Socio-economic impacts of unconventional fossil fuel extraction: a discussion and conceptual model (original) (raw)

Debating Unconventional Energy: Social, Political, and Economic Implications

Annual Review of Environment and Resources

The extraction of unconventional oil and gas-from shale rocks, tight sand, and coalbed formations-is shifting the geographies of fossil fuel production, with complex consequences. Following Jackson et al.'s (1) natural science survey of the environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing, this review examines social science literature on unconventional energy. After an overview of the rise of unconventional energy, the review examines energy economics and geopolitics, community mobilization, and state and private regulatory responses. Unconventional energy requires different frames of analysis than conventional energy because of three characteristics: increased drilling density, low-carbon and "clean" energy narratives of natural gas, and distinct ownership and royalty structures. This review points to the need for an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing the resulting dynamic, multilevel web of relationships that implicate land, water, food, and climate. Furthermore, the review highlights how scholarship on unconventional energy informs the broader energy landscape and contested energy futures. 2.1 Review in Advance first posted online on June 21 7. (Changes may still occur before final publication online and in print.) Changes may still occur before final publication online and in print

Resource-making controversies: knowledge, anticipatory politics and economization of unconventional fossil fuels

Progress in Human Geography, 2019

Advancing relational accounts of 'resource-making' processes by deploying insights from science and technology studies, this article outlines crucial new lines of inquiry for geographical research on unconventional fossil fuels. The exploitation of various carbon-rich substitutes for hydrocarbons has rapidly expanded over the last two decades, to become a highly contentious issue which augments scientific dissensus and generates new collective engagements with the subsurface. The article invites geographers to examine the epistemically and politically transformative potential of such resource-making controversies in terms of reconfiguring: the production of geoscientific knowledge, anticipation of post-conventional energy systems, and temporal strategies of (de)economizing extractive futures.

Local communities in the energy market: A place-based perspective on unconventional hydrocarbon development

2015 12th International Conference on the European Energy Market (EEM), 2015

This paper discusses the recent events and trajectory of Unconventional Hydrocarbon (UH) development in Europe and the United States, contrasting the 'high-politics' debate on UH with the 'place-based' perspectives of locally impacted communities. The unitary frames that dominate ofcial political debates, industry responses and mainstream media texts, bifurcate UH development as an economy versus environment issue and are sharply contrasted with the more integrated reality of the local simultaneous need to make a living and have a healthy life, both physically and socially. Not being able to situate themselves firmly in either camp (economy/environment), local community members tend to experience the controversy from a conflicted disposition involving both optimism and pessimism and hopes and fears surrounding money, health and community well-being. In this paper, we articulate the more nuanced and conflicted perspectives of "local communities in the energy market" in Europe that challenge the more politicized dichotomy on UH development.

Global extractive imperative: from local resistance to unburnable fuels

International Development Planning Review, 2022

Since the early 2000s, there has been an 'extractive imperative' in Latin America that made intensified extraction the policy solution to all socioeconomic challenges. More recently, a similar consensus has emerged in a diversity of political, economic and geographical contexts-such as Turkey, India and the United States-that makes it possible to speak of a 'global extractive imperative'. The imperative is especially evident in settings also characterised by authoritarian neoliberalism and the burden of resistance against extractivism is suffered overwhelmingly by marginalised communities at extractive frontiers. Emerging efforts to declare a share of existing reserves of fossil fuels 'unburnable' would not only help make progress towards tackling the climate crisis, it would also broaden the societal bases of societal struggles against capitalism's extractive excesses.

2009 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. ‘Earth System Governance: People, Places and the Planet’. Biofuels and Global Change: The Need for a Multilateral Governance Framework

2013

The demand for biofuels has expanded rapidly worldwide due to increased interests in energy security, climate change mitigation, and rural development. The increasing production of and trade in biofuels have had immense consequences worldwide, e.g. massive land-use changes impacting on forests, biodiversity and climate, and important socio-economic impacts such as land evictions, competition with food production, and food insecurity. Even though individually each of these issues has received attention in the literature, biofuel governance discussions remain rare. This article identifies this gap through a broad and systematic literature review, which adds to a more rapid policy review that examines the existing biofuel governance framework at the international level. Our examination reveals that governance is scattered in many bilateral and some supranational frameworks. However, a structured framework is seen as important because: (a) the driving forces for biofuels are largely glo...

Beyond Oil Extraction: Building Lasting Relationships between Oil Producing Firms and Host Communities through Sustainable Energy Initiatives

Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management , 2023

In a world grappling with climate change, resource depletion, and increasing poverty due to economic imbalances, the old model of resource extraction is not sustainable. Furthermore, building sustainable and lasting relationships between the oil-producing firms and communities could be considered a more sustainable option for energy initiatives. Hence, the objective of this paper is to explore the post-extraction welfare of host communities of oil-producing companies in line with the challenges of resource depletion, climate change, the imperativeness of renewable energy, environmental concerns as well as social and economic benefits of adopting renewable energy using primary and secondary sources of data. The study proposes solutions to these challenges as well as highlighting the role of different stakeholders in this process.

Energy Consequences and Conflicts across the Global Countryside: North American Agricultural Perspectives

Forum on Public Policy

Ethnographic and interpretive policy analysis of four different geographic locations where agriculture and unconventional oil and gas development overlap spatially and temporally across North America is used to highlight some of the rural, place-based consequences and conflicts resulting from regional and national energy politics. The analysis focuses on ways that family livestock farmers are currently responding to and being transformed by local, national and regional unconventional energy development policies and regulations across an emerging global countryside.

Mediating Energy Resources Development and Environmental Concerns

Carbon and Climate Law Review, 2022

This article examines two overreaching dimensions that represent the initial step towards the energy transition in the context of oil and gas development. It is agreed that the problems facing the climate system are caused by human activity, and oil and gas production plays a particular role. Therefore, it appears important to consider the dimension related to the integration of environmental standards as the initial step of the ecological transition from the production of energy from fossil-fuel sources. This study is then based on the development of legislation in sub-Saharan African countries, which illustrate perfectly how new constraints are imposed on an activity that was originally a profit-driven activity and is now moving towards greater environmental preservation. In this sense, the first part of our article focuses on the common ground of environmental protection standards in oil and gas production. This is what we call the environmental protection standards in oil and gas production. The second part of the article analyses the reconciliation of soft law standards, which are of legal significance or the power of hard law through the legislative process, and on the liability for environmental harm in the various legislations.

Differentiation, materiality, and power: Towards a political economy of fossil fuels

Energy Research & Social Science, 2018

Current Political Science approaches to the role of energy and fossil fuels in international relations are overwhelmingly based on two widely disseminated, but unhelpful practices: the artificial subsuming of other fossil fuels to oil, and the perception of energy power as state-centered influence. The issue of the differences between various fossil fuels has not been dealt with explicitly, yet it has key implications for the way in which energy is translated into power. On the basis of a structured comparison between the three most commonly used fossil fuelsoil, natural gas and coalthis article compares their key physical characteristics in order to understand how these affect secondary features (such as those having to do with and transportability, obstructability, size and location of typical markets, type of processing required, cartel possibilities, and substitutability), all of which affect relationships between actors and the ability to use energy as means of constitutive and relational power.