Ecological Distribution Conflicts Research Articles

A decolonial approach to ecological distribution conflicts and the Maya Train in Mexico

A neoliberal development model, frequently at odds with the values of the local Mayan biocultural heritage, has historically prompted the conversion of forests and small-scale agricultural land, mainly in the Yucatan Peninsula. This study analyzes ethnographic data collected in two localities in the peninsula that will be impacted by the Maya Train. Preliminary results based mainly on conducted interviews revealed perceptions regarding daily interactions with the local habitat, the effects of public policy initiatives in the communities, and resistance strategies in response to perceived threats surrounding the project. Through a decolonial lens, the study contributes to understanding how social movements impact policies in the face of the environmental and social pacts of neoliberal development projects, while advancing towards a more ontologically diverse political representation.

Accumulation by contamination: Worldwide cost-shifting strategies of capital in waste management

With this article, we propose an analytical and conceptual tool to illuminate connections between capital development and environmental injustices. The research examines how capital-driven industrial policies foster changes in social metabolisms and cause new socio-environmental impacts, leading to ecological distribution conflicts. It also explores why diverse actors mobilise and resist these changes. Building on Kapp’s ecological economics theory of social costs and David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession, we highlight the role of capital accumulation in environmental injustices through cost-shifting strategies, terming it “Accumulation by Contamination” (AbC). In this context, AbC refers to the process wherein capital socialises the costs of contamination, degrading the means of existence and bodies of human beings who oppose these processes of capital valorisation and engage in environmental conflicts. We make a compelling case for AbC by exploring waste-related conflicts at various industrial developmental stages. Waste, viewed as a ’common bad,’ emerges as a strategic realm for capitalists seeking to expand the scale and scope of accumulation. The intricacies of waste management, its market potential, and guaranteed profitability through subsidies and processes of financialisation attract significant investments globally. Quantitative and qualitative waste management assessments demonstrate that waste policies often favour businesses, leading to cost-shifting of waste management to society (in Naples, Italy; and Delhi, in India) and the dispossession of waste-pickers (in Delhi). More broadly, we emphasise the importance of integrating ecological economics and Marxist critical geography to address environmental challenges. We also analytically study the diverse actors responding to various capital strategies, fostering transformative political actions for a sustainable future. Climate change is arguably the most significant waste disposal conflict due to excessive carbon dioxide production, representing a quintessential example of Accumulation by Contamination (AbC).

The political ecologies of "green" extractivism(s): An introduction

What is so-called 'green' extractivism and where did it come from? The introduction to this Special Section examines the origins and implications of the concept, linking it to a long history of exploitation, dispossession and (neo)colonialism under the guise of green-washing notions such as 'sustainable development.' Conducting an in-depth literature review, we first revisit the concept of extractivism, exploring its origins, development and analytical purchase. We link extractivism to 'extra-action,' implying taking more than what is viable for ecosystems and argue for a supply-web oriented, rather than a point of extraction-focused understanding. Subsequently, we examine key theoretical frameworks in political ecology that paved the way to the study of 'green' extractivism, notably Ecological Distribution Conflicts (which we argue could better be labeled Ecological Destruction Conflicts) and green grabbing. Based on this, we discuss the core features of green extractivism, which are twofold: (1) the use of socioecological and climate crises to reinforce existing or generate new markets and profit-generation opportunities; and (2) the mobilization of claims of ecological sustainability and 'carbon neutrality' to legitimize and rationalize extraction. After outlining the Special Section contributions, we end by considering gaps in existing scholarship on green extractivism and suggest ways forward.

Indigenous and traditional communities’ ways of knowing and being in planetary justice

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the recent discussion on planetary justice by analyzing two environmental justice struggles around mining projects that impact indigenous peoples and traditional communities in Brazil and South Africa. Though locally based, these ecological distribution conflicts are connected to global chains, impacting the whole planet. We focus on peoples’ demands and to what extent their ways of knowing and being were considered in public consultation and litigation. Moreover, we reflect on what we can learn from these struggles. Our argument goes beyond distributive or procedural justice claims as these peoples are resisting the ontological erasure of their worlds, demanding to be consulted and participate in their own terms. These cases teach us that a deeper understanding of planetary justice entails diverse considerations of time, space, and the relations between human and non-humans. Assessing these struggles offer concrete ways to reimagine just relations, for many worlds in one planet.

