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Article
Law, Labour and Landscape in a Just Transition
Natarajan, U., & Dehm, J. (Eds.). (2022). Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108667289
  • Adrian A. Smith, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University
  • Dayna Nadine Scott, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University
Author ORCID Identifier

Dayna Nadine Scott: 0000-0003-3992-8642

Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1-2022
Keywords
  • labour,
  • landscape,
  • land,
  • political economy,
  • international law,
  • settler capitalism,
  • decarbonisation,
  • solar energy,
  • agriculture
Abstract

Taking conflicts over new solar energy projects on the agricultural landscape in the global North as its backdrop, the chapter demonstrates how work and labour (including that performed in the North by workers from the global South) are erased both by the opponents and the proponents of such projects. The erasure is consistent with prevailing ways of knowing the human-environment nexus, shaped by an underlying political economy derivative of how international law has constructed and maintained the foundational liberal mythology that separates labour from land. Grounded in our commitment to pursuing a ‘just transition’ to decarbonisation – that is to say, a transition that attends to the distributional effects and disproportionate impacts of decarbonisation on workers and communities – we strive to reconceptualise work and labour as embodied practices of working and living on the land. Everyday socio-spatial practices structured by law implicate ordinary people in the making of landscapes and continuing relations of settler capitalism, shaping how ‘we’ live together on the land, including who belongs and who gets to decide.

Citation Information
Adrian A. Smith and Dayna Nadine Scott. "Law, Labour and Landscape in a Just Transition" Natarajan, U., & Dehm, J. (Eds.). (2022). Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108667289 (2022)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/dayna_scott/91/