Rethinking fossil fuel divestment: Land, labor, and crises of overaccumulation

Abstract

Research on fossil fuel divestment has thus far focused on the efficacy of shifting finance away from fossil fuels to decarbonize investment portfolios. Drawing on a comparative analysis of fossil fuel divestment movements across the Asia Pacific, this article instead situates divestment within struggles over land, labor, and crises of overaccumulation. While the US coal industry attempts to expand supply chains in Asia, internationalist fossil fuel divestment movements have argued that additional exports are not needed in Asian coal markets which are defined by crises of overaccumulation. To rethink fossil fuel divestment as a place-based struggle over land and labor across key nodes of supply chains, this article traces how coalitions of waged and unwaged workers, fishers, environmental justice groups, and labor unions have successfully disrupted the coal industry's access to land, labor, and finance capital.