religions (Catholicism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) whose tendencies are typically imperialistic and do not embrace pluriversality. The inverse, however, is true as well. Many non-Indigenous peoples are at war with this capitalist world eating machine (Dunlap, 2021b, 2022a). Said simply, politics, political intention, and affinity matter in environmental struggles. Essentializing indigenous identity and reducing the complexity of political struggles (e.g., political “isms” and actors) have been challenged within academic decolonial theory (Asher, 2013; Cusicanqui, 2012; Dunlap, 2022a; Wilson, 2022). Academic decolonial simplifications, furthermore, obstruct how attachment to land also invites colonial and company collaboration. “[T]he struggle for and on territory and land,” as Walsh (2018: 35) explains via Tornel (2022: 16), “as the base and place of identity, knowledge, being, spirituality, cosmo-vision-existence, and life, have long organized the collective insurgent praxis of ancestral peoples, identified as Indigenous, Afro-descendant, or Black, and sometimes as peasants or campesino.” While this certainly remains true, what happens to these territories when they are subject to invasion and a multi-prong “all-of-government” counterinsurgency strategies to domesticate, pacify, and access the natural resources of a territory? Struggle, if not war, remains the outcome, which is a colonial- Progress in Human Geography 0(0) statist war that arguably spans over 500 years. People, however, do not always relate to state or company media campaigns, social development, new revenue streams, and infrastructural improvements as “war” (Verweijen and Dunlap, 2021). In fact, many in Indigenous communities—however “community” is constructed—also embrace the federal funds, corporate offers, and proposals for environmental and energy justice negotiated by NGOs, Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) procedures, and courts. Autonomous and anarchist tendencies of total rejection and self-determination, in essence, are eroded by warfare strategies— wearing communities down with “social development” and police, military, and extra-judicial efforts—among them the arrival of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines—that can last decades. Politics—and land relationships—do matter, not only in assessing struggle but also in how postdevelopmental strategies are co-constructed to counter state and extractive development. Attachment to territory, in practice, can also encourage people to “sellout” and collaborate with extractive companies and/or the state, embracing a reformist environmental or corporate-led energy justice proposals. Meanwhile, capitalist development and ecosystemic degradation continue. The threat, or a continuation, of low-intensity warfare—in all of its diversity—has a way of making energy justice acceptable. Politics, attachment to land, and political coercion remain important aspects to further unpack in matters of decolonizing energy justice. References Álvarez L and Coolsaet B (2020) Decolonizing environmental justice studies: a Latin American perspective. Capitalism Nature Socialism 31(2): 50–69. Asher K (2013) Latin American decolonial thought, or making the subaltern speak. Geography Compass 7(12): 832–842. Cusicanqui SR (2012) Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: a reflection on the practices and discourses of decolonization. South Atlantic Quarterly 111(1): 95–109. Daggett CN (2019) The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work. Durham: Duke University Press. Alexander Dunlap A (2021a) More wind energy colonialism (s) in Oaxaca? Reasonable findings, unacceptable development. Energy Research & Social Science 82: 1–9. Dunlap A (2021b) The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure. Journal of Genocide Research 23: 212–235. Dunlap A (2022a) ‘I don’t want your progress! It tries to kill me!’ Decolonial encounters and the anarchist critique of civilization. Globalizations: 1–27. Dunlap A (2022b) Conclusion: a call to action, towards an insurrection in energy research. In: Nadesan MH, Pasqualetti MJ and Keahey J (eds) Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures. Amsterdam Academic Press, pp. 339–348. Dunlap A (2023) The Structures of Conquest: Debating Extractivism(s), Infrastructures and Environmental Justice for Advancing Post-Development Pathways. International Development Policy. Kothari A, Salleh A, Escobar A, et al. (2019) Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Delhi: University of Colombia Press. Lohmann L (2021) Bioenergy, thermodynamics and inequalities. In: Backhouse M, Lehmann R, Lorenzen K, et al. (eds) Bioeconomy and Global Inequalities. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85–103. Menton M, Larrea C, Latorre S, et al. (2020) Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps 3 and contradictions. Sustainability Science 15(6): 1621–1636. Pellow DN (2016) Toward a critical environmental justice studies: Black lives matter as an environmental justice challenge. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 13(2): 221–236. Rodriguez I (2020) Latin American decolonial environmental justice. In: Coolsaet B (ed) Environmental Justice. London: Routledge, pp. 78–93. Temper L (2019) Blocking pipelines, unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory. Local Environment 24(2): 94–112. Tornel C (2022) Decolonizing energy justice from the ground up: political ecology, ontology, and energy landscapes. Progress in Human Geography 47(1): 43–65. Verweijen J and Dunlap A (2021) The evolving techniques of social engineering, land control and managing protest against extractivism: introducing political (re) actions ‘from above. Political Geography 83(1): e1–e9. Walsh C (2018) Decoloniality in/as praxis. In: Mignolo WD and Walsh C (eds) On Decoloniality Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 15–104. Wilson J (2022) The insurgent universal: between Eurocentric Universalism and the Pluriverse. Nordia Geographical Publications 51(2): 153–162. Response Article Energy justice beyond identity: Planting anarchist seeds towards total liberation Progress in Human Geography 2023, Vol. 0(0) 1–2 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/03091325221149568 journals.sagepub.com/home/phg Carlos Tornel I would like to express my gratitude to Alexander Dunlap from his commentary to the article that I published recently in this journal. His comments and critique are not only necessary but continue to open up a series of issues and concerns with energy justice as well as with decolonial scholarship. Dunlap and I agree that energy justice needs a radical overhaul. “Energy” and “justice” continue to celebrate uncritically Westernized conceptions of energy and justice. These conceptions reinforce a particular epistemology, relationship, and conception of development, effectively constituting epistemic discrimination (Dunlap, 