Convened by Hiroyuki Tsuji and Kei Otsuki, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, and Joshua Kirshner, Department of Environment and Geography, University of York

Responses to climate change are currently restructuring the global energy sector. While growing attention has been paid to the impacts of extracting green minerals, relatively less is discussed on the persistence of the fossil fuel sector, especially in the Global South. Decarbonisation is not a linear process. While some countries are closely aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement, withdrawing investment from fossil fuels, others are less aligned, showing ambiguity. Many of the extractive regions in the Global South lack alternatives, and hydrocarbon production still plays a vital role in supporting (at least) short-term economic growth, infrastructure development, and job creation. The interplay between global sustainable goals and regional development generates tensions on the ground. 

However, we still know little about how the global decarbonisation agenda has shaped different investment patterns and experiences of various actors, including mining companies, national and local governments, civil society, local communities, and workers, especially in oil, gas and coal producing regions in direct and indirect forms. As sustainability entails socio-economic, cultural and political values in addition to ecological aspects, social actors envision their sustainable futures differently, with or without fossil fuels. These uneven local dynamics in relation to the global sustainability agenda need to be documented and closely analysed. 

This panel aims to explore the lived experiences of diverse actors in active fossil fuel producing regions and to ask how divergent imaginaries regarding sustainable futures are manifested and contested, thereby forging both current and future development pathways in these regions. We welcome contributions that generate discussions on the implications of the global decarbonisation agenda across fossil fuel producing regions in the Global South. More specifically, we invite papers that provide empirical case studies focusing on the lived experiences of a diverse range of social actors from fossil fuel producing regions.