Resistance to Mining. A Review (original) (raw)
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The Right to Nature, 2019
In this article, Florea and Rhoades draw on participative field observations from two long-running anti-mining struggles – the mobilization aiming to protect Roşia Montană, in the Apuseni Mountains of Romania, from open-pit gold extraction using cyanide, and the mobilization of indigenous communities in the North Western Colombian Amazon aiming to protect their traditional territories from a Canadian multinational’s attempts to extract gold. Conceived as a dialogue between the two authors, the article sets the frame for an ongoing questioning upon the limits and possibilities of action for social and environmental justice, in the global context of neoliberal grab on human and non-human nature.
Mining and Peasant Societies Resistance: Political Ecology Perspective
The exploitation of mining resources in various regions in Indonesia often has environmental, social, and economic impacts. These problems underlie the societies' rejection of the surrounding mining activities. Likewise, the resistance of peasant societies in the Konawe Kepulauan Regency was vociferously voiced from 2015 to 2019. On this basis, this article aims to analyze the dynamics, strategies, and rationality of the resistance of peasant societies in the Konawe Kepulauan Regency. Methodologically, the research approach used in this study is a qualitative approach through discourse analysis. Data was collected by various news in the mass media from 2015 to 2019. Based on the results of the study it can be concluded two basic things. First, the dynamics of the resistance of the peasant society shows the pattern of daily resistance by involving a coalition of civil society as its strategy. Resistance is carried out in the form of joint demonstrations by unity student action and through advocacy by legal aid agencies. Second, the rationality of the resistance of the peasant societies in the Konawe Kepulauan Regency reflects the socioecological and socio-juridical rationality based on the ethics of subsistence by the principle of safety first.
Politikon, 2020
South Africa's adopted neoliberalism framework since democracy has spearheaded industrial development such as mining and has contributed to eroding civil society formations for environmental justice. Although civil society has acted against mining developments, such actions can be uncoordinated due to neoliberal development influences. Neoliberalism can work to reconfigure the geographies of environmental justice struggles contributing to a fragmented 'micro-politics'. This paper presents viewpoints from key stakeholders to examine civil society opposition to a mining proposal in rural Fuleni, KwaZulu-Natal to secure environmental justice and the campaign strategies used. The paper highlights that for environmental justice struggles against mining to be successful and effective against domination, requires communities linking up struggles and beyond isolated campaigns, sharing experiences and designing common narratives for strategies to combat mining and the broader neoliberal ideology producing unjust outcomes. This also requires that campaigners include the local youth in discussions on and alternatives to mining or run the risk of destabilising mining struggles.
Environmental justice through the lens of mining conflicts
Rodríguez-Labajos, B., Özkaynak, B. 2017. Environmental justice through the lens of mining conflicts. Geoforum 84: 245-250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.06.021 Regardless of what is driving the mining investments, mining operations occur as localised events that are connected to developments and influences at different scales. Critical approaches based on the study of ecological distribution conflicts underline that increased mineral consumption has triggered a wave of socio-environmental conflicts related to extractive industries; both in the global South and in peripheral areas in the North. Looking at these conflicts, it appears that environmental justice emerged not only as a central concern among affected groups and local communities, but also as a framework to organise and link the claims of resistance movements, which are reflected in various ways: as distributional concerns, as demands to respect the human rights to life and health, as insistence on indigenous territorial rights, as claims for the sacredness of nature, and as efforts to introduce alternative visions of—or alternatives to—development. In this special issue of Geoforum, we build on previous efforts to engage with environmental justice, and position ourselves within a dynamic field of research that combines the environmental justice literature of the North with the environmentalisms of the South. We aim to further underpin new conceptual developments that are arising in the environmental justice framework, which in many instances are initially put forth by activists and later taken up by academics and policymakers . To this end, we focus particularly on mining conflicts, and refer to the specific claims that environmental resistance movements have used against mining activities at exploration sites. By uncovering what lies beneath perceived environmental injustices in mining operations and understanding how justice concerns may be best addressed, we hope to contribute to efforts toward situating mining conflicts within the global environmental justice movement, supporting the evolution of the environmental justice frame and highlighting the needs of and opportunities for a transition to sustainability.
