The violence of Net-Zero: Towards pluriversal engagements with ecology and place

Abstract

This Speaking Out essay critically interrogates the hegemony of net-zero as the dominant framework guiding climate and environmental governance. We argue that net-zero is not a neutral technical climate mitigation target but a world-making practice that restructures ecological relations through calculative, managerial, and market logics. Drawing on political ontology and pluriversal thinking, we conceptualise net-zero as enacting interconnected forms of economic, material, temporal, and epistemic violence that displace responsibility, legitimise extractivism, and marginalise alternative lifeworlds. As net-zero increasingly shapes how sustainability is organised – also extending into biodiversity and conservation domains – we call on organisation and management scholars to scrutinise its assumptions and engage more deeply with its political and ontological consequences.