Valuation struggles in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Beyond indigenous people's responses to oil extraction

Conflicts resulting from oil extractivism can be seen as ecological and cultural distribution conflicts, and have involved Latin American indigenous movements attached to their land and environments as providers of livelihood and cultural identity. In Ecuador, some have argued that this has become a 'standard narrative', essentializing the struggles of indigenous people. And the various agreements found historically between indigenous people and large companies operating in their territories seem to legitimize such criticism. But how to understand the choices of indigenous groups, with incommensurable needs, values, and claims, in the presence of extractive projects involving incommensurable local outcomes? Through an analysis of the different claims of indigenous people who voted in favor of oil extraction projects in their territories in the ITT fields of the Ecuadorian Amazon, I show how oil extraction coupled with 'social compensation' might create non-conflictive, but problematic situations, rather than conflicts. Indeed, the perception of an incommensurable loss, related to ecological and cultural difference, does not necessarily translate into opposition to mining or drilling. This is especially important in countries where the right to prior consultation could legitimize the expansion of oil activities in indigenous territories.

The EJAtlas and the Making of the World Movement for Environmental Justice. A “Sociology of Absences”?

The EJAtlas is an archive of environmental conflicts. It is a collective endeavor. Both academics and activists contribute to it. It will reach 4,000 entries by 2023 allowing much new research on comparative political ecology and making visible the global countermovement for environmental justice. Growth in social metabolism (flows of energy and materials) and the abundance of environmental conflicts are seen as two sides of the same coin. Revealing the enormous circularity gap or “entropy hole” at the center of the industrial economy, the EJAtlas explores the geographies of resistance and the social protagonists of “ecological distribution conflicts” across the world. Environmental defenders display diverse valuation languages. Although the local complaints depend on local social and political cultures, there are common patterns of felt grievances and environmental activism at the frontiers of commodity extraction and waste disposal.

Coastal sand mining of heavy mineral sands: Contestations, resistance, and ecological distribution conflicts at HMS extraction frontiers across the world

AbstractCoastal sand mining for metals involves extraction of heavy mineral sands (HMS), which are sedimentary deposits of dense minerals that accumulate in coastal environments. HMS are localized concentrations of ores such as ilmenite, rutile, leucoxene, and iron, which are sources of metals such as titanium, zircon, iron, sillimanite/kyanite, staurolite, monazite, and garnet. The applications of these metals range from everyday products such as ceramics, paint, and pigments, as well as technologically advanced applications in the airline, shipbuilding, medicine, and defense industries. HMS extraction implies strip mining of coastal areas, which are often unique biodiversity ecosystems, or fragile ecosystems built up on sandy soils or dunes. The loss of such spaces has impacts such as loss of biodiversity and habitats, salt‐water intrusion into agricultural lands and increased exposure to sea level rise. As a result of the serious ecological and socioeconomic transformations at such extraction frontiers, these operations cause resistance movements across the world. This article identifies and documents 24 cases of resistance against such operations. It presents the first comprehensive database and analysis of HMS related ecological distribution conflicts.

Mapping mining and ecological distribution conflicts in Latin America, a bibliometric analysis

The growing worry about changing climatic circumstances, the COVID-19 economic crisis, and the management and conservation of biological resources necessitates the development of appropriate models for the long-term management of mining resources, as well as the regulation of extractivism at the Latin American level and its massive effects on the environment and communities. The major goal of this paper is to evaluate the influence of the mining conflict on the scholar. This study analyzed the Latin American mining sector and its recent evolution in the socio-ecological conflicts issues. The research was conducted through a bibliometric analysis in Scopus database from 1991 to 2020. The period with the highest concentration of publications was from 2013 to 2020, and the countries with the most substantial number of publications are Colombia and the USA. Our article concludes that mining conflicts are causing increasing worry among scholar, and their management has significant potential to address the issues of protecting the environment and communities while avoiding the crisis and its consequences in Latin America.

