Transitions research commonly assumes the dominant Western paradigm of modern ontology and its ideological colonial and capitalist relations. Yet these assumptions, left uninterrogated, endanger the emancipatory and liberatory potential heralded by new energy futures within just transitions, eliding decolonial futurities that honour tenets of Indigenous resurgence as well as truth and reconciliation. In colonized places where the invaders never left, these onto-ideological assumptions risk perpetuating settler colonialism and its manifest harms, reproducing the status quo of social inequity and hegemonic power relations. Learning from the concepts by Seto et al. (2016) of ‘carbon lock-in’ and Byrd's (2011) ‘transit of empire’, we aim to further illuminate such risks by characterizing this path dependency as settler colonialism lock-in. Here, settler colonialism lock-in refers to the entrenchment of an enmeshed modern ontology, contemporary capitalism, and colonialism within the institutional, political, social, and infrastructural (legal, financial, physical) fabric of transitions, by default prefiguring and prioritizing settler futurities. Centering equity and justice necessitates reflection upon the crux of the question: whose priorities, and whose futurities, do transitions centre? Through such reflection, we call upon researchers and practitioners working on transitions to consider different worlds and learn from Indigenous thought, and in resisting neoliberal worlds, to reimagine who can and should profit from transitions. The idea of settler colonialism lock-in aims to provoke thought and reflection in discerning such path dependency to avoid these slippery paths, towards building just transitions.
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