The intersections of mining and neoliberal conservation

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation and mining activities are increasingly overlapping throughout the world. While conservation has conventionally been seen as a strategy to oppose the negative environmental impacts of extractivism, the experiences of local communities especially in the Global South reveal similar dynamics in the ways in which mining and conservation actors seek to gain control over land and resources, often resulting in land grabbing. Furthermore, literature on neoliberal conservation has portrayed conservation as an increasingly prevalent strategy of capital accumulation. This study looks at the commodity frontiers of neoliberal conservation and mining – at the spectrum ranging from artisanal and small-scale mining to large-scale corporate mining – and focuses on the competing territorialisations at these heterogeneous ‘double’ frontiers. Analysed by means of an integrative literature review and illustrated with cases from across the Global South, this study asks just what institutional settings enable the mining and conservation frontiers to co-exist and what kinds of interactions can be expected at their intersections. The study finds three different types of double frontier interactions, competing, synergistic and co-ignorant, resulting alternatively from deepened cooperation between international mining and conservation actors, a fragmented state structure or legal pluralism at the local level. These findings provide a first attempt to create a theoretical framework for analysing the intersections of the expanding mining and conservation frontiers. They highlight the need for further empirical research to focus on double frontier contexts and particularly on the roles played by local actors between the frontiers in order to address, understand and manage the increasing competition between mining and conservation across the rural landscapes of the Global South.