This public talk by Gyekye Tanoh will engage with the multiple existential questions within the Political Economy of the Climate Crisis – fuelling extractivism and undermining just transition. Primarily, the talk will address the contestations around the understanding of energy security and climate change/crisis, and how this leads to varying conceptions of “Just Transition”. This discussion cannot be decoupled from new regimes of exploitation of people and the planet emerging in the twilight zone of such unresolved contradictions. Central to this talk is the concept of extractivism – the enabling of the exploitation of natural resources through neoliberalism and through the re-emergence of global super power rivalry, along with the accentuation of resource imperialism. Yet these highly unjust transitions can also incubate resistance and new self-empowering collective agency from below.

The discussion will be informed by inter-disciplinary approaches, drawing on Geopolitical Economy, Ecology/Sustainability, Labour, and Social Movement Studies, among others. It aims to strengthen interconnections between activists and academics and to contribute to outlooks and strategies that enhance struggles for true and encompassing Just Transition.