Continuing their exploration of the complex relationship between extractive capitalism and climate change in the Pacific, Emilka Skrzypek and Nick Bainton convened a working session at the Association for Social Anthropologists of Oceania annual meeting in Kona, Hawai’I (1-4 February 2023). The session explored how the pressures of extractive capitalism experienced across the region shape the ways in which communities, governments, and other actors respond to and act on climate change – and how climate change necessitates or justifies new patterns of extraction. And how are people and communities in the Pacific experience and deal with this peculiar form of double exposure? During the session we heard from:
- Emilka Skrzypek & Nick Bainton: Double Exposure in the Pacific: Climate Change and the Energy-Extractives nexus
- Jamon Halvaksz: The Dry Season of Mining Labour
- Michael Main: Shifting the Sands: Using Climate Change to Leverage the Social License to Operate
- Tobias Schwörer: Energy Transitions in Papua New Guinea: The Intersections of Mining, Plantations and Local Inequalities in the Markham Valley Energyscape
- Foley C. Pfalzgraf : “Fixing” the Forest in Vanuatu: The (re)Making of Forests in search of Finance
- Vehia Wheeler : Capitalism from the Inside and Out: Climate Change and Industrialized Fishing in Mâ’ohi Nui
- Miriam Ladstein: Standing on the alofi: civil society guardianship of the local in multi-scalar spaces in Fiji
- Edvard Hviding: Adjacency, Connectivity, and Benefit-Sharing: Frontlines of Oceania in United Nations Ocean Diplomacy
We also benefited from insightful comments and questions from numerous members of the audience, which greatly enriched the conversation on the day.
You can find full session detail here: Program – Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (asao.org)