The last decade and a half has witnessed a dramatic growth in mining activity in many developing countries. This article reviews these recent trends and describes the debates and conflicts they have triggered. The authors review evidence regarding debates on the resource curse and the possibility of an extraction‐led pathway to development. They then describe the different types of resistance and social mobilization that have greeted mineral expansion at a range of geographical scales, and consider how far these protests have changed the relationships between mining and political economic change. The conclusions address how far such protests might contribute to an ‘escape’ from the resource curse, and consider implications for research and policy agendas.
Recent years have seen increasingly aggressive expansion of extractive industry in the Andean-Amazonian region. Reminiscent of the film Avatar, this expansion drives conflicts over land, territory and political control of space. This expansion is occurring in both overtly neoliberal regimes and in self-consciously postneoliberal ones. This essay documents the convergence among the different regimes' ways of governing extraction and socio-environmental conflicts. We draw on Executive level statements and policy positions as well as on statements by indigenous peoples' organisations. Among the reasons for this apparent convergence are: long-standing resource curse effects; the need to generate resources to finance social policy instruments that are integral to the governments' overall political strategies; power and information asymmetries among companies and governments; and international relations. The convergences among Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru regarding the governance of extraction and the conflicts that it catalyses suggests the need for great critical caution before using the terminology of post-neoliberalism.
The last decade and a half has witnessed a dramatic growth in mining activity in many developing countries. This article reviews these recent trends and describes the debates and conflicts they have triggered. The authors review evidence regarding debates on the resource curse and the possibility of an extraction-led pathway to development. They then describe the different types of resistance and social mobilization that have greeted mineral expansion at a range of geographical scales, and consider how far these protests have changed the relationships between mining and political economic change. The conclusions address how far such protests might contribute to an 'escape' from the resource curse, and consider implications for research and policy agendas.
SignificanceWhile infrastructure expansion has been broadly investigated as a driver of deforestation, the impacts of extractive industry and its interactions with infrastructure investment on forest cover are less well studied. These challenges are urgent given growing pressure for infrastructure investment and resource extraction. We use geospatial and qualitative data from Amazonia, Indonesia, and Mesoamerica to explain how infrastructure and extractive industry lead directly and indirectly to deforestation, forest degradation, and increasingly precarious rights for forest peoples. By engaging in explicit analyses of community rights, the politics of development policy, and institutions for transparency, anticorruption, and the defense of human rights, Sustainability Science could be more effective in examining deforestation and related climate-change impacts and in contributing to policy innovation.
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