India's Long Shadow of Coal: Media Framing of Coal amidst Transition Calls
with Arne Arens (accepted in Energy Strategy Reviews, working paper)
We present a systematic map of ten years of narrative dynamics in India’s coal discourse, based on over six thousand English-language news articles, to understand state of energy transition. Using dynamic topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and named entity recognition, complemented by targeted qualitative analysis, we quantify topic trajectories, tone, and actor salience. The results show how energy-transition discussion remains marginal and mostly nested within coal supply and energy-security frames. Discursive power is visible in the privileging of certain problem definitions and actors, which structures agenda setting around continuity rather than change. Business and energy-security frames dominate persistently. Environmental and governance frames remain marginal or episodic. Event-driven spikes are short-lived and do not durably reweigh the discourse.
Positive tones are most often associated with topics in proximity to power, and status-quo business. We further highlight the dominance of certain organizations, agencies, and regions, and show Coal India Limited absolute discourse dominance. China is the most frequent actor in the energy transition topic. The results provide an evidence-based foundation for subsequent analyses of policy windows and framing strategies around the necessary energy transition away from coal.
Dirty talk: Media discourse and the struggle over South Africa’s coal transition
with Giacomo Raederscheidt and Jan Steckel (ERSS, 2025)
This paper investigates media discourses on coal in South Africa to understand the state of progress of its energy transition. We approach discourse as a key element in policy sequencing, shaping the conditions under which regulatory change becomes possible. Using an integrated text-as-data pipeline, including topic modeling, named entity recognition, and sentiment analysis, we analyze approximately 8,000 national newspaper articles from 2010 to 2024. Topic modeling reveals five discourse clusters: Mining industry, Transition politics, Energy crisis, Mining affected communities, and Politics in mining and energy. While new technologies receive attention – particularly around the announcement of the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa in 2021 – explicit discourse on coal phase-out remains marginal. At the same time, we highlight that these technologies are frequently framed as substitutes for structural change. Positive sentiment toward the mining sector and transition politics suggests that the transition is not framed as a coal exit. In this sense, the observed framing reveals not only media priorities but also the discursive power of dominant actors in structuring transition pathways. Our findings underscore the value of combining computational and qualitative approaches innovatively to examine socio-political transition discourses, with implications for broader applications of text-as-data in policy research. Our results inform debates on the political economy of energy transitions at the interplay of international climate finance.
A Resource Database of Cumulative Impacts Laws and Tools: Emerging Policy Opportunities to Protect Environmental Justice Communities from Additional Burden
with Yuykan Lam, Ana Baptista, Anna Yulsman, Madeleine Killough (Environmental Justice, 2025)
The Environmental Justice (EJ) movement has persistently called attention to the failure of government policies to prevent and reduce cumulative impacts (CI), the multiple and compounding social and environmental stressors that disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color. The crisis of CI facing these communities has resulted in decades-long organizing efforts to advance substantive government policies that can respond to this persistent problem at the heart of environmental injustices. Beginning in 2019, the Tishman Center created a broad compilation of national and sub-national laws, policies, mapping tools, agency guidance, and gray literature on CI and definitions of EJ communities. In recent years, there has been a proliferation, not only of CI assessment methodologies and mapping tools, but also of specific policy proposals to address CI in permitting decisions. Much of this policymaking has occurred at the state level, where grassroots EJ advocacy has resulted in the passage of innovative CI policies. In response to these developments, version 2.0 of this initial database was created to focus on CI mapping tools, assessment methodologies, and policies (laws and regulations) codifying a CI requirement in permitting decisions, for the purpose of more directly informing advocacy efforts to protect EJ communities through improved regulatory frameworks. Tools, methodologies, and policies were collected using key search terms of online media and legislative websites, as well as referrals from EJ advocates. Data were summarized on the purpose and scope, definitions of key concepts, calculations and points of comparison, burden or exposure indicators, and thresholds for determining CI. The current database includes 6 states with laws and/or regulations requiring CI consideration in permitting decisions, 7 states with tools or methodologies for assessing CI, and 5 states with proposed laws that are being considered. The policies are examined from the perspective of how CI laws, particularly at the sub-national level, have evolved over the last two decades, including insight into the commonalities and distinct differences of approaches to CI in permitting. We conclude by sharing some of the challenges, opportunities, and emerging trends in CI policymaking.
