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The ecological processes underpinning commodity production have been largely overlooked by theories of social regulation and governance. Conventional applications of regulation theory, for example, often reduce the complex interactions between the environment and processes of accumulation to an homogenous surface on which the institutions of social regulation are inscribed. By contrast, this paper...
Pro-poor water engineering aims to deliver water services to individuals and communities in a manner that yields obvious and significant net-benefits to the poorest people. Technology transfer in the field of pro-poor water engineering has too often been seen as one-way (north to south), with industrialised nations exporting their supposedly superior technologies and organisational priorities to the...
Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that al Qaeda sympathizers were using an obscure gemstone commodity known as tanzanite to raise funds for terrorist activities. Despite subsequent disclaimers by the US State Department, this allegation effectively marked tanzanite as a “conflict gem,” and set in motion a complex...
With neoliberal reforms and the growth of multinational mining investment in developing countries, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become notable (and debatable) for its potential to fill a social and environmental governance gap. As yet, there has been limited analytical attention paid to the political struggles and power dynamics that get reflected through specific CSR guidelines and their...
This article explores the relationship between science and the extension of colonial power through an examination of the rise of the Northern Rhodesian (later, Zambian) Copperbelt in the 1930s. The rise of the Copperbelt rested in part on scientific prospecting operations perhaps unparalleled in size and scope in the world at the time. These operations brought new ‘scientific’ prospecting techniques...
After prolonged economic decline, Africa is being seen widely as having turned the corner. Relatively high rates of economic growth have been witnessed since the early 2000s, in part due to the China-driven global commodity boom. In addition to older established enclaves, investment has flown into new mineral reserves. Zambia’s North Western Province (NWP)—now popularly called the New Copperbelt—has...
In May 2010 the proposed Bickham coal mine near the Pages River in the Upper Hunter region of Australia was formally rejected because of its potentially deleterious impacts on hydrology and the likely negative impacts on a valuable thoroughbred breeding region. In this paper we focus on the ‘psychoterratic’ mental states of topophilia and solastalgia and highlight how people’s intimate personal relationships...
The recent emergence of the Fairtrade certification of gold in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa promises a radical new direction for the environmental governance of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). In doing so, it aims to tackle the longstanding environment and development challenges of the sector which mainstream policy has failed to alleviate. The move towards more responsible ASM practices...
This study examines the political uses of “conflict diamond” discourse in global debates about commodity certification and socially responsible mining in Zimbabwe. Engaging critical literature on “conflict-free” corporate branding initiatives, the study focuses on representations of conflict in Marange, in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands. In 2006, a diamond rush in Marange drew in tens of thousands of...
The right to food is increasingly evoked by a range of actors, but there is not sufficient critical analysis of distinct interpretations of what this right means in practice. Through examination of a mineral extraction project with agricultural implications, this article explores diverse human rights narratives and illuminates associated corporate efforts to minimize recognition of food as a fundamental...
South Gobi province is at the center of Mongolia’s mining boom, where companies began exporting minerals over dirt-track roads in the early 2000s. This paper examines recent controversies surrounding road dust near the Oyu Tolgoi copper–gold mine, the so-called coal road from Tavan Tolgoi mines, and the Chinese border. At the time of the research, local residents, particularly nomadic herders, were...
Water conflicts are a significant issue in northern Chile, especially when linked to neoliberal economic activities – mainly mining – on the lands of indigenous peoples. In fact, political ecology tends to accentuate the ways in which their communities unite around a water-based territoriality and/or cultural politics when faced with ‘threatening’ outsiders. However, internal differentiation has become...
This review article offers a critique of the social license concept, and of the debate surrounding it. In order to best understand what is meant by “social license”, one must look beyond its constituent terminology and instead examine the core drivers of contemporary mining practice. The working assumption inside the industry is that if disapproval becomes too intense there is a chance that members...
China’s economic growth in recent decades has been accompanied by vigorous growth in energy production and consumption. This article analyzes geographical shifts in the production of energy resources using a relational frontier concept. The frontier concept is deployed to examine the forces driving energy resource production to territories in China’s west. Through an understanding of frontiers as...
The expansion of resource extractivism in Latin America in the last decade has been related to previous neoliberalisation processes, which opened-up mineral exploitation to transnational firms and granted investors favourable conditions. Extractivism, however, expanded equally (or more) in countries which have undertaken “counter-neoliberal” reform—as it is most clearly the case for Evo Morales’s...
The ownership and activism of institutional investors in large publicly traded gold mining companies have re-oriented business strategies toward maximising value for shareholders. This paper examines these strategies in the context of the commodity boom (and bust) of 2003–2015. A study of the activities of some of the largest gold mining companies reveals a re-alignment of their operations to satisfy...
The global extraction of minerals is commonly located in areas populated by indigenous people; and while conflicts between multinational corporations and local activists and indigenous people are widespread today, the understanding of their dynamics are lacking. The Swedish government’s encouragement to an expanding mining industry has caused resistance due to environmental and social implications,...
Academics across disciplines are increasingly employing political ecology lenses to unpack conflicts related to resource extraction. Yet, an area that remains under-researched and under-theorised is how environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are embedded in politics and imagined as sites of power relations. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Zimbabwe engaging small-scale gold miners, EIA consultants...
Multiple use forests in the United States take on different meanings for people who live, work, and recreate on the land. Forests are imbued with often contested visions of what the landscape is and ought to be, and this is related to the various knowledges, values, and experiences of users who project social, political, and economic power. The resources and amenities of multiple use public lands...
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