Foreword

Abstract

Extract In this book, Federico Demaria discusses a world issue through case studies in India. In particular, he looks at solid waste disposal conflicts that are related to recycling. We could say that he discusses the social and political dimensions of the circular economy. Recycling tends to be always seen as positive, but what are its social and environmental costs? Are we ready to use slaves and pollute local ecosystems in order to close a little the circularity gap? The industrial economy is not circular, it is increasingly entropic. Energy from the photosynthesis of the distant past, fossil fuels, is burned and dissipated. Even without further economic growth the industrial economy would need new supplies of energy and materials extracted from the ‘commodity frontiers’, producing also more waste (including excessive amounts of greenhouse gases). Therefore, new ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) arise all the time. Such EDCs are often ‘valuation contests’ displaying incommensurable plural values. There are many examples of such conflicts in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas.org), for instance on the mining of coal, iron ore, and bauxite in India. There are conflicts on extraction of materials, on their transport and on the disposal of waste. Climate change is arguably the largest waste disposal conflict given the excessive production of carbon dioxide. Also the pollution of water is a waste disposal conflict.