Fencing off commons for the energy expansion: Conflicts over lithium extraction in Cornwall (UK), Jequitinhonha (BR) and Barroso (PT)

This article examines how the global push for “green” energy expansion produces new enclosures and conflicts in territories historically organised around common land use. Focusing on lithium extraction in Covas do Barroso (Portugal), Cornwall (UK), and the Jequitinhonha Valley (Brazil), it shows how the so-called energy transition manifests as energy expansion: the simultaneous growth of energy production, consumption, and territorial occupation under the legitimating discourse of decarbonisation. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research, it traces how intensive and wasteful lithium mining transforms local ecologies and social relations, converting communal and post-industrial commons into fenced extraction zones. In Portugal, the servidão administrativa opens centuries-old baldios to corporate access; in Cornwall, the “mining renaissance” threatens post-industrial leisure commons; in Brazil, open-pit operations turn living ground into “sterile” residue. Across these cases, the article argues that lithium’s framing as essential to decarbonisation conceals a colonial continuity - displacing peripheral populations in the name of planetary salvation - and calls for defending the commons as spaces for alternative transitions.

Keywords:
Energy transition; Violence; Local communities; Lithium mining