Circularity, entropy, ecological conflicts and LFFU

ABSTRACT The 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 (EDC) arise all the time. Such EDCs are often “valuation contests” displaying incommensurable plural values. Examples from the Atlas of Environmental Justice are given of coal, oil and gas-related conflicts in several countries combining local and global complaints. Claims for climate justice and recognition of an ecological debt have been put forward by environmentalists from the South since 1991, together with a strategy of leaving fossil fuels underground (LFFU) through bottom-up movements. This could make a substantial contribution to the decrease in carbon dioxide emissions.

Thirst revolution: practices of contestation and mobilisation in rural Egypt

ABSTRACT Between 2007 and 2018, water-based protests in Egypt received extensive visibility in media headlines. These protests were first sparked by events in a village in the Nile Delta in 2007; since this demonstration, water-based protests, known as Thawrat al-‘Atash or the Thirst Revolution, have become widespread. Nevertheless, the vast majority of academic research looking at social movements in Egypt has focused on urban protests. This paper investigates the dynamics of water-focused protests in rural Egypt. We use a political ecology approach to understand ecological distribution conflicts and the perceived unjust distribution of water that was behind the social unrest. The article includes a classification of local-scale water-based protests in rural Egypt, which breaks down their causes and shows how the protest movement is embedded within biophysical, water management and agriculture development politics.

Mapping ecological distribution conflicts: The EJAtlas

This article describes the origins of the terms “environmental justice” and “environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous” since the 1980s. In 2012 the collection of “ecological distribution conflicts” (EDC) in an Atlas of Environmental Justice (the EJAtlas) started. The EJAtlas reached 3350 entries by January 2021. Such conflicts arise because the industrial economy is not circular, it is entropic. Since the industrial economy is entropic, it continuously looks for new energy and material sources at the “commodity extraction frontiers”, and for waste disposal sites. There are counter-movements of resistance, which become also “valuation system contests” since the participants in such movements (environmental organizations, indigenous peoples, peasants, neighbors and citizens) display different values. Examples recorded in the EJAtlas are given from different continents while answering the questions: Why did the world movement for environmental justice come into being, and which type of social movement is it? The relevance of the EJAtlas for research on comparative, statistical political ecology but also on business economics and management, is noticed.

Iron ore peripheries in the extractive boom: A comparison between mining conflicts in India and Brazil

The emerging economies of India and Brazil experienced a strong increase in iron ore extraction during the late commodities boom. Despite similar extraction trends, these economies followed distinct development patterns. While Brazilian neoextractivism strongly promoted iron ore exports, Indian production was largely turned to domestic consumption as a response to demands of industrialization. In both countries, the resulting expansion of extraction frontiers into new spaces and ecosystems already inhabited by local communities generated several ecological distribution conflicts. In this paper we analyse iron ore mining conflicts exploring the links between conflicts dynamics and different development patterns of India and Brazil. By providing both quantitative and qualitative data on the selected cases, the study contributes towards addressing core-periphery dynamics as a key aspect of environmental (in)justice. We show that, while Indian social mobilizations were sometimes successful in delaying or halting the expansion of extractive frontiers, power relations in Brazil were less favorable to resistance movements. Still, even in India, international and national asymmetries impinged costs of extractivism to local communities. The reinforcement of environmental (in)justices related to extractive industries by very different development models points to the importance of debates around development alternatives, especially for emerging countries.

A global environmental justice movement: mapping ecological distribution conflicts

The industrial economy is not circular, it is entropic, therefore requiring new supplies of energy and materials extracted from the “commodity frontiers”, and producing polluting waste. Therefore, ecological distribution conflicts arise. The Global Atlas of Environmental Justice is an online inventory of such ecological distribution conflicts based on scholarly and activist knowledge. It reached 3200 entries by July 2020 (ejtlas.org) allowing research on such conflicts in the field of comparative, statistical political ecology. The EJAtlas is used for research but also for university teaching in the environmental social sciences and in business economics and management. It is a unique instrument co-produced with and supporting environmental movements. One can do comparative analyses on the social actors involved in the conflicts and their forms of mobilization, and also on the behaviour of private or public companies. Research may focus on countries or regions but also on cross-cultural topics such as gold and copper mining, sand mining, dams, eucalyptus or oil palm plantations, incinerators and other methods of waste disposal, coal fired power plants, gas fracking, nuclear reactors, CAFOs. Analyses are done also on the cross- cultural expressions (slogans, banners, documentaries, murals) of the conflicts gathered in the EJAtlas. The wealth of research coming from the EJAtlas gives an affirmative answer to the question: Is there a global environmental justice movement? Making old or emergent conflicts more visible contributes to placing political ecology at the centre of politics.

