Renewable energy, mining, and extraction governance

本项目由文化人类学和促进竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。该项目比较了如何管理太阳能和传统采矿项目，以确定可再生能源转型的机遇和挑战。该项目将采用协作研究方法，让当地社区参与研究的设计和实施，研究大型可再生能源项目在多大程度上借鉴了与传统开采相同的经济和治理策略。研究小组将记录在农村地区发展和运作大型项目的法律、官僚和经济框架。传统的开采项目历来加深了许多农村地区的经济和政治边缘化，这些地区在承担开采的环境和经济成本的同时，贫困率很高。如果可再生能源项目利用与采矿相同的机制征收资源，那么能源转型战略的重点就不应局限于减少碳排放，而应包括社会经济和政治措施，以解决农村地区的系统性边缘化问题。研究成果将通过解决可再生能源转型的国家和国际政策场所，在参与研究的社区中分享，包括在从事农村能源和经济转型工作的美国公民团体、社区和政策制定者之间分享。其他更广泛的影响包括关于公民参与和提取的合作分析培训讲习班，这将扩大阿巴拉契亚中部代表性不足的人口对科学的参与。这项民族志和文献研究倡议将让民间组织和农村社区参与收集有关促进大规模太阳能和采矿项目的法律、程序和实践的数据。项目团队将制作有关这些治理实践的外联材料，作为对国家和公司参与者用于管理这些项目的战略进行实地定性研究的基础。该研究还将确定居民如何参与可再生能源和传统开采的共性和差异，以提出与特定项目相关或扩展的服务，政策或代表的要求。该项目将推进提取的人类学理论，将其作为治理实践的一种表达，而不仅仅是被提取的物质资源，并将这些理论与农村地区面临的挑战的农业研究和可再生能源转型的社会科学联系起来。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is jointly funded by Cultural Anthropology and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This project compares how solar energy and conventional mining projects are governed to determine the opportunities and challenges of a renewable energy transition. Using collaborative research methods that involve local communities in the design and conduct of the research, the project will examine to what extent large-scale renewable energy projects draw upon the same economic and governance strategies as conventional extraction. The research team will document the legal, bureaucratic, and economic frameworks for developing and operating large-scale projects in rural areas. Conventional extraction projects have historically deepened the economic and political marginalization of many rural zones, which experience high rates of poverty while shouldering the environmental and economic costs of extraction. If renewable energy projects draw on the same mechanisms for expropriating resources as mining, then strategies for just energy transition should focus on more than reducing carbon emissions and include socio-economic and political measures to address the systemic marginalization of rural areas. Research results will be shared in the communities participating in the research, through national and international policy venues addressing a renewable energy transition, including among U.S. civic groups, communities, and policymakers engaged in rural energy and economic transition work. Other broader impacts include collaborative analysis training workshops on civic engagement and extraction, which will broaden participation in science to underrepresented populations in Central Appalachia. This ethnographic and documentary research initiative will engage civic organizations and rural communities in collecting data about the laws, procedures, and practices that facilitate large-scale solar and mining projects. The project team will produce outreach materials on these governance practices as the basis for field-based, qualitative research on strategies state and corporate actors use to manage these projects. The research will also establish the commonalities and differences in how residents engage with renewable energy and conventional extraction to make claims for services, policies, or representation related to and extending beyond specific projects. This project will advance anthropological theories of extraction as an expression of governance practices, not only the material resource being extracted, and will relate those theories to agrarian studies of the challenges facing rural areas and the social science of renewable energy transitions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.