Just transformations: grassroots struggles for alternative futures, 2023
Notes on Contributors Index The ACKnowl-EJ Project: Who Are We and What Brought Us Together? ACKnowl-EJ was a three-year project funded by UNESCO's International Social Science Council as one of three Transformative Knowledge Networks within their Transformations to Sustainability programme and a broader Future Earth Science programme. ACKnowl-EJ aimed to engage in action and collaborative analysis of the transformative potential of community responses to environmental and social injustices, particularly those framed as extractivism, and alternatives born from resistance. The project was an experiment in co-producing knowledge that could answer the needs of social groups, advocates, citizens and social movements, while supporting communities and movements in their push for change. The network was made up of activist-scholars and activists with ties to academic institutions, nongovernmental organizations, communities and social movements (see Figure 0.2), and drew on work that members were carrying out in India,
How to be heard when nobody wants to listen. Community action against mining in Argentina
Since 2002, Argentina has witnessed a growing number of mining conflicts. While national and provincial governments promote mining as a basis for development, local communities have opposed and acted to prevent it. Between 2003 and 2008, 7 out of 23 provinces banned open-pit metal mining, thus challenging the institutional framework that promotes it. These challenges, moreover, began during a period of high unemployment. Why are communities opposed to an activity that could benefit local development? This article argues that these communities are demanding recognition for local visions of development that are not compatible with mining-and that cannot be adequately accommodated by current decision-making processes.
Towards environmental justice success in mining resistances: An empirical investigation
This report sets out to provide evidence-based support for successful environmental justice (EJ) activism and assess the constituents and outcomes of contemporary socio-environmental mining conflicts by applying a collaborative statistical approach to the political ecology of mining resistances. The empirical evidence covers 346 mining cases from around the world, featured on the EJOLT website as The EJOLT Atlas of Environmental Justice, and is enriched by an interactive discussion of results with activists and experts. In an effort to understand both the general patterns identified in conflicts at hand, and the factors that determine EJ ‘success’ and ‘failure’ from an activist viewpoint, the experiences of EJOs that pursue EJ in mining conflicts are analysed by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The report employs, first, social network analysis to study the nature of the relationships both among corporations involved in the mining activity, on the one hand, and among EJOs resisting against the mining project, on the other. Both sets of conditions and cooperation are then compared to discuss ways to develop a more resilient activist network that can trigger social change and achieve EJ success. Then, multivariate analysis methods are used to examine the defining factors in achieving EJ success and to answer the following research questions: In which case a conflict is more intense? What makes EJ served? When is a disruptive project stopped? Finally, qualitative analysis, based on descriptive statistics, is conducted to investigate factors that configure the perception of success for EJ and incorporate activist knowledge into the theory of EJ. A thorough analysis of the answers given to question “Do you consider the case as an accomplishment for the EJ?” with their respective justifications help us to understand why the resistance movements consider a particular result as an EJ success or failure in the context of a mining conflict. Overall, such analytical exercises, coproduced with activists, should be seen as a source of engaged knowledge creation, which is increasingly being recognised as a pertinent method to inform scientific debate with policy implications. We hope that the findings of this report, which brings past experiences on mining conflicts together, will be insightful and relevant for EJOs. The results and policy recommendations are open to further testing, whenever a better evidence base becomes available.
2008
Brooks World Poverty Institute ISBN : 978-1-906518-32-5 www.manchester.ac.uk/bwpi Abstract Social movements have been viewed as vehicles through which the concerns of poor and marginalised groups are given greater visibility within civil society, lauded for being the means to achieve local empowerment and citizen activism, and seen as essential in holding the state to account and constituting a grassroots mechanism for promoting democracy. However, within development studies little attention has been paid to understanding how social movements can affect trajectories of development and rural livelihood in given spaces, and how these effects are related to movements' internal dynamics and their interaction with the broader environment within which they operate. This paper addresses this theme for the case of social movements protesting contemporary forms of mining investment in Latin America. On the basis of cases from Peru and Ecuador, the paper argues that the presence and nature of social movements has significant influences both on forms taken by extractive industries (in this case mining), and on the effects of this extraction on rural livelihoods. In this sense one can usefully talk about rural development as being co-produced by movements, mining companies and other actors, in particular the state. The terms of this co-production, however, vary greatly among different locations, reflecting the distinct geographies of social mobilisation and of mineral investment, as well as the varying power relationships among the different actors involved.