Salvatore Paolo de Rosa

Research areas

Political ecology, climate activism, climate justice, socio-environmental conflicts, grassroots environmentalism, place-based mobilizations, direct-action, climate litigations, socio-ecological metabolisms, discard studies, waste management

Research

My current research within the GAMES project is part of an interdisciplinary effort to study and to enhance interactions and synergies between recent advancements in climate science (specifically, the attribution of weather extremes to climate change), legal frameworks and social mobilizations around the climate. I am particularly interested in how stronger attribution of extreme weather events to climate change and to specific emitters influences climate movements’ campaigns; how movements’ goals may be advanced by the combination of law and science through climate lawsuits; and how this interplay affects the politics and theory of climate justice. The geographical scope of the research centers on Sweden and Europe while also engaging a global analytical perspective.

My research involves the promotion of mutual learning between scientists, law experts and climate activists through workshops, collaborations and dissemination of results in a variety of fora within and beyond academia (policy settings, mainstream media, NGOs outlets and activist channels). Part of my outreach work is carried out through the political ecology platform Undisciplined Environments (of which I am a founder and co-editor), and through the Italian independent media outlet Napoli Monitor.

In previous research, I explored the engagement of climate movements in Malmö and Sweden with issues of local adaptation, loss & damage, and climate justice, focusing on the forms of contentious politics cutting across bottom-up activists’ strategies, municipal climate politics and top-down climate governance.

In my PhD dissertation, I provided a political ecology of the ‘waste wars’ of Campania region in southern Italy through an analysis of waste metabolisms and an ethnography of social mobilizations. On the one hand, I traced the production of spaces of waste management and disposal to historical, geographical and power dynamics. On the other, I focused on the progression of grassroots environmental movements from protests and resistance to bottom-up reclamation of territory.

A consistent theme running through my research is an interrogation of the politics and cultures of grassroots environmental organizing in the context of multiple ecological and social crises, aimed at supporting the self-determination and self-organization of marginalized and impacted communities in the quest for social, environmental and climate justice.

Research projects

Global Attribution Models, Mediation and Mobilisation in Sweden and Spain (GAMES, 2019-2021, funded by FORMAS)

A project on how attribution of climate extremes and mediation of attribution in legal and governance frameworks create constraints and opportunities for social mobilisation and for transformational change.