2022), and—worse of all— smother the socio-ecological or biocentric postdevelopment alternatives desperately amongst ecological and climate catastrophe. We also agree that the problem lies, not only within the academic production of knowledge that informs energy justice, but in its largely uncritical stance towards coloniality/modernity and capitalism. Applying energy justice in this context can end-up reaffirming other forms of injustice by piling one upon another or pretending that these harms can be somehow separated. Through the epistemology of development, the liberal tenets of energy, environmental, and climate justice (recognition, participation, and distribution, plus restorative and cosmopolitan) not only fail to account for other forms of being, knowing, and living—they often continue to impose a Westernized and universalized vision of progress, promoting enclosures, expulsions, and counter-insurgency tactics, dispersing and disciplining struggles for autonomy, sovereignty, and democracy (Dunlap, 2018). The coloniality of justice is often expressed in violent terms, revealing epistemological and ontological injustices, while also promoting the centrality of the State, which continues to be at the core of Capitalist Modernity. This brings energy and other forms of liberal justice as well as some thinkers of the modernity/ coloniality-decoloniality (MCD) project into a problematic relationship with the State. As Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (2020: 7) reminds us, “liberal policies articulated around identity have built a rigid and sophisticated legal and procedural scaffolding both to distract and capture collective forces by directing them towards the negotiation of recognition, to reinstall renewed forms of dispossession and guardianship combined with the endless bargaining of unfulfilled rights” (my translation). Dunlap (2018) has shown how such practices and policies (i.e., Free Prior Informed Consultations, Environmental and/or Social Impact Assessments)—the tools for energy justice—can have a counterinsurrectionary impact in favor of state control and transnational capital accumulation. Dunlap rightly points out that the portrait of indigenous and non-indigenous people as good versus bad not only presents a simplistic dichotomy but views the former as exterior to the state/capitalism/ modernity. The result is thus an essentialization of identity, reducing the complexity of the conflict. Thinking beyond this simplified view and the ontoepistemic forms of injustice that can apply to indigenous peoples and their cosmo-visions, reveals that the political horizon of transformation goes beyond the identity of those that revolt and/or resist. As the Zapatistas (EZLN, 2015) continue to remind us, capitalism’s world war is everywhere, in all 2 forms, all the time. Thus, the struggle against capitalist modernity and extractivism cannot and should not rely only on Indigenous cosmo-visions. While there are undeniable ontological incommensurabilities between some indigenous and non-indigenous groups in their struggles against capitalism, I agree with Dunlap that we should not rely only on these stereotypical portrayals to build a counter-hegemonic movement to resist the advances of capitalist expansion. Thinkers like Gustavo Esteva (2022) and Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (2020) reveal that the struggles for and from the commons can reveal other political horizons that are not centered in state-centric transformations, and which are constructed beyond identity. Esteva’s work with urban marginals and peasant communities in Mexico shows how the struggles and revolts against development and capitalism are rooted in everyday forms of insurrections beyond identity or group. This insurrection is ongoing and is taking place through everyday practices such as the replacement of nouns like “education,” “health,” or “housing” for verbs: “learn,” “heal,” or “inhabit” (2022: 200), with similar small-scale initiatives carried out against the backdrop of an aggressive system. Similarly, Gutiérrez Aguilar (2020) argues that the communal struggle is not necessarily indigenous, and the indigenous is not necessarily communal. Instead, the struggles for the commons are rooted in interdependence by harvesting, revitalizing, regenerating, and reconstructing the material and symbolic conditions which guarantee collective life and self-determination. These communitarian-popular horizons are diverse and not hereditary, emanating regardless of identity, based instead on recovering and maintaining multiple caring practices invisibilized by capitalism. Bringing energy justice to this task then begs the questions: Is energy justice the right answer to face capitalist modernity’s war for endless nonhuman extraction and human exploitation? How will energy justice aid itself to a post-development agenda? In his own writings, Dunlap (2021, 2022: 12) has shown that (eco)anarchism’s push toward total liberation and decolonization Progress in Human Geography 0(0) recenters some of the problematic formulations of energy justice and decolonial theory—specifically structured around the MCD project and their flirtation with the “project of state decolonizing and refounding.” As the climate and civilization crisis continues, the energy transition must then move away from Techno-optimist and Westernized notions of development. If struggles on the ground get energy justice in its current formulation, we scholars have already failed to actually support the autonomous movements seeking that communitarian-popular horizon. Energy justice should be the worst-case scenario compared to the post-development alternative stifled and unrealized by conservative and liberal modernist forces. Dunlap’s articles and his critique inspired by my article open up the needed discussion that must hold energy scholarship accountable to its commitment towards emancipation, liberation, and justice. Energy justice scholarship must commit to these principles, doing away with the epistemology of development and promoting a form of justice based on a plural and relation praxis of mutual aid, voluntary association, and direct action. References Dunlap A (2018) “A bureaucratic trap:” free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and wind energy development in Juchitán, Mexico. Climate, Nature, Socialism 29(4): 88–108. Dunlap A (2021) Toward an Anarchist Decolonization: A Few Notes. Capitalism Nature Socialism 32(4): 62–72. Dunlap A (2022) I don’t want your progress! It tries to kill … me!’ Decolonial encounters and the anarchist critique of civilization. Globalizations: 1–27. Esteva G (2022) Gustavo Esteva: A Critique of Development and Other Essays. New York and London: Routledge. EZLN (2015) El Pensamiento Crı́tico Frente a la Hidra Capitalista 1. Participación de la Sexta Comisión de EZLN. Gutiérrez Aguilar R (2020) Producir lo común. Entramados comunitarios y formas de lo polı́tico. Revisiones 10: 1–17.