Reluctant Decarbonization and Militant Petrostates Workshop: Part I - Global
The OHPA hosted its first workshop entitled “Reluctant Decarbonization and Militant Petrostates” on May 27, 2024, in which an array of scholars formed interdisciplinary panels to discuss their individual research and how it relates to broader issues of Petroaggression and Decarbonization in international climate politics. The workshop was divided into three thematic panels: Global, European and a Case study panel. This is the recap of the first panel, and the summaries of the other panels will be subsequently released in coming weeks.
Panel I “Global” was chaired by OHPA Research coordinator Valeriia Hesse and consisted of Director of the OHPA Dr. Alexander Etkind (CEU), Dr. Naosuke Mukoyama (University of Tokyo), Dr. Aleh Cherp (CEU) and Dr. Andreas Folkers (Frankfurt Institute of Social Research). Dr. Etkind began the workshop by referring to the research he produced for his latest book by analyzing the concept of petrostate and claiming that decarbonization makes these carbon-exporting countries vulnerable to the loss of revenue. Dissecting the relations between the oil-supplying and oilconsuming states, Etkind introduced the concept of transit state, which becomes the target of petroaggression. Petro-importers impose carbon taxes on their citizenries in order to help combat climate change, however the petrostates themselves do not pay for any environmental consequences in this regard. Additionally, Dr. Etkind argued that emissions trading schemes must be restructured so that they include the proportional payments by the countries and corporations that provide the carbon fuel, and not only those that use it.
Dr. Mukoyama followed by his research on the history of colonialism and the creation of Petrostates in the 20th century. Dr. Mukoyama explained his interest lies on the connection between resource location and statehood; he found that the pretense of oil greatly increased if not virtually guaranteed a particular territory reaching sovereignty rather than being incorporated into a larger former colony-state. Dr. Mukoyama displayed this with a variety of examples, but the most striking remained Qatar and Bahrain. Both states are geographically small and in immediate proximity to the U.A.E., however the discovery and economic potential of petroleum in these areas allowed the autonomy to reach sovereignty. Dr. Mukoyama further elucidated that merging to form a larger state had little incentive for Petro-rich territories. Firstly, colonizers were already galvanized to protect such territories for economic gain, and typically formed protectorates. Whether a state would reach independence or secede was based on the timing of resource discovery: earlier increased the chance of independence, whereas later allowed the territory bargaining power to broker deals of both sovereignty as well as protection. Dr. Mukoyama posited that if natural resources played an important role in the formation of formerly colonial petrostates, then it would play a vital role in the decarbonization transition.
Dr. Aleh Cherp’s talk focused on his team’s research regarding the economic realities of petrostates and decarbonization. Dr. Cherp found that within petrostates, renewable technologies are rarely, if ever, produced and implemented; Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. being notable exceptions for investing in nuclear and solar technologies. Additionally petrostates are the highest payers of fossil-fuel subsidies on average in the world, as it buoys the price and makes domestic consumption profitable. Dr. Cherp and his team found that oil demand lowers proportionally to decarbonization: this varies massively state to state, as those with higher fossil fuel exports per GDP are naturally more vulnerable to the green transition. Finally Dr. Cherp argued that the framework for subsidies to phase out petroleum and other fossil fuels has already been created: we must look to how coal power was phased out as a roadmap for the decarbonized future.
The final talk of the first panel was given by Dr. Folkers on the link between capitalism, climate bombs and Necropolitics. Dr. Folkers argued that capitalism has played a massive role in enabling ecocide and the destruction of the natural environment. In a capitalist system governments give contracts and concessions to private firms - however the issue with private firms rather than state managed is that they are beholden to shareholders rather than society or nature as a whole. Thus Big Oil has been able to extract and pillage the natural world at an unprecedented rate, and as resources continue to dry up it becomes drastically less profitable to push the extractive “frontier.” Dr. Folkers explained that this practice has created “capitalist bombs” poised to explode in the future, as the campaigns conducted against climate science and to obfuscate ecocide will eventually become its own downfall when the system collapses in on itself - there is no “profit” on a dead planet.
The full talk as well as the subsequent discussion is available to view on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/a8sOFbYJXjk