In this talk, Matteo Fermeglia examines how resistance to fossil fuel extraction projects shapes the equity dimensions of global efforts to phase out fossil fuels. He argues that against the legal imperative of transitioning away from fossil fuels, frontline communities, Indigenous peoples, workers, and environmental movements contest extraction on grounds of land rights, environmental harm, socio-ecological disruption and unequal exposure to climate change impacts, thereby enshrining how benefits and burdens within the fossil fuel economy are unevenly distributed along lines of class, race, gender, and colonial history. At the same time, the allocation of benefits and burdens from fossil fuels extraction lies at the core of equitable considerations in designing a truly equitable pathway to the phase-out of fossil fuels. Resistance can thus simultaneously advance and complicate equitable phaseout pathways: it can prevent new lock-in of carbon-intensive infrastructure and strengthen calls for rapid decline in fossil fuel production, yet it may also trigger socio-economic dislocation if not accompanied by robust just transition policies for affected workers and regions.

The main conclusion is that to achieve an equitable fossil fuel phaseout at the global level requires understanding resistance movements at the local level, embedding their claims in formal planning processes, and coupling moratoria on new extraction with mechanisms for reparations, redistribution, and democratic control over energy systems. In this way, resistance to extraction becomes a driver of more just, rather than merely faster, a just transition.

Dr. Carolina Valladeres has kindly agreed to comment on the paper. Carolina has a PhD in Social Sciences and is an Environmental justice researcher at the University of Amsterdam.