Congratulations to PhD student Zahid Ali on receiving the prestigious Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. He received a grant for his project "Carbon Futures and Coal Realities: Energy Development in Pakistan's Thar Desert."
Zahid Ali's research investigates Pakistan’s rapid coal development in the Thar Desert under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), despite global imperatives for decarbonization. As the world shifts to cleaner energy, Pakistan is expanding coal infrastructure as a path to economic growth and national sovereignty. The project examines how state actors, engineers, and financiers justify coal investments amid the climate crisis, and how global knowledge systems—such as geological surveys and financial models—support this persistence. It also explores how Indigenous Thari communities, displaced and ecologically affected by these projects, resist and reinterpret coal development through cultural, legal, and environmental claims. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork across government offices, corporate boardrooms, advocacy organizations, and Thari villages, the research explores how energy infrastructures mediate power, governance, and contested futures. This project challenges linear energy transition narratives by emphasizing “energy persistence”—how fossil fuels continue to shape developmental ideologies in the Global South. By drawing from the anthropology of energy, infrastructure, and the state, the research highlights the entanglement of postcolonial governance, global finance, and ecological transformation. Ultimately, it offers a critical account of how marginalized communities navigate and contest extractive futures, contributing to broader conversations on environmental justice, climate politics, and South-South geopolitical alignments.