After COP21: Contested Transformations in the Energy/Agri-Food Nexus

Abstract

To what extent are we witnessing real transformatory change towards a low- or zero-carbon economy following the optimism surrounding the COP21 Paris agreements? Taking the energy/agri-food nexus as a major focus, the paper examines what it regards as highly contested co-evolutionary trends associated both with carbonised and geo-politically motivated ‘lock-in’ on the one hand, but nevertheless, the rise of significant post-carbon strategies and practices on the other. The latter may be significantly encouraged by the rise of what are termed as ‘stranded assets’ and disinvestments in the financial investment sector, and the opportunities for more distributed systems of production in the energy/agri-food nexus. These shifts suggest a more polyvalent set of post-carbonised capitalist and post-capitalist processes which demand a renewed political- ecological approach by scholars in understanding these multiple resources and transformatory processes. Overall, this would suggest that the transformations before us will not assume a ‘business as usual’ model of conventional (and concentrated) capitalist development.