Powering Change With Justice

The Powering Change project aims to foster dialogue through surfacing Indigenous and Traditional knowledges for a just and inclusive energy transition

The Project

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is often touted as a critical strategy for combating climate change. However, rapid expansion of ‘green’ energy projects such as wind energy parks also have significant impacts. If wind energy projects are done in the same way that energy projects have been done in the past, they will have multiple negative local and cross-border social, cultural, spiritual, health, economic and ecological effects. This latest energy transition risks keeping us on the same trajectory of environmental degradation and deepening inequalities, rather than being part of positive transformative change. In the research project Powering change with justice, we study the effects of wind energy projects on the territorial rights, ways of life and relationships with nature of Sámi in Sweden, and of Indigenous and local communities in Brazil. Through this we aim to explore how local and global dynamics of energy transitions are connected, and as such,energy transitions in one place, have spillover effects in other places. The project team aims to combine Sámi knowledge, local knowledge, western science knowledge, and knowledge(s) shared through artistic perspectives to identify pathways towards a just energy transition.

The project is hosted at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, in partnership with CEMFOR, Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, Uppsala University; and funded by Formas (Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development). The project will run from 2024 to 2027.

Field research for the project has been approved by the Ethics Review Authority, the diary number for the review at the Ethics Review Authority is DNR: 2024-07932-01.