Axe SENS et UMR TREE

The conflictual definition of ecological transition in the subsurface industries

While political economy has long shown how subsurface energy and mineral resources where at the core of modern societies, the urgency of global ecological crisis poses more acutely the compatibility question between the ever-increasing subsoil mobilisation and the necessary process of ecological transition (Abraham and Murray 2015; Hopkins 2009). This intensive exploitation of soils and subsurface (Moore 2017) challenges the various conceptualisations of the ecological transition ending an extractive and destructive area. Moreover, the subsurface is frequently mobilised as a technical solution for the ecological transition (carbon storage, hydrogen storage, native hydrogen extraction, geothermal energy, copper or lithium extraction). With regard to other environmental issues (water, biodiversity, air pollution and the use of plant protection products), the subsurface is subject to a partial and incomplete politicisation in/for the transition conceptually deriving from the dominant and institutionalize 'ecological modernisation'  (Mol, Sonnenfeld, and Spaargaren 2009; Sémal, 2017).

Program

8 h 45 Welcoming 

9 h  Colloquium introduction

The conflictual definition of ecological transition

Chairs: Xavier Arnauld de Sartre et Sébastien Chailleux

Axis 1 Conceptualising the transition: how to go beyond ecological modernisation?

Chairs: Daniel Compagnon and Brice Auvet

9h15          Matthew Paterson, Pr. International Politics Manchester University

De- and repoliticization, purification and complexity in climate politics

10h             Excerpts from Peter Newell seminar, Pr. Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex

10h10 Collegial Discussion Axis 1

10h45 Break

Axis 2: Subsurface in the ecological transition: what roles? what effects? what scenarios?

Chairs: Sébastien Chailleux and Xavier Arnauld de Sartre

11h            Johan Yans, Pr. of Geology, University of Namur

11h45        Aleina Bleicher Pr. of Geography, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research

It’s  Always  Dark  in  Front  of  the  Pickaxe”: Non-knowledge and the ecological transition in subsurface industries

12h30        Collegial discussion of Axis 2

13h Conclusion