Compensation instruments and the socio-environmental impacts of the energy transition in contemporary times
Pointed out by the mainstream as one of the leading solutions to the global environmental crisis, one of the mainstays of the energy transition is the electrification of transport. Therefore, the guarantee of strategic mineral resources is essential for this process. Among them, lithium has been progressively gaining prominence in national and international media and the speeches of various government actors and representatives of the global economic market. However, in the exploration sites of this mineral, the populations that inhabit there, among them indigenous peoples, notice a transition process that goes against the one positively supported by the actors mentioned above, presenting environmental injustice as one of its foundations. Marked by an unequal distribution of the socio-environmental impacts arising from the lithium exploration process and by the non-recognition of the different ways of life that the populations have in the places where these activities occur, this negative transition model has been establishing itself in distinct parts of the world.
Locating the context above in a contemporary world in which the global environmental collapse represents a symptom of the crisis of modern rationality, how to reflect on possible models of compensation instruments that deal with the risks, threats, and social and environmental impacts related to the exploitation of natural resources that deepen our marks on a Planet Earth that is already in a geological era called Anthropocene?
Designing possible compensatory instruments in the contemporary world is an invitation to reflection. To this end, this text proposes three points that can contribute to a new look at environmental management instruments: the first of them refers to the adoption of an understanding that flees from dichotomous perspectives on society and nature, as observed, for example, in compensations that present the monetary route as the only way to deal with socio-environmental impacts. It implies, therefore, the recognition that compensations in strictly economic terms, structured based on modern rationality, can no longer fully encompass such a current situation.
In this context, proposals such as the notion of hybrids by author Bruno Latour in the book We have never been modern represent new perspectives for understanding the scenario of places that present exploratory activities and the role of a compensation instrument in this context. Based on this understanding, the places where natural resources are found are no longer considered “empty,” and the relationships between humans and the existing natural environment are no longer ignored. Distinctly, natural resources and the exploitation around them would arise from the interconnections between humans and non-humans.
A second point refers to the actors involved in exploiting natural resources. As observed about lithium, this is not a relationship restricted to the government, the company, and the population of the place but a combination of actors on different scales, characterized by presenting a spatiality that is not only local but involves a series of members both local and global. In this context, the interests are diverse — economic and cultural, among others –forming a web of actors that permeate the place where the exploration is taking place.
It seems important, therefore, to understand the constitution of this network of actors existing around exploration, guaranteeing, mainly for minority groups, access to decision-making spaces regarding the occurrence of exploratory activity, at first and later, if it is decided, on the appropriate arrangement of a compensation instrument. Therefore, the importance of avoiding compensations that encompass specific interests to the detriment of the lives of other populations is indicated. This would ensure the discussion of an environmental management model that allows for divergence and makes room for the expression of the different ways of being of the actors when considering the principles of sustainability, self-management, democracy, equity, participation, and autonomy.
The third and final point refers to the importance of considering the scale of environmental impacts in the contemporary world when designing a compensation model. Connected with the diversity of actors highlighted above, the damage caused by exploratory activities takes on other proportions in a world where risks are globalized, not being restricted to specific places but being able to impact incalculable spatial and temporal horizons. The last two highlighted points thus indicate a geographic and temporal indistinction of the actors and impacts involved in exploiting natural resources. This characteristic goes against financial compensation anchored in modern rationality, where the delimitation of these aspects is an assumption considered in its implementation.
Based on the listed points, it was highlighted the challenges and possibilities for new understandings of compensation instruments capable of guaranteeing the exploration of natural resources on which the current energy transition depends. Moreover, those aspects point to possible ways to construct political, cultural, and more egalitarian socio-ecological arrangements that would make it possible to erect sustainable futures, both environmentally and socially.
The reflections exposed here were based on my PhD thesis defended in 2022. For more information, please comment below. This text presented here was originally written in Portuguese. The link to access it and the authors that contributed to it can be seen at: https://jornal.usp.br/artigos/instrumentos-de-compensacao-e-os-impactos-socioambientais-da-transicao-energetica-na-contemporaneidade/
