Joanna Allan discusses "Saharan Winds: Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara."
Joanna Allan, Associate Professor in global development at Northumbria University, UK, will discuss her book Saharan Winds: Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara (West Virginia University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 1 December 2025, at 16:00 in Norway & 15:00 in UK.
Zoom link: https://stavanger.zoom.us/j/63871293633?pwd=ezofUW7bKVzIJO0R4SH1B5eMlqvtJ6.1
As climate crisis ensues, a transition away from fossil fuels becomes urgent. However, some renewable energy developments are propagating injustices such as landgrabs, colonial dispossession, and environmentally destructive practices. Changing the way we imagine and understand wind will help us ensure a globally just wind energy future.
Saharan Winds contributes to a fairer energy horizon by illuminating the role of imaginaries—how we understand energy sources such as wind and the meanings we attach to wind—in determining the wider politics, whether oppressive or just, associated with energy systems. This book turns to various cultures and communities across different time periods in Western Sahara to explore how wind imaginaries affect the development, management, and promotion of wind farms; the distribution of energy that wind farms produce; and, vitally, the type of politics mediated by all these elements combined. Highlighting the wind-fueled oppression of colonial energy systems, the book shows the potential offered by nomadic, Indigenous wind imaginaries for contributing to a fairer energy future.