Mining, Colonial Legacies, and Neoliberalism: A Political Ecology of Health Knowledge Minerıa, legados coloniales y neoliberalismo: una ecologıa polıtica del conocimiento en salud

Abstract

Scholarship on the health impacts of resource extraction displays prominent gaps and apparent corporate and neocolonial footprints that raise questions about how science is produced. We analyze production of knowledge, on the health impacts of mining, carried out in relation to the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI), a university-based organization with substantial extractive industry involvement and links to Canada’s mining-dominated foreign policy. We use a “political ecology of knowledge” framework to situate CIRDI in the context of neoliberal capitalism, neocolonial sustainable development discourses, and mining industry corporate social responsibility techniques. We then document the interactions of specific health disciplinary conventions and knowledges within CIRDI-related research and advocacy efforts involving a major Canadian global health organization. This analysis illustrates both accommodation and resistance to large-scale political economic structures and the need to directly confront the global North governments and sectors pushing extractive-led neoliberal development globally. Minería, legados coloniales y neoliberalismo: una ecología política del conocimiento en salud Resumen La investigación sobre los impactos en la salud de la extracción de recursos naturales delata brechas importantes y huellas corporativas y neocoloniales, que plantean dudas acerca de cómo se produce la ciencia. Analizamos la producción de conocimiento sobre los impactos en la salud de la minería en relación con el Instituto Canadiense de Desarrollo y Recursos Internacionales (CIRDI, siglas en inglés), una organización universitaria que cuenta con participación sustancial de la industria extractiva y tiene vínculos con la política exterior de Canadá, la cual es dominada por intereses mineros. Utilizamos un marco de "ecología política del conocimiento" para situar a CIRDI en el contexto del capitalismo neoliberal, los discursos neocoloniales de desarrollo sostenible y las técnicas de responsabilidad social corporativa de la industria minera. Luego, documentamos las interacciones entre los conocimientos y convenciones disciplinarias de salud dentro de los esfuerzos de investigación y promoción relacionados con CIRDI que involucran a una importante organización canadiense de salud global. Este análisis muestra tanto la complacencia como la resistencia a las estructuras políticas económicas a gran escala, y la necesidad de confrontar directamente a los gobiernos y sectores del Norte global que manejan el desarrollo neoliberal impulsado por la extracción a nivel mundial.

Corporate activities that influence population health: A scoping review and qualitative synthesis to develop the HEALTH-CORP typology

“…They were reported to engage in a wide breadth of argumentative strategies to challenge proposed health policies. For example, corporations suggested that policies were redundant, conflicting, or misaligned with other regulations or international norms [45,49,52–54,69,75]. Arguments about the impacts of the policy on the economy, employment, equity, and poverty were also common [19,20,31,52–55,63,65,67,71,74,76–80], and economic arguments were considered to be particularly persuasive in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) [19,67,74].…”

“…Corporations were accused of promoting excessive consumption of harmful products, for example, by engaging in intensive and highly-resourced marketing campaigns that normalize their consumption (e.g., portraying alcohol as part of a normal everyday routine [84]) [12,18,36,42,47,51,63,65,72–74,84–99]. They were reported to influence the public debate about product related-risks by reframing and creating uncertainty about the causes of health issues (e.g., focusing on genetic causes of cancer as opposed to alcohol consumption [100]) [18,20,27,28,31,32,34,36,37,40–42,44,46,48,50–52,56–58,64,65,75,76,79,81,101–104] and acquiring or funding media companies, making it more difficult for public health messages to be heard [20,45,48,49,65,72]. Though commercial entities promoted education as the solution to managing health-related risks [20,45,51,58,66,68,74,80], they were also accused of attempting to shape the public’s understanding of health issues by providing educational resources that promoted their products and/or downplayed the associated health risks (e.g., alcohol [61,62]) [19,20,36,51,63,65,68,80,84,100].…”

“…Similarly, commercial actors were accused of promoting products to health professionals by, for example, delivering educational initiatives to health professionals (e.g., the breast-milk substitute (BMS) industry's funding of medical student retreats [42]) [18][19][20]49,51,65,80] and influencing the development of clinical standards (e.g., BMS industry's funding of clinical guidelines for the diagnosis of cows-milk protein allergy [91]) [48,78,91,97,105]. Corporations were also reported to influence the academic debate and the production of science by, for example, by funding universities, think tanks, and scientific conferences, providing scientific awards, developing industry research institutes and suppressing research that is not aligned with their interests (e.g., failing to publish research on health harms of products) [19,20,32,42,46,48,49,51,64,[66][67][68]72,75,80].…”

“…Overall, CSR was perceived critically and was seen as being closely related to political practices and preference and perception shaping practices. That is, CSR efforts were seen as attempts to distract from corporate harms [12,18,27,44,48,75,107], shift blame [68,75], enhance brand image and credibility [19,36,44,67,84], influence policymaking [19,37,44,48,68,71], and/or preemptively address threats to business practices [55]. In some cases, these strategic uses of CSR were described by corporations in leaked company documents [48].…”

Encourage resource governance: Responding disaster threats behind environmentally friendly claims at the Tumpang Pitu gold mine

“…The rise of the mining industry raises issues about the agenda of neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and capitalism (Brisbois et al, 2021). The importance of a nuanced understanding of the social power relations that underlie the process of resource exploitation in the neoliberal turnover of capitalism (Adduci, 2013).…”