Deconstructing the ivory tower: the liminal space between margins and centers in climate research
with Zakia Soomauroo and Camille Belmin (accepted in ERSS)
What does it mean to produce climate science in 2026? Building on the dialogical approach of Fenner and Harcourt (2023), this paper explores how positionalities and emotional landscapes shape the work of three female researchers in climate research. Through a collective, reflexive dialogue, we confront the personal and structural tensions embedded in global climate science, examining power asymmetries, the tokenization of diversity, and the hegemonic dominance of quantification and masculinized norms. Our reflections draw attention to how scientific practices often, even unintentionally, perpetuate the very injustices they aim to address. These inherent exclusionary practices lead us to the idea of academia as a border. By weaving together anecdotal recollections and critical theory, we illuminate how situatedness matters, not just methodologically but politically. We critique the neoliberal and heteronormative underpinnings of academic institutions and propose a future-oriented agenda grounded in relationality, emotional honesty, and epistemic inclusivity. Our concluding recommendations aim to shift academic practice from extractive performance metrics to spaces of resistance, care, and collective transformation. As part of this, we bring a reflective tool inspired by Audre Lorde’s (1977) Questionnaire to oneself to invite deeper engagement with the contradictions and silences within our own scholarly work.
Conceptualising the environmental dimension of left-behind places
single author (Ecological Economics, 2025)
This analysis aims at conceptualizing the environmental dimension of left-behind places. I argue that implementing environmental inequality concepts into economic geography is pivotal to sharpen the analysis of just transition geographies. Adopting such lens (1) helps to grasp the theoretical underpinnings of environmental inequalities, (2) lays bare the stratification of environmental risks in left-behind places, (3) helps overcome the environment-vs-jobs narrative. Overall, I lay out how environmental inequality exacerbates economic deprivation, together producing and reproducing left-behind places. Taken together, economic geography studies would profit from putting environmental inequality at its core. This conceptualization has important policy implications around labour-focused just transitions.
Political Participations in Sacrifice Areas. Workers and community-based mobilization for a Just Transition
Book chapter for Fondazione Feltrinelli, Milan, 2025
What happens when the global drive for ecological transition meets the stark realities of heavy industrial regions? This thought-provoking collection of essays explores the urgent need for a bottom-up approach to environmental justice in Europe’s “sacrifice areas“—territories where the demands of industrial production clash with the health, social, and environmental rights of their inhabitants. With a preface by Emanuele Leonardi, this book examines the strategies and struggles of workers and communities fighting to transform deindustrialized and polluted regions into hubs of sustainable and inclusive growth. From the petrochemical plants of Porto Marghera to the steelworks of Taranto, the contributors reveal the deep-seated inequalities and systemic challenges that hinder a just transition—and the innovative grassroots solutions that seek to overcome them. Featuring case studies, comparative analyses, and conceptual frameworks, Political Participations in Sacrifice Areas redefines the role of democratic participation in addressing environmental crises. It is essential reading for anyone invested in the intersection of labor, ecology, and social justice.
With contributions by: Charlotte Sophia Bez, Ilaria Boniburini, Maristella Cacciapaglia, Alessandro Esposito, Lorenzo Feltrin, Gabriela Julio Medel
Environmental inequality in industrial brownfields: Evidence from French municipalities
with Michael Ash and James K. Boyce (Ecological Economics, 2024)
Recent research on environmental inequality has extended its focus from ongoing pollution to legacy pollution by examining the geography of industrial brownfields, defined as nonproductive, contaminated land. This article is the first extensive brownfield analysis for a European country from an environmental inequality perspective, exploiting the political momentum in France where brownfield restoration has become a national priority. In doing so, we combine data on over 7,200 industrial brownfields from the 2022 geodatabase ‘Cartofriches’ with socio-economic variables at the municipality level. We demonstrate communities with higher percentages of foreign-born and unemployed persons are disproportionately more likely to be located near brownfields. The social gradient increases significantly in communities that host many brownfields, the so-called hotspots. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship with income, with a positive correlation until the 75th percentile (€23,700 annually). These findings are robust to different controls, including across urban and rural areas, though with regional differences. Further, we also account for the location of noxious industrial facilities sourced from the E-PRTR database to show the existence of cumulative impacts of environmental risks. Our analysis provides crucial entry points for restorative environmental justice considerations and has important implications for Europe’s just transition and cohesion policies.
Toxic pollution and labour markets: Uncovering Europe’s left-behind places
with Maria Enrica Virgillito (Review of Regional Research, 2024)
This paper looks at the nexus between toxic industrial pollution and the spillovers from the plant’s production activities, leading to regional lock-ins. Geolocalised facility-level data from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) are used to calculate annual chemical-specific pollution, weighted by its toxicity. We combine the latter with regional data on employment, wages and demographics sourced from Cambridge Econometrics, covering more than 1.200 NUTS-3 regions in 15 countries, over the period 2007-2018. We employ quantile regressions to detect the heterogeneity across regions and understand the specificities of the 10th and 25th percentiles. Our first contribution consists in giving a novel and comprehensive account of the geography of toxic pollution in Europe, both at facility and regional level, disaggregated by sectors. Second, we regress toxic pollution (intensity effect) and pollutant concentration (composition effect) on labour market dimensions of left-behind places. Our results point to the existence of economic dependence on noxious industrialization in left-behind places. In addition, whenever environmental efficiency-enhancing production technologies are adopted this leads to labour-saving effects in industrial employment, but positive spatial spillovers at the regional level. Through the lens of evolutionary economic geography our results call for a new political economy of left-behind places.
