From Socioecological Struggles to New Local Political Alliances: Labour, Environment and Socioecological Justice

This autoethnographic exercise offers a reflection on emerging forms of political action and citizen mobilization from my perspective as a scholar-activist. I begin by problematizing recent top-down “green” infrastructure initiatives intended to address climate change and promote a “just transition” in my community, Cercal do Alentejo, a small rural village in the municipality of Santiago do Cacém, Portugal. In recent years, Cercal and the broader Alentejo region have become a “case of territorial contestation” and a “sacrifice zone,” exemplifying the consequences of a clash between divergent developmental models: on one hand, a technocratic “green” transition combined with the political marginalization of local citizens; and on the other, citizen-led imaginaries of alternative socioecological futures for local and regional development centered around issues such as energy and food sovereignty, rural people and peasant and migrant rights and fair socioecological development. The absence of civic engagement and opportunities for public participation in environmental and social matters has sparked grassroots resistance, which, since its emergence in 2021, has manifested in various forms and operated at multiple levels. While political resistance has always been part of the grass-roots resistance, the formation of partisan organizations represents one of the most recent developments in this movement. Through personal reflections on scholar-activism in the context of socioecological justice, I examine how experiences of social and political isolation and exclusion from environmental decision-making contributed to the formation of a locally led political movement composed primarily of local activists, myself included. RENOVAR SANTIAGO DO CACÉM was established as a local, left-leaning political platform in 2025 and presented a candidacy in the municipal elections of Santiago do Cacém, for which I was selected as the mayoral candidate. This analysis identifies and explores the development process of political and partisan mobilization and highlights the need and will that rural populations have to actively participate in political issues. Scholar activists can, perhaps more than ever, help to further disseminate the struggles emanating from rural contexts and aid rural populations in claiming the right to democracy, participating in policy design, and politically expanding the right to say no to further marginalization, sacrifice, degradation, inequality, and expropriation.