Convened by Tereza Němečková and Ricardo Reboredo, African Studies Centre at Metropolitan University Prague, Czechia, and Patience Mususa, The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden 

The race to address climate change has triggered an unprecedented demand for critical minerals—lithium, cobalt, copper, and rare earths—essential for green technologies such as electric vehicles, solar panels, and battery storage. While this transition is widely portrayed as sustainable and future-oriented, it has fueled a new wave of resource extraction across the Global South, often accompanied by environmental harm, social injustice, and widening inequalities. These tensions challenge the dominant narrative of “green growth” and expose the uneven geographies of the green transition. 

This panel brings together scholars examining how global decarbonisation ambitions intersect with the everyday realities of mineral-rich regions. Drawing from diverse contexts and disciplines, we explore how communities experience, contest, and adapt to the pressures of the green transition—and how local and national governments navigate the power of resource-rich multinational corporations. Moving beyond portrayals of passive victimhood, the panel foregrounds local knowledge systems, grassroots resistance, and governance innovations that point toward alternative, more equitable futures. 

By connecting grounded, empirical insights to global governance frameworks, the panel contributes to debates on what a just and sustainable green transition must entail—locally and globally. We invite contributions that address questions such as:

• What are the social, environmental, and political consequences of intensified critical mineral extraction in specific locales?

• How do affected communities, civil society actors, and local governments respond to or resist these dynamics?

• What forms of local governance, participation, or alternative development visions are emerging in these contexts?

• How can global frameworks (e.g. the EU Green Deal/Global Gateway) better integrate and support genuinely local solutions?