ENERGY TRANSITIONS AND COLONIALISM
What does history tell us about energy transitions?
The simple and undoubted premise: free lands where the natives lived fishing, hunting and cultivating to meet their needs were enslaved and their lands colonized to produce wealth for foreign countries.
What do energy transitions tell us about the history of colonialism?
They are the intertwined histories of colonies that were forced to transform their resources into energy for the production of wealth for the colonizers.
Social aspects are often left out of discussions of energy transitions, which are often dominated by economic, engineering, or scientific narratives.
energy colonialism. The concept of energy colonialism became a prominent issue when Power Shift Africa director and celebrity activist Mohamed Adow accused European nations of practicing energy colonialism.
Energy colonialism is defined as a situation in which foreign countries and companies use land and resources belonging to another country to generate energy for their own benefits and profits.
In the 21st century, a transition is needed in which the energy sources used massively in the last two centuries will no longer be available. At the same time, this crisis exacerbates socio-environmental and economic conflicts.
In this sense, there is an open debate on renewable energies due to the problems and environmental impacts generated by fossil fuels in the environment.
In times of crisis like these, if we are serious about going beyond fossil fuels, it is crucial to take a close look at the links between fossil fuels and the economy, and address power relations and hierarchies in the energy system. These relationships have their roots in colonial legacies, as well as in practices of dispossession and looting.
When we talk about energy in the popular imagination, we talk about resources. The modality of control and looting of these resources is called extractivism, perhaps because it initially arose from extracting gold and other metals as well as precious stones of great value for the European market.
It was launched in 1492 with the conquest of the Americas and is structured through colonialism, slavery, exploitation and sheer violence. It continues today with the development of energy colonism.
Let's call things by their name: it is the energetic version of colonialism. And the problem is that the rich once again tell us to stay poor, and we must once again submit to their greed schemes.
This situation has been imposed and shaped by colonialism and attempts to break it have thus far been defeated by new tools of subjugation: crippling debts, the religion of "free market/trade", structural adjustment programs (such as the Fiscal Control Board ), among others.
These tools of domination not only lock countries into an economic model with external objectives, responding to the demands of rich countries and foreign corporations, but also limit the political space to make sovereign decisions, such as moving away from fossil fuels and develop an equitable energy system.
France did it with Total in Algeria: Displacing the costs of a destructive industry is a strategy of capital in which environmental racism joins energy colonialism, inserting a people into a subordinate position with a profoundly unfair division of labor: on the one hand, providers of a reservoir of cheap labor, and on the other as a captive market.
A green and just transition must fundamentally transform and decolonize our economic system from what is unfit for the purpose of environmental justice on a social, ecological, and even biological level.
We need to break with the colonialist and racialized (as well as gender) logic of energy systems that, if not questioned, only generate a new extractivism and exploitation (of nature and work).
Any and all conversations about the green transition and sustainability must break through the rhetorical facade of colonial schemes of plunder and domination.
What does history tell us about energy transitions?
The simple and undoubted premise: free lands where the natives lived fishing, hunting and cultivating to meet their needs were enslaved and their lands colonized to produce wealth for foreign countries.
What do energy transitions tell us about the history of colonialism?
They are the intertwined histories of colonies that were forced to transform their resources into energy for the production of wealth for the colonizers.
Social aspects are often left out of discussions of energy transitions, which are often dominated by economic, engineering, or scientific narratives.
energy colonialism. The concept of energy colonialism became a prominent issue when Power Shift Africa director and celebrity activist Mohamed Adow accused European nations of practicing energy colonialism.
Energy colonialism is defined as a situation in which foreign countries and companies use land and resources belonging to another country to generate energy for their own benefits and profits.
In the 21st century, a transition is needed in which the energy sources used massively in the last two centuries will no longer be available. At the same time, this crisis exacerbates socio-environmental and economic conflicts.
In this sense, there is an open debate on renewable energies due to the problems and environmental impacts generated by fossil fuels in the environment.
In times of crisis like these, if we are serious about going beyond fossil fuels, it is crucial to take a close look at the links between fossil fuels and the economy, and address power relations and hierarchies in the energy system. These relationships have their roots in colonial legacies, as well as in practices of dispossession and looting.
When we talk about energy in the popular imagination, we talk about resources. The modality of control and looting of these resources is called extractivism, perhaps because it initially arose from extracting gold and other metals as well as precious stones of great value for the European market.
It was launched in 1492 with the conquest of the Americas and is structured through colonialism, slavery, exploitation and sheer violence. It continues today with the development of energy colonism.
Let's call things by their name: it is the energetic version of colonialism. And the problem is that the rich once again tell us to stay poor, and we must once again submit to their greed schemes.
This situation has been imposed and shaped by colonialism and attempts to break it have thus far been defeated by new tools of subjugation: crippling debts, the religion of "free market/trade", structural adjustment programs (such as the Fiscal Control Board ), among others.
These tools of domination not only lock countries into an economic model with external objectives, responding to the demands of rich countries and foreign corporations, but also limit the political space to make sovereign decisions, such as moving away from fossil fuels and develop an equitable energy system.
France did it with Total in Algeria: Displacing the costs of a destructive industry is a strategy of capital in which environmental racism joins energy colonialism, inserting a people into a subordinate position with a profoundly unfair division of labor: on the one hand, providers of a reservoir of cheap labor, and on the other as a captive market.
A green and just transition must fundamentally transform and decolonize our economic system from what is unfit for the purpose of environmental justice on a social, ecological, and even biological level.
We need to break with the colonialist and racialized (as well as gender) logic of energy systems that, if not questioned, only generate a new extractivism and exploitation (of nature and work).
Any and all conversations about the green transition and sustainability must break through the rhetorical facade of colonial schemes of plunder and domination.
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