This event is hosted by the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences
The green transition is widely championed, but its success depends upon the sustainable access to critical minerals. Critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements are essential components in many clean energy technologies, such as solar cells and batteries for electric vehicles.
Widely regarded as “global frontrunners in low-carbon development” the Nordic countries are well endowed with critical minerals, and investigations on the best ways to extract them are underway.
However large-scale mining inevitably generates considerable controversy. Concerns about environmental damage, disputed land use, disruption of established ways of life and indigenous rights have long existed around mining. Such intractable controversy has implications for a democracy, especially when it relates to the green transition that is expected to demand widespread public support and active involvement of citizens.
This roundtable focuses on the question of the impact of controversies around critical mineral extraction for democracy. For while controversies might be seen as obstacles that have to be suppressed or bypassed in the green transition, controversies can also be seen as ‘critical moments’ or ‘generative events’ that have the potential to repoliticise environmental issues to bring people together around concrete concerns and reconfigure the building blocks of democratic engagement. From this perspective, political controversies can be approached as an inevitable feature of open societies, and as demonstrative of a healthy agonistic democracy in an environmental political arena comprised of active citizens, responsive institutions and social movements.
The roundtable will bring together scholars with expert knowledge of the politics and controversies of extraction to discuss some important and pertinent questions.
Everyone welcome to join!
Speakers:
- Simon Haikola (Linköping University)
- Daniel Fjellborg (Luleå University of Technology)
- Kristina Sehlin MacNeil (Umeå University)
- Rikard Hjorth Warlenius (Södertörns University)
- Jan Bachmann (Gothenburg University)
- Gørild Merethe Heggelund (Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo)
- Jon Birger Skjærseth (Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo)
- Mikaela Vasstrøm (Department of Global Development and Planning, UiA)
- Amanda Machin (Department of Sociology and Social Work, UiA)