21.08.2023 - Just published: A Critical Perspective on the Complex Nexus of Climate Change and Energy Transition
A thought-provoking analysis titled "The Discursive Blinkers of Climate Change: Energy Transition as a Wicked Problem" was published by Nadia Catalina Combariza Diaz, a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU), Justus Liebig University Giessen. This insightful viewpoint has been featured in The Extractive Industries and Society Journal, shedding light on the intricate interplay between energy transition and climate change.
Highlights:
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The exploration of the relevance of the 'wicked problems' concept in framing the just energy transition and navigating the complexity of climate change within prevailing problem-solution frameworks.
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Identification of interconnected discursive limitations between climate change and the energy transition.
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Examination of the ontological blinkers stemming from the imperial mode of living, intertwined with Euromodernity and often presented as objective science.
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Analysis of the partitioning of climate action into mitigation and adaptation measures as another manifestation of these blinkers.
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Emphasis on the need for holistic and decolonial methodologies to challenge established power dynamics and normativity.
Abstract:
The energy transition, propagated as the flagship solution to climate change, is far more complex than replacing fossil energy with renewable energy. It is ambiguous, uncertain and often poorly understood or narrowly framed. In this sense, the energy transition resembles a ‘wicked problem’. The sensitizing concept of wicked problems sheds light on the discursive power in dominant problem-solution-framings calling into question the current international discourse on climate change and the ‘just transition’. Challenges of extractivist countries are ignored when the pathways to a low-carbon future are debated in international arenas. This reinforces a myriad of problems - besides climate change or the energy transition - such as crisis-deepening patterns of consumption and production, the notorious externalization of socio-environmental harms, and the seemingly unstoppable extractivist frontier. Under this problem-solution framing the elephant in the room, the so-called ‘imperial mode of living’, runs in danger of persisting in the new ‘green’ and low-carbon economy dooming a ‘just transition’ to fail.
The paper is available for reading here.
Reference: Schwab, J., & Diaz, N. C. C. (2023). The discursive blinkers of climate change: Energy transition as a wicked problem. The Extractive Industries and Society, 15, 101319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2023.101319