Recarbonizing landscape? Assessing the cumulative effects of net-zero decarbonization in the Saaghii Naachii/Peace River region, Canada

Keywords: Energy, decarbonization, landscape, relationality, materiality
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 47

Abstract

Decarbonization is a space-making process, embedded in landscapes where the biophysical, socionatural, and material dimensions of energy intersect. However, contemporary discourses of net-zero decarbonization routinely overlook the landscape transformations required to offset carbon emissions. This creates a conceptual pitfall: the potential to misread and depoliticize strategies of putative decarbonization which may not, in fact, be carbon neutral, particularly when the cumulative effects of broader landscape transformations are considered. Our analysis queries net-zero decarbonization strategies that arise alongside—and as a result of—simultaneous investments in fossil fuel production; a process we term recarbonization. We posit recarbonization as a variegated socio-spatial phenomenon that materializes through the site-specific interplay between capitalist social relations and biophysical processes. In making this claim, we seek to bridge political economy with concepts of materiality and relationality which, we suggest, enable deeper theoretical engagement with multifaceted landscape transformations entailed by processes of energy transition. Drawing on a case study of the Saaghii Naachii/Peace River in the western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, the paper illustrates the empirical impact of this theoretical framework by illustrating how a focus on landscape can problematize net-zero decarbonization agendas which, in some cases, obscure cumulative environmental impacts and ongoing forms colonial violence.