Next week the European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference will take place in Poznań between 21th and 24th of July. We are excited to present ongoing research and open up the conversation about how the emergence of conservation frontiers is changing the meanings of justice in Europe’s mountain areas.
Meet us on the first day of the conference, Tuesday 21st from 16:15 – 18:00 during the panel titled “Emerging green frontiers: European uplands between green extractivism and non-extractive conservation.” convened by Marco and George.
European Union’s recent push for green transition revealed enduring tensions between green extractivism and nature conservation within the continent’s marginalized areas. While the two policies appear as polar opposites, they are both green capitalism’s attempts to solve the joint climate-biodiversity crisis without addressing its root causes. European mountain areas in particular, become sites of political contestation caught between mining for critical minerals or hydropower projects and climate-smart rewilding, ecological restoration, and the expansion of private wilderness conservation projects. While these visions are promoted as urgent fixes, they are also framed as solutions to land abandonment, the emptying of the countryside, and the erosion of rural livelihoods. Within this polarisation, alternative forms of land stewardship, such as commons, territories of life, and other convivial practices continue to struggle for recognition, advancing alternative ways to inhabit the highlands. This panel focuses on these multiple, polarizing forces and aims to advance anthropological inquiries into the social and environmental justice dimensions of incorporating the uplands into the EU’s green growth vision.
We included four contributions in this session, each unpacking different dimensions of justice emerging from the conservation – green extractivism nexus:
•Ana Belén López Tárraga, University of Salamanca – Cross-border community energy in Europe’s green frontiers: Efiduero energy and mountain-commons across Spain and Portugal.
•Ragnhild Freng Dale, Western Norway Research Institute – On letting mountains live: Land use justice and green transition frontiers.
•Marco Immovilli, Wageningen University – Between care and growth: Conservation frontiers as political battlefields over life in the Italian Alps.
•George Iordachescu, Wageningen University – Conservation justice and the emergence of the Southern Carpathians as a green internal periphery
The panel will be followed by a roundtable discussion, open to everyone in attendance.
The whole EASA programme can be checked here.