Extractive economies and public policies: critical perspectives from Latin America (original) (raw)

2023, Handbook on critical political economy and public policy

Mining and extractive industries are usually presented as significant contributors to national economies. Yet, empirical and analytical studies developed throughout the 20th century have revealed the limits and challenges that they must deal with to ensure long-term economic growth. More recently, some works have focused on the territorial aspects and conflicts at the subnational scale, involving specific social groups around extractive projects (Graulau, 2008; Saes & Bisht, 2020; Santos & Milanez, 2020). In this chapter, we argue that despite the risks of resource-based growth, the emergence of neoliberalism and the economic rise of Asia have driven the restructuring of nation-states and public policies, which in turn has deepened the dependence on extractivism in several Latin American countries. This dynamic has resulted in new and complex territorial impacts and conflicts. It presents new challenges to the economic critiques formulated between the 1950s and the 1990s such as structuralism, dependence theory and the resource curse, among others, opening up a space for the construction of new paradigms that sought to complement such critiques as well as question some of their proposed solutions, including the development discourse itself. This chapter is organized into three main parts. We begin by briefly describing the main schools of thought on extractivism and economic development in the 20th century. Then, we address the main issues involving the economic and political context of mining in Latin America at the beginning of the 21st century, providing examples of public policies in the extractive sector. We conclude with a synthesis of new conceptual propositions on 'post-extractivism' and 'post-development', based on recent Latin American intellectual debates. Our analysis is based on our experience as academics with participatory research in extractivism and mining in Brazil and Latin America, as well as in international networks on mining multinationals in Brazil, Mozambique and Canada, of which the Articulação Internacional de Atingidos e Atingidas pela Vale [International Articulation of those Affected by Vale] is a major example. 1 Although focused on Latin America, the debates presented here are applicable to other regions that experience the expansion of the mineral frontier, either to meet the infrastructure demands of emerging countries (Edwards et al., 2014; Rubbers, 2020) or to ensure the energy transition of countries of consolidated industrialization (Bazilian, 2018; Church & Crawford, 2020). In our view, despite the alleged legitimacy of extractive-oriented activities (mainly generated by promises of employment, infrastructure and modernization), the territorial nature of conflicts that emerged from them reveal the limitations of natural resource-based growth, and challenge social movements and academics to rethink the relationship between nature, society and economy.