In May 2024, the island community of Gardi Sugdub entered the final stages of its relocation to the Panamanian mainland, capturing the attention of environmentalists and human rights advocates as the first ‘climate refugees’ escaping sea level rise in Latin America. Their case presents a rich opportunity for study owing to the unique degree of autonomy granted to the Indigenous Guna people and their territory through the Guna Revolution of 1925, and the subsequent establishment of a comarcal system of governance in 1938, whereby special administrative regions were created for areas with significant Indigenous populations. Building on previous scholarship published before the completion of the relocation, this thesis draws on original interviews with Guna residents of other islands—who view the fate of Isber Yala as an experiment for their own futures—along with Indigenous leaders and government officials, to answer the question: To what extent does the comarcal system translate into autonomy in Guna relocation efforts in response to sea level rise? Autonomy is investigated along dimensions of both governance (defined as the consultative process, division of labor between national and tribal authorities, and accessibility of finance) and culture (defined as the preservation of Guna customs, creation of new economic opportunities, and respect for the desires of those wishing to remain in place). The analysis—which is grounded in Ransan-Cooper et al.’s 2015 political subjects framing of environmental migration and Geneva-based NGO Displacement Solutions’s associated Peninsula Principles—reveals that comarcal status plays a key role in safeguarding existing expressions of autonomy along both dimensions. In terms of governance, comarcal status allows communities to initiate calls for relocation, facilitates free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), and legitimizes requests for financing. With regards to culture, comarcal status has affirmed Guna desires to remain in situ, though has largely been insufficient in preserving traditional housing customs and expanding livelihoods. This conclusion also demarcates a different relationship between the Guna and the Panamanian state as compared to other contexts of Indigenous relocation in the face of climate change, such as the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw of Louisiana, United States. The thesis concludes with recommendations regarding the development of a national climate mobility strategy, the inclusion of cultural considerations in community construction projects, and the integration of local knowledge into scientific data collection and habitability assessments.

This thesis examines Serbia’s Jadar Project, a contentious lithium mining initiative led by Rio Tinto in the Jadar Valley, as a critical case study of Serbia’s struggle to balance economic development, environmental sustainability, and geopolitical pressures within the global green transition. The research question guiding this study is: How does Serbia navigate the competing demands of economic development, environmental sustainability, and geopolitical pressures in its approach to lithium mining, particularly through the Jadar Project? The central argument asserts that the Jadar Project exemplifies the contradictions of green capitalism, wherein core economies, such as the European Union (EU), externalize environmental and social costs to semi-peripheral states like Serbia, prioritizing economic and geopolitical interests over local sustainability. The study employs an interdisciplinary, multi-scalar framework integrating Political Ecology, World-Systems Theory, the Critique of Green Capitalism, and Social Movement Theory. Through qualitative methods, including case study analysis, document review, and theoretical synthesis, it examines the project’s local impacts, national policy dynamics, and global implications. Major themes include the tension between economic growth and ecological integrity, the role of grassroots resistance in shaping policy, the influence of EU geopolitics, and the structural inequalities embedded in the green economy. These concepts frame the Jadar Project as a site of contestation between local needs and global demands. Findings reveal Serbia’s limited agency as a semi-peripheral state, evidenced by its policy reversals: the project’s suspension in 2022 following mass protests led by groups like Ne Damo Jadar (“We won’t give up Jadar”), and its reinstatement in 2024 under EU pressure to secure lithium for the Green Deal. Locally, the project threatens water contamination (e.g., Jadar and Drina rivers), land degradation (2,030 hectares), and displacement (350 families), driven by sulfuric acid-based extraction and weak regulatory oversight. Nationally, grassroots movements temporarily disrupted the project by mobilizing resources and leveraging political opportunities, yet their influence was overridden by external imperatives. Globally, comparisons with semi-peripheral states (e.g., Chile, Argentina) and core economies (e.g., Australia) highlight systemic inequities: while Australia enforces stringent standards at Greenbushes, Serbia absorbs disproportionate harm, reinforcing its role as a resource supplier rather than an equal partner. The thesis concludes that green capitalism perpetuates global hierarchies by displacing the green transition’s costs onto semi-peripheral states. It advocates for equitable resource governance and democratic participation to prioritize local sustainability over extractive exploitation, encouraging a reevaluation of global climate policies to prevent the entrenchment of injustice under sustainability’s pretense. The Jadar Project underscores the need for a just transition that dismantles, rather than reinforces, core-periphery disparities.