Environmental Justice Atlas Research Articles

Deciphering the impacts of ‘green’ energy transition on socio-environmental lithium conflicts: Evidence from Argentina and Chile

The surging demand for lithium-powered electric vehicles and energy storage systems, driven by the low-carbon energy transition, is explored in this study regarding its impact on socio-environmental lithium conflicts up to 2019. We show the limitations of applying resource curse models for this enquiry due to unique characteristics of lithium cases and discrepancies between economic (demand, price and production) and conflict data. Combining quantitative political ecology methods with the explanatory power of ethnographic insights from critical resource geography, this paper builds and investigates a dataset encompassing 13 lithium and 41 non-transition-related resource (‘NTR’) conflicts in Argentina and Chile, mainly using data from Environmental Justice Atlas. Findings reveal distinct patterns between the two conflict types, with lithium conflicts experiencing increased initiation and intensification during 2010–2019 when all of the core conflict events, i.e., human, indigenous and environmental rights violations & reported health hazards, legal actions, mass mobilisations and violent events took place. Forms of mass mobilisations, such as protests and roadblocks, were commonly observed in both lithium (15 events) and NTR (19 events) cases with higher intensity per case in the former whereas rights violations (1 vs 13 events) and legal actions (5 vs 34) were less common in lithium conflicts.We then discuss the impacts of the demand pressure on governments, companies and indigenous residents, with their responses to these influences. We demonstrate that, while State actors became more active in the economic sphere of lithium mining, they abandoned their role as the guarantor of indigenous citizens’ rights until 2019. Economic opportunities, uncertainties and the ‘green discourse’ fuelled by the transition demand led the State and private actors to neglect indigenous concerns, rights and lifestyles. In the absence of state support, indigenous communities asserted their agency through mainly protests and roadblocks navigating the socio-environmental impact landscape amidst evolving state-company-community dynamics.

A global analysis of violence against women defenders in environmental conflicts

Women environmental defenders face retaliation for mobilizing against extractive and polluting projects, which perpetrate violence against Indigenous, minority, poor and rural communities. The issue matters because it highlights the gendered nature of extractive violence and the urgent need to address the systemic patterns of violence that affect women defenders, who are often overlooked and underreported. Here we analyse violence against women defenders in environmental conflicts around the world. We use data from the Environmental Justice Atlas and employ log-linear and binomial regressions to find statistically significant patterns in displacement, repression, criminalization, violent targeting and assassinations committed against women defenders in extractive conflicts. Statistical results indicate that violence against women defenders is concentrated among mining, agribusiness and industrial conflicts in the geographical South. Repression, criminalization and violent targeting are closely linked, while displacement and assassination appear as extreme outcomes when conflict violence worsens. Women defenders experience high rates of violence regardless of countries’ governance accountability and gender equality. This work contributes to the broader sustainability agenda by highlighting the need to address the impacts of extractive activities on women.

Not victims, but fighters: A global overview on women's leadership in anti-mining struggles

While it is known that women have a strong presence in struggles for Environmental Justice, there is a lack of knowledge about their role in them, particularly in struggles opposing mining projects. We aim to fill this gap by undertaking the first global systematization of the available data on women's anti-mining activism, using a multi-case perspective. We analyze 151 mining conflicts identified through the Environmental Justice Atlas, examining the impacts mining activities have had on women, how women responded to these, how they organized to oppose mining projects, and what challenges they faced in their activism. While our analysis reinforces many aspects discussed by Feminist Political Ecology scholars on the challenges women face in their activism, it also raises new questions about the specific impacts mining has on women, the repertoire of actions they have at their disposal as part of their activism, and how they organize to oppose mining projects, patriarchal dynamics within movements, and to question prevailing narratives of progress.

