Conflicts over extractivist policy and the forest frontier in Central America

Central America is characterized by an asymmetric forest transition in which net deforestation is a product of both forest loss and patches of forest resurgence. Forest loss is also associated with rights violations. We explore the extent to which extractive industry and infrastructure investments create pressure on forest resources, community rights and livelihoods. Drivers of this investment are identified, in particular: constitutional, legislative and regulatory reforms; energy policies; new financial flows; and ideas of development emphasizing the centrality of infrastructure in combining geographical integration and economic growth. We discuss forms of contentious action that have emerged in response to these pressures, asking how far and in what ways this contention has elicited changes in the policies that govern investment and extractive industry, and how far such changes might reduce pressure on Central America's remaining forest cover. The paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing relationships among contention, policy change and the resilience of policy changes

Resource extraction and infrastructure threaten forest cover and community rights

Mineral and hydrocarbon extraction and infrastructure are increasingly significant drivers of forest loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and threats to the rights of forest communities in forested areas of Amazonia, Indonesia, and Mesoamerica. Projected investments in these sectors suggest that future threats to forests and rights are substantial, particularly because resource extraction and infrastructure reinforce each other and enable population movements and agricultural expansion further into the forest. In each region, governments have made framework policy commitments to national and cross-border infrastructure integration, increased energy production, and growth strategies based on further exploitation of natural resources. This reflects political settlements among national elites that endorse resource extraction as a pathway toward development. Regulations that protect forests, indigenous and rural peoples’ lands, and conservation areas are being rolled back or are under threat. Small-scale gold mining has intensified in specific locations and also has become a driver of deforestation and degradation. Forest dwellers’ perceptions of insecurity have increased, as have documented homicides of environmental activists. To explain the relationships among extraction, infrastructure, and forests, this paper combines a geospatial analysis of forest loss overlapped with areas of potential resource extraction, interviews with key informants, and feedback from stakeholder workshops. The increasing significance of resource extraction and associated infrastructure as drivers of forest loss and rights violations merits greater attention in the empirical analyses and conceptual frameworks of Sustainability Science

Resistindo ao desenvolvimento neocolonial: a luta do povo de Andalgalá contra projetos megamineiros

A América Latina vem experimentando uma nova era de declarada fé dos governos no mito do desenvolvimento, em articulação com a expansão de políticas extrativistas exportadoras em um contexto de renovada dependência. A face mais dramática do extrativismo na região tem sido a crescente presença de corporações mineiras transnacionais apoiadas por governos nacionais e regionais e por instituições internacionais financeiras e de apoio ao desenvolvimento, e intensamente resistidas por movimentos sociais populares. Neste artigo apresentamos o caso de Andalgalá (uma pequena cidade na Província de Catamarca, na Argentina) e as lutas do povo contra corporações mineiras transnacionais e seus aliados. Na tradição da Filosofia da Libertação e do método ana-dialético de Dussel, nos engajamos com o que tem sido denominado "comunidades argentinas do NÃO", expressando sua oposição a formas neocoloniais de desenvolvimento e gestão. Neste artigo estamos especificamente interessados em compreender como dois dispositivos gerencialistas usados pelas corporações mineiras, responsabilidade social corporativa (RSC) e pactos de governança, impactam a luta do povo. Acima de tudo, este artigo oferece instantâneos de batalhas na linha de frente do extrativismo. Esperamos ter dado voz àquelas pessoas que normalmente não são ouvidas, criando um espaço para suas visões sobre um tipo diferente de desenvolvimento.</jats:p

Mining, movements and sustainable development: Concepts for a framework

Mining disrupts: it ruptures the boundary between the surface and the sub-surface, it upsets pre-existing modes of living on the surface, it changes biogeochemical, social and economic flows across surfaces, and it transforms imaginations of the future. Mining not only moves mountains, it also moves people – physically, emotionally, politically and economically. Some people leave, some refuse to get out of the way, some carry on, some stay but build new livelihoods, and others arrive in pursuit of the livelihoods made possible by this particular form of development. Development also disrupts: it modifies modes of living and social organization, it alters relations between humans and nature, it deepens the integration of places into broader flows of finance and ideas, and it shifts ideas about the future. Development is also implicated in the forced, voluntary and induced movement of people. Analytically, mining and development are therefore not dissimilar. This paper works from this similarity to suggest concepts for thinking about the relationships between mining, movement and development. These concepts are drawn from literature in Human Geography, Rural Territorial Development and Development Studies. It then uses these concepts to frame the relationships between mining and sustainable development

Actores y ambientalismos: Continuidades &amp; cambios en los conflictos socio-ambientales en el Perú

Este artículo identifica cinco tipos de ambientalismos que están presentes en los conflictos mineros en el Perú: el conservacionista, el nacionalista-populista, el de defensa de las formas de vida, el de justicia socio-ambiental y el ecologismo profundo. Se sugiere que cada ambientalismo conlleva diferentes salidas a los conflictos ambientales: la compensación en unos casos o el debate público abierto y franco en otros. Es esta segunda salida la que promovería un fortalecimiento de la democracia. La experiencia histórica sugiere que muchas instituciones del estado de bienestar han nacido a raíz de los conflictos sociales. En este sentido los conflictos pueden verse no como problemas a resolver en el corto plazo sino como motores que empujan procesos de transformación institucional. The authors identify five types of environmentalism currently visible in mining conflicts in Peru. These are: conservationist, nationalist-populist, livelihood based, environmental justice, and deep ecological. This article suggests that different environmentalisms lead to different ways out of existing conflicts: some of these emphasize practices of compensation while others suggest the need for open and frank public debate. This second pathway would promote democratic strengthening. Historical experience suggests that many of the institutions of the welfare state have emerged as a consequence of social conflict. In this sense, conflicts can be seen not as problems that have to be resolved quickly but rather as motors that drive institutional transformations