Abstract
Extractive industries increasingly use compensation measures to silence opposition, divide communities and stop resistance. Cerrejón, Colombia's largest transnational coal mining corporation, has a long history of damaging Indigenous Wayúu, Afro-Colombian and local communities' health and livelihoods. In the northeastern Colombian region of La Guajira, local communities struggle against the social and environmental impacts of coal mining. This article, based on field research conducted between 2018-2019, concludes that corporate and state-backed consultation and compensation projects are incommensurable with the damage caused by the coal mining operations and are implemented as a corporate social technology that undermines community cohesion and reinforces a power imbalance, perpetuating and enabling the expansion of damaging coal mining practices in Colombia.
Highlights
The northeastern coastline of Colombia's Guajira Peninsula sustained numerous Indigenous Wayúu fishing villages for centuries
Contrary to promises of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, we show how compensations act as a "counter-insurrectionary device to pacify opposition and legitimize harm" (Dunlap 2018: 90)
Our research demonstrates how compensation programs are incommensurable with the damage caused by the mining industry
Summary
The northeastern coastline of Colombia's Guajira Peninsula sustained numerous Indigenous Wayúu fishing villages for centuries. We present literature from political ecology to illustrate how social responsibility programs, community consultations and resulting compensations often work to legitimize damage, thereby safeguarding extractive projects, not people and the environment. We combine these arguments with literature exploring the incommensurability of monetary value and survivability, to make visible the ontological clash of values between mining companies and local communities. We conclude by arguing that corporate and state-backed consultations and compensations are designed to undermine local autonomy and community cohesion, reinforcing a power imbalance that perpetuates damaging coal mining practices and destroys ecologies and communities. Compensations provide a false appearance that nature-processes can be paid for and that damages can be erased with money, while silencing opposition and building international support for corporate-led development
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