Earth system tipping points pose existential threats to current and future generations, both human and non-human, with those least responsible for causing them facing the greatest risks. “Positive” social tipping points (that we shorten to positive tipping points, or PTPs) are often deliberate interventions into social systems with the aim of rapidly mitigating the risks of Earth system tipping. However, the desire to intervene should neither increase risks nor perpetuate unjust or inequitable outcomes through the creation of sacrifice zones. In this paper, we argue that considerations of what needs to change, who is being asked to change, and where and by whom the impacts of change will be felt are fundamental and normative questions that require reflexivity and systemic understanding of decision-making across scales. All actors have a role to play in ensuring that justice, equity, and ethics are carefully considered before any intervention. Enabling positive tipping points for radical transformations would thus benefit from more diverse perspectives, with a particular emphasis on the inclusion of marginalized voices in offering solutions. We conclude that taking a cautious approach to positive tipping interventions, including careful consideration of distributional and unintended consequences, and stepping back to explore all options, not just those appearing to offer a quick fix, could lead to more equitable and sustainable outcomes.

In this article, we study forms of storytelling about energy sovereignty retrieved from community-based art and their implications for energy justice formulations in Latin America. Based on the visual and discursive analysis of five contemporary Latin American artistic practices, the article shows that their poetic and political engagements with energy production, consumption, and distribution build what we call energy sovereignty storytelling. That is, understandings of energy justice that territorialize energy technologies, thus defying Western-centered views on energy and energy infrastructure in a context of marked transitions. Combining insights from art analysis in STS with concepts from energy humanities and technological sovereignty studies, this research discusses four aspects that characterize these emergent energy storytelling practices. By bringing these four aspects together, this study shows that territory-attuned, community-based art research highlights understandings of energy beyond corporate extractivism and market interests. In this way, activating new modes of storytelling in relation to energy affords novel understandings of energy and energy infrastructure that can contribute to attaining a just and equitable energy transition in Latin America, where ancestral and local more-than-human communities can participate actively in shaping energy presents and futures. 

Radical and quick transformations towards sustainability will be fundamental to achieving a more sustainable future. However, deliberate interventions to reconfigure systems will result in winners and losers, with the potential for greater or lesser equity and justice outcomes. Positive tipping points (PTPs) have been proposed as interventions in complex systems with the aim to (a) reduce the likelihood of negative Earth system tipping points and/or (b) increase the likelihood of achieving just social foundations. However, many narratives around PTPs often do not take into account the entire spectrum of impacts the proposed alternatives could have or still rely on narratives that maintain current unsustainable behaviours and marginalize many people (i.e. do not take “b” into account). One such example is the move from petrol-based to electric vehicles. An energy transition that remains based on natural resource inputs from the Global South must be unpacked with an equity and justice lens to understand the true cost of this transition. There are two arguments why a critical engagement with these and other similar proposals needs to be made. First, the idea of transitioning through a substitution (e.g. of fuel) while maintaining the system structure (e.g. of private vehicles) may not necessarily be conceived as the kind of radical transformation being called for by global scientific bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Second, and probably more importantly, the question of positive for whom, positive where, and positive how must be considered. In this paper, we unpack these narratives using a critical decolonial view from the south and outline their implications for the concept of tipping points.

The practice of envisioning the future has deep roots in the past. Across the continent of Africa, there are traditions of oral storytelling, griots, folklore, and indigenous speculation that offer guidance on how to live in the present and orient towards better futures. Whilst these traditions can act as navigational compasses, they are not prevalent in conventional futuring methodologies. Rather, we are surrounded by perspectives of thinking about the future as a projection of current trends. In this perspective, we offer a new heuristic, the Entangled Time Tree, to the body of futuring approaches for how to acknowledge multiple pasts and alternative ways of conceptualizing futures. We recognise that in a decolonial approach, it is necessary to consider a multiplicity of pasts that lead to diverse presents and futures; a recognition that we see reflected in Africanfuturism and in traditional storytelling that further offer diverse ways of understanding temporality and futures. We propose that the diverse forms of storytelling across the African continent constitute critically underexplored forms of knowledge for enabling a decolonial approach to futuring through three mechanisms -stories as power, stories as healing, and stories as diversification. We argue that centering these stories will allow the exploration of more just and ecologically sustainable futures. We recognise that this is just a first, but we hope a promising, step towards a longer term commitment of creating more diverse, imaginative visions and pathways of a decolonial future that will be useful not only on the African continent, but globally.

