The historical geographies of extractivism and empire cut across the division between “Global North” and “Global South.” This roundtable brought together scholars working on the Russian and North American Arctic, Brazil, and Lebanon for a conversation across regions rarely placed in the same frame. We traced the surprising parallels and uncanny connections between histories of energy extraction and ecological transformation on very different colonial and capitalist resource frontiers. We explored, too, sources of hope: the nodes of resistance and alternative imaginaries generated by projects of Indigenous and decolonial worldmaking.

This event was part of the Environmental Studies Workshop and the Fossil Capitalism in the Global South project at the Neubauer Collegium, and additionally supported by the Urban Theory Lab and the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU).

Cover Image: Lat/long graticules of coordinate systems centered on Glacier Bay, Alaska, and Belo Monte dam, Brazil, with processed satellite image underlays. Satellite image source: Maxar Technologies / CNES Airbus