Abstract

George will be discussing a paper with the group. If you require a copy of the paper please email tjf46@cam.ac.uk. The abstract for the paper is below:

The ongoing incorporation of southern and eastern Europe (SEE) within global green capitalism is an underexplored phenomenon. This paper argues that SEE is being redefined as a green internal periphery of the European Union, where biodiverse but marginal areas framed as newly discovered wilderness are emerging as a new resource instrumental in the EU’s strategies for promoting green growth and addressing climate change mitigation. The paper integrates environmental history and world-ecology perspectives to investigate recent processes of frontier-making associated with the strict protection of nature. Part of the global effort to secure extensive land areas for green growth, this wilderness momentum emerges as a process of re-territorialization, raising significant questions about environmental and social injustices. On the ground, conservation interventions that advance capital accumulation by offsetting environmental costs, such as rewilding, restoration, and expanding protected areas, are intimately connected with land abandonment and depopulation. They trigger transformations of traditional agricultural landscapes, a decline of sylvo-pastoral systems, and an imminent demise of local ecological knowledge. This frontier shift is an abrupt phenomenon and involves processes of criminalization where states’ attempts to tackle illegal logging, mining, or hunting lead to new forms of violence and marginalization of the most vulnerable.