![Governing land, landscapes and infrastructure for a simply power transition [Commentary]](https://foreignshoresnrinews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Turbines-thar-india.jpg)
- India’s renewable power transition is accelerating, marked by a big drop in fossil gasoline energy era and a rising push for inexperienced funding via subsidies, simplified insurance policies, and the introduction of a sustainable finance taxonomy.
- Contested land and panorama use lies on the coronary heart of power transitions, with conflicting pursuits between governments, firms, conservationists, and native communities resulting in tensions over fairness, possession, and socio-ecological impacts.
- Inexperienced ensconcement is proposed as a holistic framework to information simply and inclusive power transitions by integrating numerous social, cultural, ecological, and psychological values into how land and infrastructure are ruled and remodeled.
India’s tryst with transitioning away from fossil fuels and powering via renewables is at an intriguing second. Power statistics point out that Might 2025 marked the steepest year-on-year decline in coal and fuel fired energy era because the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of studies of elevated push for coal, oil and fuel extraction, a push which additionally meets rising cases of social conflicts and protests. Investments in renewable power are rising by the day, well-supported by governments providing profitable incentives and subsidies in addition to simplified licensing mechanisms to potential inexperienced power traders at frequent international investor summits which have risen to prominence. India’s draft Sustainable Finance Taxonomy launched by the nationwide authorities mid-2025 marks one other improvement to additional entice traders in ‘inexperienced’ financial sectors together with power.
As power transitions achieve momentum, questions of ‘accelerating’ and ‘enhancing tempo and scale’ preoccupy policymakers, improvement organisations and philanthropic establishments. Governing land for power futures is a contested matter — some need relaxed legal guidelines that facilitate land acquisition, whereas others oppose unchecked, usually forceful, acquisition that may dispossess native inhabitants of their property, livelihoods and socio-cultural identification. Amidst this backdrop, questions of simply, equitable and honest inexperienced power futures are additionally circulating in coverage circles. These questions concern not solely land, however altered landscapes, infrastructural adjustments, management, and possession over time. With a number of actors, pursuits and aspirations pitted towards one another on essential considerations round governing land, landscapes and infrastructures for power transition, linear, remoted, myopic and technocratic approaches will lead to winners and losers — in contrast to the ‘no-one-left-behind’ state of affairs espoused by simply transition visions such because the Sustainable Growth Objectives.
To deal with this, ‘inexperienced ensconcement’ might be thought of as an strategy to know, study and implement power transition in a manner which is aware and respectful of the a number of values, views, and aspirations that numerous peoples accord to land, landscapes and power infrastructures. This doesn’t imply reinventing the wheel or pushing for extra jargon in a saturated discursive area. Fairly, it channels numerous disciplines which were advocating for parts that represent the ensconcement strategy.
The what and why of inexperienced ensconcement
Extrapolating from the literal which means of the verb ‘ensconce’ that denotes comfortably settling an individual or factor in a secure area, ensconcement has been just lately conceptualised in a research, Geographies of Photo voltaic Power Transitions on decentralised renewable power installations in Lisbon and Jaipur. Being expressive of embrace, absorption, and evocative of a way of melding collectively, distinct but mixed in shut entanglement, inexperienced power ensconcement presents a coverage device to problematise, discover and lament numerous views that form how power infrastructures work together with land and landscapes in any regional setting.
Academically, three broad disciplines lend themselves to conceptualising ensconcement — panorama geography, apply concept and environmental psychology. First, from panorama geography, the main focus is on precise adjustments to landscapes and their utility worth to a variety of actors. What’s a panorama used for, how does this alteration primarily based on reformed terrain and territorialisation, and what does the reshaped panorama prioritise/deny? Second, in apply concept, the main focus is on the relational nature of actor-landscape dynamics to establish political and power-based tensions that unlock specific varieties of adjustments in a given context. It emphasises which practices proceed and that are reconfigured. Third, in environmental psychology, the worth of understanding contextual tensions between most well-liked landscapes and land makes use of is studied, together with the resistance by numerous actors to specific imaginaries of future landscapes created as a consequence of a given kind of ensconcement. What’s the nature of envisioning and contestation, and the way are the 2 associated to the precise adjustments which can be dropped at bear on specific landscapes?
With this conceptual background, it’s crucial to notice how power transitions minimize throughout land, landscapes, and power infrastructures. By way of land-intensive sides of power transitions, these encompass extractive mining, allied transportation infrastructure, energy era and different energy-based financial industries, inexperienced power era websites, landscapes, and related transmission infrastructure that cumulatively alter native indigenous landscapes. Be it the case of a brand new coal mine arising in forest areas, like in Hasdeo Aranya in Chhattisgarh; an previous mine being closed down for repurposing with photo voltaic crops or ecotourism; or inexperienced power setups being put in within the deserts of Rajasthan, the Rann of Kachh in Gujarat, or the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — power transitions are inherently riddled with visibly oppositional views and competing pursuits. A pastoralist in Jaisalmer’s desert panorama desires an undisturbed panorama with shrubs and water our bodies left untouched by industries; an environmentalist in Hasdeo Aranya desires to avoid wasting the bushes which the proposed coal mine would uproot; a wildlife conservationist in Jodhpur desires to have reflectors put in on transmission traces and electrical infrastructure that threatens the Nice Indian Bustard. Nevertheless, governments and environmentalists understandably additionally wish to improve renewable power infrastructure improvement, supported by keen traders and power builders; they need continued industrialisation as a way to result in improvement; and policymakers and most of the people primarily based removed from contested power areas have divided views and convictions concerning such points.