Comunalidad, Guendaliza'a and anti-mine mobilizations in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

How do grassroots strategies for the defense of territory inter-relate with the "politics of time" in the early phases of socio-environmental struggles? This article addresses this question via ethnographic research and in-depth interviews in Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Opponents of mines and a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in this region invoke comunalidad and Guendaliza'a— indigenous ways of life associated with mutual aid and territorial sovereignty. These values are enacted by networks of activists seeking to protect the land and livelihoods of future generations against global capitalism's drive for cheap raw materials. By rejecting dualist distinctions between Society and Nature, indigenous cosmovisions can help defensive movements forge alternatives to socio-environmental violence. Engaging with this case brings separate theoretical frameworks of defensive resistance, cheap nature, ecological-distribution conflicts, and indigenous cosmovisions into dialogue with one another.Key words: social movements, indigenous peoples, global capitalism, ethnography, anti-mining

Gendered geographies of violence: a multiple case study analysis of murdered women environmental defenders

This study illustrates how, despite the diversity of women environmental defenders and their movements around the world, there are near-universal patterns of violence threatening their survival. Violence against women environmental defenders, often perpetrated by government-backed corporations, remains overlooked. Research on this issue importantly contributes to discussions about environmental justice because women defenders make up a large proportion of those at the frontlines of ecological distribution conflicts. Through comparative political ecology, this research analyzes cases from the Environmental Justice Atlas, an online open-access inventory of environmental distribution conflicts, in which one or more women were assassinated while fighting a diverse array of extractive and polluting projects. Although the stories showcase a breadth of places, conflicts, social-class backgrounds, and other circumstances between women defenders, most cases featured multinational large-scale extractive companies supported by governments violently targeting women defenders with impunity.Keywords: Violence, murder, women environmental defenders, EJAtlas, comparative political ecology

Blue Growth and its discontents in the Faroe Islands: an island perspective on Blue (De)Growth, sustainability, and environmental justice

Blue Growth is promoted as an important strategy for future food security, and sustainable harvesting of marine resources. This paper aims to identify dominating ideologies and strategies of Blue Growth in the Faroe Islands, mainly regarding salmon farming and industrial capture fisheries, and to investigate how these ideologies materialize in the social metabolism of Faroese society. The analysis approaches the Faroese Blue Economy from a holistic perspective using analytical concepts and frameworks of social (island) metabolism, environmental justice and degrowth to assess how current Blue Growth strategies pertain to long-term sustainability and human well-being. It offers a critical analysis of aquaculture in the Faroe Islands and shows that although the rhetoric around Blue Growth is framed within mainstreamed sustainability discourse, the ideologies and visions underpinning current Blue Growth strategies result in a continuation of conventional growth through the exploitation of new commodity frontiers. Finally, the negative consequences of Blue Growth are assessed and discussed through a mapping of recent and ongoing social and ecological distribution conflicts in the Faroes.

“Garbage is Gold”: Waste-based Commodity Frontiers, Modes of Valorization and Ecological Distribution Conflicts

ABSTRACT Waste is increasingly viewed as a resource rather than an externality. However, new waste management regimes must be introduced in order for value to be created, enhanced and captured. We refer to these regimes as modes of valorization, and they establish the conditions that allow waste to become a commodity frontier. The production of waste-based commodity frontiers is often accompanied by dispossession, and this explains why conflicts surrounding the ownership over and control of waste have proliferated worldwide. This article introduces a special issue of Capitalism Nature Socialism that includes papers focused on the establishment of new modes of valorization and concomitant impacts in India, South Africa, Turkey and the U.S.

