Greening the Regime of Dispossession

Legal Contradictions in the Energy Transition and Pathways Beyond

Abstract

The climate crisis marking the Anthropocene era has driven the emergence of various energy transition policies that, in turn, shape new legal configurations under the banner of sustainable development. This article aims to analyze the contradictions within energy transition law which, rather than addressing the ecological crisis, tend to expand land dispossession and the enclosure of local communities’ living spaces. The study employs a socio-legal method, combining normative legal analysis with critical agrarian studies to examine how law operates within capitalist power structures. The findings reveal that energy transition law functions within a “greened” dispossession regime, wherein the logic of capital accumulation persists through the legalization of land appropriation in the name of clean energy. These results suggest that the law has yet to undergo a substantive transformation and continues to reproduce ecological inequality. It concludes that a just energy transition is only possible through a fundamental shift in the nature of law itself.