Contesting the Just Transition from the Waterberg Coalfield: grounded socio-ecological possibilities for (co)habitable futures

Anthropogenic climate change through fossil-fuel reliance has necessitated decarbonisation on a global scale. The “Just Transition,” as a concept embedded in a particular and shifting discursive context, weighs up environmental ambitions against material livelihood impacts, and is increasingly gaining significant political currency. It is, however, often implemented in a top-down techno-managerial manner that flattens out localised socio-ecological and contextually specific dynamics. By thinking from the Waterberg Coalfield in Limpopo, South Africa, we explore the tensions between local livelihoods dependent on fossil-fuel capital and those that are historically foreclosed and are at increased future risk due to the South African government’s continued commitment to coal economies. By embedding debates about future “justice” in the history of injustice, racialised dispossession and enclosure, we explore how the political ecologies of land, water and energy are folded into a politics of a just transition from below. A granular and relational analysis of these divergent livelihoods and their socio-ecological bases offers the possibility for transformative pathways of “just” futures for the Waterberg and beyond.