Who promotes sustainability? Five theses on the relationships between the degrowth and the environmental justice movements

Environmental destructions, overconsumption and overdevelopment are felt by an increasing number of people. Voices for ‘prosperity without growth’ have strengthened and environmental conflicts are on the rise worldwide. This introduction to the special issue explores the possibility of an alliance between post-growth and ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs). It argues that among the various branches of post-growth and EDCs, degrowth and environmental justice (EJ) movements have the best potential to interconnect. This claim is discussed via five ‘theses’: We argue that both degrowth and EJ movements are materialist but also more than just materialist in scope (thesis I) and both seek a politico-metabolic reconfiguration of our economies (thesis II). We also show that both degrowth and EJ seek consequential as well as deontological justice (thesis III) and they are complementary: while EJ has not developed a unified and broader theoretical roadmap, degrowth has largely failed to connect with a wider social movement (thesis IV). Finally, both degrowth and EJ stress the contradiction between capitalist accumulation vs. conditions of social reproduction (rather than that between capital and labour) (thesis V). We conclude that an alliance between degrowth and EJ is not only possible but necessary.

Splintered Hinterlands: Public Anthropology, Environmental Advocacy, and Indigenous Sovereignty

This research analyzes the roles of action ethnobiology and public anthropology in “ecological distribution conflicts”—disputes over the benefits and burdens of natural resources—in policy-oriented research and advocacy. It considers the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) international campaigns to protect “frontier landscapes” of the Western hemisphere. Specifically, I examine case studies in Chilean Patagonia and the boreal forest region in the Canadian Northeast. Despite geographical, historical, and cultural differences, NRDC's campaigns in these two regions involved a shared focus on developing advocacy strategies that draw on biocultural knowledge to advance stronger environmental protections. NRDC and its local partners used ethnoecology as an environmental tactic to protect rivers from proposed large hydroelectric dam projects in Chile, and drew upon ethnozoology to preserve caribou threatened by industrial logging in Canada. To consider the synergies and tensions of environmental advocacy and Indigenous sovereignty in these two instances, I analyze partnerships between environmental activists, lawyers, and scientists on the one hand, and Indigenous leaders and local residents on the other. Taking a public anthropological approach, this comparative research sheds light on the role of action ethnobiology as a condition of possibility for advocacy to enhance environmental sustainability and Indigenous sovereignty across the Americas.

Identifying Ecological Distribution Conflicts Around the Inter-regional Flow of Energy in Turkey: A Mapping Exercise

The consumption of more energy in Turkey is seen as a precondition for the economic and social development of the country in line with its comprehensive ideology of modernization and progress, and hence, a rather aggressive strategy in energy infrastructure investments is adopted since mid 2000s. Because of this aggressive strategy involving expropriation and enclosure of commons societal unrest against the electricity plants at local scale escalated even further, creating numerous local environmental justice conflicts all over the country. While electricity generation in Turkey is mostly carried out at the rural setting, electricity is consumed mostly in the urban setting, where both the household and industrial consumption levels are higher. A comparison of the regional distribution of electricity generation and consumption in Turkey shows that while the electricity generation capacity is concentrated in some cities – Izmir, Sakarya, Adana, Hatay, Zonguldak, Canakkale, Mugla, and Samsun to name a few – it is mostly consumed in the urbanised centres of the country, more particularly in Istanbul, Kocaeli, Bursa, Ankara, and Izmir (the industrialised cities, considered as the engine of growth in the country). Hence, it would not be wrong to say that some cities such as Canakkale and Zonguldak are designated as “ecological sacrifice zones” for the sake of national growth, illustrating well how Turkey prioritises economic growth (and thus industrialisation) over just ecological distribution. At this background, this paper focuses on the ecological distribution conflicts over electricity generation infrastructures and attempts to provide a mapping of the different electricity generation projects (in operation, under construction or planned) to better understand the urban-rural interplay over the electricity consumption and production. Hence, it attempts to shed light on the growing number of environmental conflicts for the last three decades, following the aggressive neo-liberal policies of modernisation and industrialisation.