This article explores fluvial forms of art and activism to reclaim new meanings of energy at a time when questions about the energy transition are central in geography studies and global environmental discourses. Departing from Serpent River Book by Carolina Caycedo, we propose affective, embodied, and creative entanglements to understand energy flows in river ecologies in Latin America for an exploration of energy geohumanities. We then discuss the methodology of this energy geohumanities project in our engagements with Caycedo’s art, reflecting on our sedimentary writing and thinking process enacted throughout the article. By centering this article on what energies art conjures and releases in affective and political terms, we explore the meanings of doing energy geohumanities in the deployment of a poetics of embodied tensions between flow and containment and between aerial and immersive views that challenge the dichotomies of subject/object, nature/culture and geo/human. Through unfolding a “sedimentary blog writing” method based on geo-mimicry, we hope to make a case for how entangled thinking and writing offer a novel approach to examining the multiple meanings of energy beyond electricity in the extractive zones of hydro-modernity.

The national implementation of electricity generation projects directly threatens the livelihoods of local and Indigenous communities in Latin America. Therefore, it is crucial to search for solutions to energy supply considering local needs and cosmologies. This article focuses on micro-energy production in rural settlements on the Colombian Caribbean coast. The aim is to provide insights into the relationship between energy, technology, and ancestrality through the lens of solarpunk storytelling. To explore this theme, we present the «tech to embrace the sun» initiative as a case study to co-design and imagine desirable futures by the local community of Selvatorium, in La Guajira. The results consist of the development of seven future ancestral stories co-written by community members and guests, two guides to build two prototypes, and a fanzine. The project concludes with empirical and theoretical insights for development studies about sustainable energy futures.

Renewable energy is recognized as a cornerstone in achieving sustainable development globally, evidenced by international standards such as the UN Agenda 2030 as well as in nations energy policies globally. One of the front runners of the energy transition globally is Brazil, where wind energy has expanded substantially since the early 2000’s. Currently, the state of Bahia in North-Eastern Brazil is seeing the fastest expansions, a state that is characterised by its many traditional and Indigenous communities. Although wind energy is known for its positive sustainability aspects, conflicting wind energy narratives and politics are abundant in this region. The fast expansion of wind energy projects has caused socio-environmental conflicts due to land related conflicts and expulsion of traditional communities for the creation of wind energy parks. In this study, we apply document analysis to critically explore the multiple narratives surrounding wind energy expansion in the state of Bahia. This study shows that different actors frame the matter differently, showcasing that civil society and local perspectives are made invisible in policy documents and decision-making processes. Our results suggest that the dominant narrative of wind power as the most sustainable energy option excludes the contrasting perspectives, perpetuating exclusion and marginalisation of local communities as well as the environment that are directly impacted by the expansion of wind energy projects.

Hemos resuelto invitar y entrevistar a Gisela Heffes en el marco de la publicación del presente número de Humanidades: Revista de la Universidad de Montevideo. Tanto por su trayectoria académica como por su preocupación por los estudios latinoamericanos, queremos consultarle sobre el presente y el futuro de las humanidades ambientales en América Latina. Heffes, escritora y profesora de literatura latinoamericana en la Universidad de Rice (Texas), ha elaborado una prolífica producción en el campo de la ecocrítica, en la que se destacan sus libros Política de la destrucción/poéticas de la preservación (2013) y Las ciudades imaginarias en América Latina (2008), y ha sido coeditora del volumen The Latin American Ecocritical Reader (2021). Faro para los estudios ecocríticos, las presentes respuestas iluminan en parte la trayectoria de este volumen.  

Futuros multiespecie explora los modos en que diversas prácticas artísticas contemporáneas elaboran relaciones entre humanos y no humanos ante los futuros climáticos con foco en América Latina. En un recorrido que incluye el sonido de paisajes en extinción en Colombia, tejidos para aves en la Patagonia, imágenes de esqueletos de salmón del Pacífico, lxs artistas, investigadorxs, educadorxs y curadorxs ofrecen nuevos métodos de indagación sobre los vínculos entre formas de vida y no vida en un planeta herido por la violencia extractiva y neocolonial. Los diversos ensayos e intervenciones artísticas y curatoriales activan lo multiespecie como alternativa estética y política para futuros que convocan lo ancestral y lo no humano contra los imaginarios del catastrofismo climático.

Multispecies Futures explores how diverse contemporary artistic practices address relations between humans and nonhumans, focusing on Latin America in the face of uncertain climate futures. In an analytical and sensorial journey that includes the sounds of landscapes in extinction in Colombia, weaved fabrics for birds in Patagonia, salmon skeletons from the Pacific, and mud for the Wichí people of Chaco, the artists, curators, researchers, and educators offer new methods of inquiry on the assemblages of lifeforms and non-lifeforms on a planet wounded by extractivist and neocolonial violence. The diverse scholarly essays and curatorial and artistic interventions activate the multispecies as an aesthetic and political alternative for futures that call for the ancestral and the nonhuman against climate catastrophism.