CBDS Annual Lecture 2026 – The Great Green Grab: Climate Extractivism and the New Resource Imperialism

The Centre for Business and Development Studies is pleased to invite you to this year’s CBDS Annual Lecture featuring Professor Philippe Le Billon, a leading political ecologist working at the intersection of environment, development, and security.

In his keynote, The Great Green Grab, Le Billon challenges us to look beyond the seductive imagery of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles powering a “green” future. While the energy transition is often framed as technological progress guided by markets and green growth, it may also reproduce longstanding extractive logics, geopolitical competition, and patterns of dispossession.

The lecture examines contemporary forms of resource extraction driven by climate policies – focusing on power asymmetries, territorial transformations, and the political economy of green transitions

Speaker: Philippe Le Billon, Professor (Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia)

Programme

14:00–14:10 | Welcome and Opening Remarks

14:10–15:00 | Keynote Lecture Philippe Le Billon

15:00–15:10 | Break

15:10–15:50 | Panel Conversation

With CBDS scholars: Kristian Steensen Nielsen, Lisa Ann Richey, Karin Buhmann, and Peter Lund-Thomsen

Each panelist will present a critical question or short reflection in response to the keynote lecture, followed by a moderated conversation with Philippe Le Billon. The extended time allows for deeper engagement across CBDS research perspectives.

Moderated by Jacobo Ramírez

15:50–16:30 | Q&A, Open discussion with the audience

16:30 | Drinks & Networking, Informal reception with refreshments.

Venue: DH.C.033

Date & Time: June 4th, 14:00–16:30

Join us for a critical conversation on the politics of the green transition.

Please register for the event before the registration deadline.