How can societies move away from a century-old global system based on fossil fuels and the deeply vested economic, financial, and political interests and patterns associated with them? Despite thirty years of international climate negotiations, industrialized countries continue to exploit new fossil fuel reserves. Many countries in the Global South have followed suit and still engage in large new fossil fuel projects with all that that entails, including pollution, social injustice, and debt. Increasingly, however, social and political actors are mobilizing to Leave Fossil Fuels Underground (LFFU).

This book examines the roles played by key actors and the arguments and approaches they employ in promoting the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels. Along with local resistance, it also explores policy initiatives, both national and international, and the financial mechanisms used by actors ranging from social movements to investors and from state to nonstate actors.

In Leaving Fossil Fuels Underground, an international team of well-established authors takes a global perspective and pays special attention to Africa and Latin America, with case studies on South Africa and Ecuador.