Unions and industrial policies in transition: the case of industria italiana autobus
with Angelo Castellani, Emanuela La Rocca, Gianluca Sala (Economia e Società Regionale, 2024)
In Italia i trasporti sono uno dei principali settori responsabili delle emissioni di CO₂ annue, con la mobilità privata responsabile del 70% delle emissioni dei veicoli su gomma. La transizione ecologica, che include l’elettrificazione dei mezzi di trasporto e il potenziamento del trasporto pubblico da parte dello Stato, è cruciale per ridurre queste emissioni. Il presente contributo analizza il ruolo della Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici (Fiom) nella crisi aziendale di Industria Italiana Autobus (Iia), focalizzandosi sull’agenda sindacale in materia di transizione ecologica e politiche industriali. La ricerca si basa su interviste semi-strutturate con membri della Fiom di Bologna e Avellino. I risultati della ricerca mostrano una visione comune della transizione come un’opportunità per migliorare l’occupazione e produrre beni socialmente utili; non come una minaccia, ma come un mezzo per garantire un futuro sostenibile, promuovendo alleanze tra sindacati e movimenti ambientalisti.
Industriepolitik und Sektoren der Transformation – ein Blick auf strukturschwache Regionen
Book chapter for the German Jahrbuch Ökonomie und Gesellschaft 2024
Dieser Beitrag behandelt Rahmenbedingungen und Politiken einer sozial-ökologischen Transformation strukturschwacher Industrieregionen in Europa. Strukturschwäche wird hier als relative sozioökonomische Benachteiligung verstanden und mit der räumlichen Verteilung von Industriestandorten in Verbindung gebracht. Im Fokus steht die Frage, wie umweltbelastende Industrien in den Bereichen Energieerzeugung, Metallverarbeitung, Mineralindustrie und chemische Industrie regionale Ungleichheiten verstärken. Der Fokus auf solche Industrieregionen offenbart eine Spirale industriell-technologischer Lock-ins und hoher Umweltverschmutzung. Diese wirtschaftliche Abhängigkeit führt zu einer verzögerten oder vertagten Konversion, vor allem, wenn der Konversionsprozess als Bedrohung für die bestehende Beschäftigungssituation wahrgenommen wird. Der Beitrag stellt verschiedene Mechanismen zur Analyse von Umweltungerechtigkeit und räumlichen Machtverhältnissen vor und erörtert die Rolle von Arbeit und Technologie im kapitalistischen System. Wirtschaftliche Nöte und regionale Disparitäten können außerdem einen fruchtbaren Nährboden für rechtspopulistische Narrative schaffen. Ebenso wird erläutert, wie bestehende Klimapolitik die verteilungspolitischen Auswirkungen von Globalisierung und Delokalisierung multipliziert. Es wird argumentiert, dass ohne glaubwürdige Kompensation weitere politische Gegenreaktionen zu erwarten sind. Abschließend werden mögliche Konversionsstrategien für strukturschwache Regionen diskutiert, mit besonderem Fokus auf die Einbeziehung der Arbeitenden und historische Lernprozesse, um eine ökologische Klassenpolitik zu fördern. Dabei werden die kapitalismuskritischen Schriften des Arbeiterkollektivs von Porto Marghera sowie die Arbeitskämpfe um den Stahlstandort Ruhregebiet aufgegriffen. Das Ziel solcher Strategien ist die Reartikulation des Dilemmas „Arbeitsplätze versus Umwelt“ und die Schaffung von Allianzen zwischen Arbeitenden und Klimabewegung. Dabei ist es entscheidend, die Produktionsverhältnisse in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen und tiefgreifende qualitative Veränderungen in der Produktion zu fordern.
Exposure to International Trade Lowers Green Voting and Worsens Environmental Attitudes
with Valentina Bosetti, Italo Colantone and Maurizio Zanardi (Nature Climate Change, 2023)
From a political perspective, advancing green agendas in democracies requires obtaining electoral support for parties and candidates proposing green platforms. It is therefore crucial to understand the factors driving green voting and attitudes. Yet, limited research has explored the role of economic determinants in this context. In this study we show that globalization, through the distributional consequences of import competition, is an important determinant of support for parties proposing green platforms. Our analysis covers the United States and 15 countries of Western Europe, over the period 2000–2019, with trade exposure measured at the level of subnational geographic areas. We find that higher trade exposure leads to lower support for more environmentalist parties and to more sceptical attitudes about climate change. Our empirical findings are in line with the theoretical channel of deprioritization of environmental concerns, as trade-induced economic distress raises the salience of economic issues.