Welcome to a seminar with Georgia De Leeuw, researcher at Lund University. The event is a collaboration between FEMSEM and MAGS (Power Critical and Global Studies in Social Work).
Sweden is one of the countries heralded as the front riders of the steel transition, leading efforts to decarbonise steel production through a new hydrogen-based technology. Translating the decarbonization of the heavy industry into an upscaling of various forms of extraction and production, Sweden has pushed forth a narrative of extractive virtue and exceptionalism. Mining expertise, ore deposits and existing infrastructures are highlighted as making the North the ideal space for further extraction for the green transition. I show how this risks reinforcing the region as extractible, extraction as the only alternative and indigenous livelihoods as disposable. I problematize the steel transition’s emphasis on an upscaling in production and the accompanied pressures on energy, land, biodiversity, and people. The steel transition is situated in what has been framed as Sweden’s mining mecca, a historically sacrificed space dedicated to industrial expansion. I see this transition to be anchored in earlier and related articulations of Swedish mining leadership and its iron ore persona. Alongside the green steel transition I therefore also study iron ore extraction to pinpoint the green transition’s alignment with the logic of extractivism. I scrutinize the supposed rationality of this alignment, its commonsensical nature, and identify avenues of discomfort that may indeed incite a readjustment. I do this by juxtaposing industry and state notions of green steel and mining futures against local and indigenous ‘misalignment’ with the logic of extractivism in search for alternative transition trajectories.