The Threat That Has Not (Yet) Happened: Anticipation, Values, and Imagined Petroleum Futures in East Greenland

The Threat That Has Not (Yet) Happened: Anticipation, Values, and Imagined Petroleum Futures in East Greenland

Authors:
Jeanne Gherardi, UVSQ, Jean-Paul Vanderlinden, UVSQ

Abstract (working draft):
How do communities evaluate a future that has not yet materialised? This paper examines the emergence of public deliberation surrounding prospective petroleum exploration in the Jameson Land Basin, East Greenland, where renewed industrial interest intersects with broader debates on sovereignty, economic development, environmental responsibility, and Arctic geopolitics. Rather than analysing the impacts of extraction itself, we focus on the anticipatory phase during which petroleum development remains a possibility rather than a reality.
Building on the concepts of local terminal risks and moral grammars, we argue that anticipated transformations create moments of axiological disclosure, in which communities articulate the principles, values, and ethical orientations through which possible futures are evaluated. The paper draws upon multiple empirical corpora, including ethnographic observations, local public debate, social media discussions, press coverage, and industry communications, to reconstruct the normative architectures underlying competing interpretations of petroleum development.

Our analysis shows that disagreement is rarely structured around a simple opposition between supporters and opponents of extraction. Instead, actors frequently invoke shared principles - such as community continuity, autonomy, or economic security - while assigning them different priorities and translating them into contrasting ethical commitments. The controversy therefore concerns less whether the future of Ittoqqortoormiit matters than how that future ought to be imagined, secured, and enacted.

By shifting attention from the consequences of extraction to the social life of its anticipation, the paper contributes to emerging debates on resource frontiers, anticipation studies, Arctic governance, and the empirical study of values under conditions of profound uncertainty.