geopolitical ecology

Welcome to Continential Shift, a series from The Break—Down and Geopolitical Ecology, where we examine the global rush for critical minerals and the struggle for resource dominance on the North American continent. The phrase "trade regimes" may sound dry, but these rules and agreements are a defining architecture of the global economy. They determine who gets to exploit a country’s resources, and...

In this episode we speak with Alyssa Battistoni about her most recent book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature published back in August 2025 by Princeton University Press. Alyssa is a political theorist with research interests in environmental and climate politics, feminism, Marxist thought, political economy, and the history of political thought. She is the co-author of A Planet to...

In this episode, we talk with Jessica Dempsey and Rosemary Collard about how to think about the capitalist state not as a unified actor, but as a contradictory and often incoherent set of institutions, practices, and relationships that both authorize extraction and seek legitimacy. We explore how environmental governance in Canada is shaped by this contradiction: despite laws and frameworks that a...

In this episode, we’re joined by Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and author of The Tenant Class (2023). Ricardo’s work reframes housing—not as a temporary crisis—but as a long-standing, for-profit system that deliberately extracts wealth from tenants to enrich landlords, developers, and investors.  Ricardo dismantles the conventional supply‑and‑demand narrative embraced by policymakers and th...

In this episode, we speak with Emily Iona Stewart to unpack the complex and deeply political dynamics behind the global rush for critical minerals. Why are these minerals—like lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel—so important? Where are they found? What are the implications of their extraction for Indigenous communities, ecosystems, and the development trajectories of post-colonial nations? We expl...

In this episode, we speak with Priti Narayan about the devastating floods that hit Chennai, India—a city grappling with the compounding effects of climate change and urban inequality. Reflecting on the floods a decade later, Priti unpacks how such dramatic events both reveal and deepen the everyday structural violence embedded in urban life. We explore how climate disasters are experienced unevenl...

I had the honor to host Dr. Hicham Safieddine, a brilliant Lebanese scholar and historian at the University of British Columbia.  His work has included a detailed study of the emergence and transformation of global and national monetary regimes and financial systems under capitalist expansion, debt, war, colonial conquest, national liberation and revolution. He also works on the history of economi...

A lot has happened and changed in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine since we last spoke with Karim Safieddine over a month ago in our episode titled “Anti-Establishment Positions in Lebanon and Beyond.” So, we decided to have him back on to try and make sense of this moment, where a lot of shifts, some positive and some negative, are unfolding right before our eyes. We discuss a variety of issues, fro...

As wildfires rage across Los Angeles, Erika takes a moment to reflect on the personal and the political dimensions of this catastrophe. We urge listeners to think critically about the individuals and communities most impacted by this situation, and by the climate crisis more broadly. These fires expose and remind us all that the vulnerability of physical structures people call home hinges upon the...

Karim Safieddine is a PhD student interested in understanding the ways in which social movements, for what they represent in terms of various aspects of intellectual and organizational leadership, challenge or reproduce prevailing power relations and ideological norms between late 20th and 21st century Lebanon. In this context, his research focuses on the historical and contemporary development of...

In this episode, we have a heartfelt and eye-opening conversation with Hammad Jabr, a dedicated Palestinian activist and emerging scholar whose work has been central to student organizing for Palestine at UBC and beyond. Hammad shares his journey from Palestine to Canada, discussing the personal challenges of navigating movement as a Palestinian and the impact of becoming part of the diaspora. We...

Tending to this podcast and putting out episodes, let alone tending to our daily responsibilities, has been incredibly challenging. Our hearts break every day as we witness not only the continuation, but also expansion, of genocide. This here is a reflective note from Youssef's experience trying to find the necessary balance between insanity and political consciousness to show up both for oneself...

In this episode, we sit with Osprey Orielle Lake and dig into the topics she explores in her book The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis as well as her work with the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). We discuss worldviews as a portal to different ways of knowing and being that resist the extractive and exploitative logics unde...

In this episode, we sit with Max Ajl, author of A People’s Green New Deal (2021) , to discuss a range of issues pertaining to climate justice. We discuss the GND’s (lack of) engagement with anti/imperialism, class struggle over the socialization of the means of production and why it’s necessary in a just transition, the political economy of land, structural adjustment programs, national sovereignt...

Holly Caggiano is an Assistant Professor in Climate Justice and Environmental Planning at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Her research explores social dimensions of climate transitions in the US and Canada, and how diverse stakeholder groups form coalitions to advocate for energy systems change.  In this episode, we chat about efforts to mobilize tow...

Sophie L. Van Neste is an associate professor in urban studies at INRS (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal), holder of a Canada research chair in urban climate action. Her research focuses on social movements in urban environmental politics and participatory action research for justice in climate adaptation.  In this episode, we sit with Sophie and discuss the politics of climate adaptation, or how urban landsca...

In this episode, we sit with Philippe Le Billon and Erik Post and discuss a wide array of topics all connected by a thread of seeing ‘sustainable development’ as yet another iteration in a long history of capitalist development.  By examining violence and systemic injustices, as well as counter-hegemonic resistances, we situate the projects and paradigms advertised as ‘sustainable’ in a long histo...

Liam is a PhD researcher in Geography at the University of Toronto and a volunteer tenant organizer in Vancouver. He’s interested in labor, community, and movement organizing strategy, and the politics of reproduction under capitalism. In this episode, we sit with Liam Fox to discuss the extractivist paradigm of pipelines ripping through Indigenous land in so-called Canada. Specifically, we discus...