In such a context, the ‘either-or’ strategy of both bulldozing inexperienced power over current landscapes or submitting to the calls of protestors additional widens the rift between actors. Governments, firms, and like-minded coverage actors stand towards environmentalists, conservationists, and different protestors in an ‘us-versus-them’ setting. Governance turns into extra authoritarian and fewer democratic, particularly given how pressing ‘local weather motion’ frames an power acceleration agenda. A inexperienced ensconcement strategy will help establish a greater pathway ahead.
Learn how to carry inexperienced ensconcement into play
To implement ensconcement and reconfigure power transitions in the direction of extra equitable and simply outcomes, it’s important to stress context-specificity. Whereas precise practices differ by context, beneath we articulate three fundamental stipulations for analyzing inexperienced ensconcement, specifically reconfiguring socioecological landscapes, structuring decision-making processes, and addressing energy differentials.
First, reconfiguring socioecological landscapes: inexperienced power futures, together with photo voltaic and wind power, are intrinsically composed of associated social, political, cultural and ecological values. Even because the financial valuation of nature, ecosystem providers, and pure capital positive aspects momentum in tutorial and coverage circles, there’s a have to broaden the conceptual bandwagon of how one can perceive infrastructures, land and landscapes within the context of power transitions. This means prioritising traditionally ignored socio-cultural, non secular, and ecological elements that reshape land and landscapes throughout power transitions. It’s value including a cautionary word concerning the appropriation of ideas by actors to serve vested pursuits. Exploratory research that additional problematise points are sometimes accused of hindering ‘motion’. Even inside academia, completely different colleges of thought and ideological inclinations can lead to the appropriation of an idea such that it could actually imply every part, and due to this fact nothing, like the purpose famously made by Aaron Wildavsky in 1973 about planning, which might be mentioned to carry true of ‘simply transitions’ at current.
Second, structuring decision-making processes: to be able to reorient accountability, participatory and transparency mechanisms, there’s a want to position strong checks and balances on the largely unhindered conduct of state and company actors in contexts the place inexperienced power tasks are being applied. Issues associated to inexperienced power tasks are sometimes ingeniously manoeuvred by policymakers who paint a shiny, rosy image that insulates tasks away from critique associated to cognate elements equivalent to biodiversity degradation, human rights violations, and socioecological injustice. The state governs society and economic system utilizing a wide selection of regulatory instruments (starting from strict command-and-control to self-regulation); in the identical vein, there’s a want to reinforce the mechanisms via which traditionally marginalised sections of society try to maintain the conduct of state and company actors in examine.
Third and at last, addressing energy differentials: along with reconfiguring infrastructures, landscapes, and governance methods, it’s prudent to construct company in order to shift unequal energy dynamics over time and widen affect over decision-making. Strengthening and structurally revitalising current mechanisms of participatory governance with democratic rules and practices equivalent to environmental influence assessments and public hearings should go hand in hand with institutional and behavioural shifts to handle energy differentials. Taking a cue from different proof, as an illustration of empowering municipalities to have a say in power tasks, or the apply of Neighborhood Selection Aggregation in California, one can configure, reconfigure and prefigure methods to decentralise and democratise power transitions in favour of marginalised communities.
Land and infrastructure will not be simply issues, nor are landscapes essentially what they appear from the air-conditioned chambers of policymakers. It follows that merely measuring the progress of power transitions via checklists of reductive indicators or quantitative metrics equivalent to low-carbon targets can’t suffice. We argue for guarding towards the entice of determining methods to exhibit ‘justice’ on paper. In apply, justice can solely movement from first acknowledging and exploring previous injustices in a located method, a course of that can provide rise to future improvement pathways. Ensconcement presents an epistemological and developmental device to review and perceive previous injustices to be able to co-create methods to handle them — upholding the very important rules of democracy, transparency and accountability to a excessive customary.
Sarthak Shukla is a PhD candidate on the Swedish College of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden and Siddharth Sareen is a Analysis Professor at Fridjof Nansen Institute, Oslo, Norway. An extended journal article on this matter is beneath assessment.
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Banner picture: A lady works at a coal depot in Ahmedabad in the summertime of 2022, when warmth waves had been scorching the nation. Consultant picture. (AP Photograph/Ajit Solanki)
