Inequalities in mining and oil regions of Andean countries (original) (raw)
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Mining in Latin America: Critical Approaches to The New Extraction
(If you're interested in copies of chapters, please let me know.) The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic expansion and intensification of mineral resource exploitation and development across the global south, especially in Latin America. This shift has brought mining more visibly into global public debates and spurred a great deal of controversy and conflict. This volume assembles new scholarship that provides critical perspectives on these issues. The book marshals original, empirical work from leading social scientists in a variety of disciplines to address a range of questions about the practices of mining companies on the ground, the impacts of mining on host communities, and the responses to mining from communities, civil society and states. The book further explores the global and international causes, consequences and innovations of this new era of mining activity in Latin America. Key issues include the role of Canadian mining companies and their investment in the region, and, to a lesser extent, the role of Chinese mining capital. Several chapters take a regional perspective, while others are based on empirical data from specific countries including Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru.
Regional&Federal Studies, 2019
The transfer of oil and mining revenues to the subnational governments of resource-rich jurisdictions is a common policy aimed at promoting development and reducing local opposition to extraction. In the early 2000s, Peru implemented a radical version of that policy. Peruvian mining regions received fiscal transfers many times greater than the national average during the last commodity boom. The strategy had mixed effects on well-being indicators. These transfers had statistically significant positive effects on economic growth and the rate of school attendance at different ages. In contrast, they did not have a significant impact on poverty reduction or the coverage of other basic services, while being positively correlated with an increase in the income gap between women and men. Overall, the results are not as positive as the promoters had expected. The transfers generated political incentives for local authorities to pursue short-term, clientelistic spending that has reduced their potential benefits.
Social Struggle and the Political Economy of Natural Resource Extraction in Peru
In the period 2002–12, the Peruvian economy almost doubled in size. This growth was mainly the consequence of the commodity boom in these years. The importance of the mining sector for the Peruvian Treasury is politically translated in the immense difficulties Peruvian Governments have in closing the doors to transnational mining corporations. The government of Ollanta Humala actually inserted the fiscal contribution of extractive industries into the cornerstone of its social policies. In Peru, a growing body of literature is emerging regarding mining issues. However, it lacks an analysis of the development of the mining sector in relation to the general workings of capitalism. In this article we analyze the development of mining in Peru from a critical political economy perspective as this enables us to identify the forces that are advancing the capitalist development process as well as the forces of resistance to this development.
Extractive economies and public policies: critical perspectives from Latin America
Handbook on critical political economy and public policy, 2023
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.
Sharing the Riches of the Earth: Democratizing Natural Resource-Led Development
2004
Many developing countries are attempting to use their natural resource endowments – notably oil, natural gas, and minerals such as gold – as the basis for economic growth and development. Recent history, however, indicates that countries that depend heavily on resource extraction do more poorly on a variety of economic indicators, including growth rates, education levels, and income inequality. This is due in significant part to the way in which wealth derived from resource extraction is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, which often misuses these revenues through corruption, poorly planned investments, and other means. This contrasts with other kinds of economic activity, such as agriculture, in which benefits are distributed more widely. Thus, a key to increasing the development and poverty reduction benefit value of resource extraction is breaking elite control of these revenues and increasing public involvement in decision-making related to their use. Doing so would enhance the likelihood that these funds would be employed with greater concern for the needs of the populace. The experiences of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia highlight the importance of increasing distributive justice and public participation in resource revenue distribution and provide insights into how this could be implemented in resource-dependent economies.