Inverting the impacts: Mining, conservation and sustainability claims near the Rio Tinto/QMM ilmenite mine in Southeast Madagascar

A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters

“…A growing number of states are drawing up national policies for the enabling and regulation of BDO, accompanied by nascent regional policy such as the European Union's No Net Loss initiative (EU NNLi). This combination of emergent national and regional policy frameworks with the participation, via BBOP, of multinational corporate and financial institutions in BDO guidelines and design, has placed BDO centre stage as a neoliberal conservation technology with the potential to stimulate 'green growth' on a global scale (see, Carver and Sullivan, 2017;Seagle, 2012;Sullivan, 2013a;Benabou, 2014;Hannis, 2015, 2017), even though it has proven hard in practice to legislate for BDO policy at national and regional levels of government (see Brock, 2018;Carver, 2017;Carver andSullivan, 2017, 2018;Lockhart and Rea, 2019).…”

“…In Germany, Brock (2018) and Brock and Dunlap (2018) show how the increasingly 'flexibilised' provision of habitat compensation payments emerging in connection with the EU NNLi becomes part of strategies for legitimizing and extending coal mining at Europe's 'largest hole', the coal mine in the Hambach forest operated by German electric utilities company RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk). Seagle (2012) and Kill and Franchi (2016) demonstrate that Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) procedures for biodiversity offsetting proposals in developing country contexts may be less than perfect, leading to both displacement and loss of access to important resources. Sullivan (2013b: 87) has shown that even areas under national park protection may be mined if considered strategically important by governments, with offsetting mobilized (rhetorically at least) to make extraction 'green', even when the mineral concerned is uranium with all the present, future and carbon-intensive damage this implies (Barnum, 2015;Churchill, 2003;Jensen, 2006;Sovacool, 2008).…”

“…Jobs are temporary, part-time and deliver only a portion of the imagined expectations raised in neoliberal environmental governance proposals (Aguilar-Støen, 2015;Duffy, 2002;Fletcher and Neves, 2012;Fletcher et al, 2016Holmes, 2014;Igoe, 2010;Roth and Dressler, 2012). Social development projects are limited and/or tokenistic in relation to broader societal transformation (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012;Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2014;Holmes, 2007Holmes, , 2014Marijnen and Verweijen, 2016;Matulis, 2015;Rotz, 2014;Seagle, 2012;West et al, 2006). Collective benefits tend to transform into exacerbation of income-inequality, related to elite capture of benefits, clientelism and the way companies approach local 'leaders ' and/or 'political authorities' (Aguilar-Støen, 2015;Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012;Duffy, 2002;Hunsberger et al, 2017;Osborne, 2013;Sullivan 2002Sullivan , 2003.…”

La esterilización del eco-criticismo: del desarrollo sostenible al capitalismo verde

“…A parallel case of commercial speculative penetration into the environmentalist world under the cover of green economy is the landing of the mining industry amidst the large environmentalist NGOs (MacDonald 2010): being the 2010 agreement between RioTinto and IUCN a spectacular milestone (Kapelus 2002;Seagle 2012). Environmental NGO's, across their history, have had to deal with the temptation of collaborating with the very agents that promote environmental degradation: mitigation or prohibition (Macekura 2016).…”

Nodes of resistance to green grabbing: a political ecology

“…The growing literature on the subject suggests that this is a problem of global scale that has mainly arisen during a historical period when free market, neo-liberal policies have dominated the world economy (Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones, 2012;Corson, 2011Corson, , 2012Corson and MacDonald, 2012;Wolford, 2010;Leach, Fairhead and Fraser, 2012;Cardenas, 2012;Benjaminsin and Bryceson, 2012;Gardner, 2012;Nalepa and Bauer, 2012;Neimark, 2012;Seagle, 2012;Ybarra, 2012;Snijders, 2012;MaCarthy, Vel and Afiff, 2012;Tienhaara, 2012;Baletti, 2012;Filer, 2012;Kelly, 2011;Nelson, 2010;Dressler et al, 2010;Goldman, 2011;Castree, 2008Castree, , 2010. A neoliberal view of the environment prescribes the commoditization of nearly all aspects of the natural environment -essentially rendering nature for sale -along with the new institutions and relationships that have accompanied this transition toward laissez-faire economics and politics (Buchler and Dressler, 2012;Leach, 2012).…”