Selected Paper/ Paper Seleccionado
Waste-land Island: The Designer’s Gaze on Sardinia (Italy) Between (Post)Mining Extractivism and Energy Transition
Abstract (English)
The recent environmental crisis has prompted the European Union to accelerate decarbonization policies under the EU Green Deal. These energy transition policies create eco-frictions (Benadusi 2025) and affect how people perceive the environment and embody locally (Meloni 2021).In Sardinia, the target of 6.2 GW of renewable energy production by 2030 has spurred a surge in projects submitted to the national Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure — collectively estimated to exceed 50 GW. Grassroots activists have mobilized strong opposition, arguing that these projects threaten Sardinia’s cultural heritage, which they claim is deeply embedded in the landscape.
This contribution examines the narratives of “wasteland” that emerge from EIA documentation, framing certain territories as expendable for energy development. The paper uses a comparative approach (based on visual and archival sources and long-term fieldwork) to reveal how these narratives reflect a particular gaze on Sardinia’s resources. This gaze seems reminiscent of the extractivist logic that drove the mining rush in Sardinia, dating back centuries, which expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries, and ultimately ended in the 1990s (Bachis 2025). During this time, pioneers, engineers, company executives, and mining corporations have produced an imaginary based on the idea that the island's territory was a “void” to be filled and a “wasteland” to be modernized (Atzeni 2008).
Finally, the paper examines how these "wasteland" narratives serve as virtual realities, creating tensions with the multiple realities of local communities, policymakers, and other stakeholders involved in the energy transition.
Keywords (Ingles)
Energy transition; Extractivism; Landscape narratives; Environmental conflicts; Sardinia;presenters
Greca N. Meloni
Nationality: Italy
Residence: Austria
University of Vienna
Presence:Online
Francesco Bachis
Nationality: Italy
Residence: Italy
University of Cagliari
Presence:Online