The nexus mineral resources – energy transition: a new resources frontier for Latin America?

Résumé En

The poster aims at presenting an investigation in progress. It will focus on the complexity of the energy transition, which, beyond its justification as a vital part of the response to global change, reveals enormous contrasts between the logics operating in raw materialextraction territories and territories transitioning towards new ways of producing energy. These contrasts raise the question of how this transition, enacted mostly in the Global North by moving from carbon-based energy production to a more sustainable system, impacts extractive regions, mostly in the Global South, where perceptions of the environment, resources and territorial organisation are underlain by other values. The project focuses on mountain territories because they represent an ideal of “Nature” that environmental protection and energy transition polices are intended to preserve, but they are also particularly vulnerable to the effects of global change. Hence, it is essential to confront this idealised view of mountains with the reality experienced by mountain regions where the minerals, metals and rare earths needed for new energy technologies are mined, with all that implies in terms of societal breakdown, the “denaturing” of indigenous landscapes and irreversible environmental damage. It will then focus on the raw materials needed for the energy transition, rather than just society’s ability to adapt by adjusting to technical solutions and by taking a fresh look at the resource-transition nexus with respect to the territorial trajectories of European versus Latin American mountain socioecosystems