Environmental conflict and the expansion of renewable energy in Central America: exploring Canadian participation

ABSTRACT As capacity to generate and distribute renewable energy expands across Central America, environmental conflict is on the rise, with communities confronting dispossession of water and territory. Renewable energy holds a central position within the extractivist economic model in the region, but little is known about the involvement of Canada in Central American renewable energy sectors. This paper addresses that gap by asking what role Canada plays within a scenario of expanding and conflictual renewable energy projects across Central America. We combine Canadian public records with data from projects, including GeoComunes and the Environmental Justice Atlas, to analyze 726 renewable energy and 162 traditional extractive projects in Central America, and to connect 156 of these projects to evidence of conflict with surrounding communities. While Canadian private companies own very few renewable energy projects in Central America, we argue that this does not imply an absence of Canadian involvement. Instead, the paper explores Canadian participation at multilateral venues, support for energy projects by the federal government, and the benefits that renewable energy expansion presents to the Canadian private sector. The invisibility of the Canadian presence in Central American renewable energy, we suggest, serves to obscure Canadian responsibility for a scenario defined by high levels of conflict.

Gendered violence martyring Filipina environmental defenders

This article contributes to discussions of extractive violence by exploring how gender influences violent circumstances under which women were assassinated during environmental conflicts. Partnership with local activists facilitated the reporting of cases of martyred Filipina women environmental defenders on the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas). Twenty cases from the EJAtlas involving thirty-one women environmental defenders martyred for their activism were analyzed qualitatively examining why and how differences and similarities emerge based on intersectional factors with special attention to gender. Findings suggest that 1) impoverished, rural, Indigenous, and otherwise multiply marginalized women were at high risk of vulnerability and retaliation in environmental conflicts because of their loss of agency and status; 2) mining and logging were deadliest partly because such industries institutionalize and exacerbate violent, gendered subordination 3) the circumstances of their murders were subtly gendered, including their exposure and vulnerability to conflicts, mobilization opportunities, and experienced violence.

Struggles for just conservation: an analysis of India's biodiversity conservation conflicts

The protection of the Earth's remaining biodiversity continues to be a debate of global importance as well as a source of contestation. In this context, the Indian government started with its post-colonial forest conservation from the 1970s, by ushering in the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972. It has since reinforced its conservation policies, over the last 15 years giving particular focus to the protection of tigers, considered a keystone and endangered species. In 2004, a Tiger Task Force was set up to protect the tiger, followed by the establishment of protected habitats for tiger conservation, which in turn reinforced the idea of a human-wildlife binary and legitimized the control of these spaces through armed policing. These changes in environmental governance have altered the relationship between local communities and forest guards, in many cases aggravating already conflictual interactions. This article discusses the political ecology of emerging conflicts around protected areas (national parks, tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries) in India through an analysis of 26 conflicts documented in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), and informed by field research conducted within and around protected areas of India. Specifically, the article analyzes the interplay between conservation policies and the rights of the commons recognized under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, as well as the socio-economic impacts of conservation policies in terms of dispossession, violence and the increase of "green militarization." The article also highlights the social resistance movements developed against these trends, which are framed as part of the growing environmental justice movement. The article concludes with how this struggle may be essential to achieving an ecologically sustainable society in the future and to shape a new conservation model.

From environmental to climate justice: social-environmental expulsions and the emergence of a climate edge in Europe

ABSTRACT This paper builds on a recent strand of critical social theory – Sassen’s [Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Harvard University Press; At the systemic edge. Cultural Dynamics, 27(1), 173–181] expulsions and systemic edge perspective – to argue that a sociological theory of climate change needs to start from the critical sites where change takes place. To this end, we propose the concept of climate edge as the intersection of accelerating environmental injustices and future climate change vulnerabilities. We use data from the Environmental Justice Atlas and the Climate Adapt platform to select 17 cases that approximate, to various degrees, the climate edge concept. We conclude that these sites deserve closer attention as they signal the transformative potential of long expulsion chains that may define the characteristics of future climate-related conflicts. The climate edge is simultaneously a site of social struggle.

‘We are the oceans, we are the people!’: fisher people’s struggles for blue justice

ABSTRACT Fisher people and their communities around the world have been key social actors in seafood production and they are still feeding the world with about two-thirds of the catches destined for direct human consumption. However, they are subjected to a wide range of injustices due to coastal and offshore investment projects and the inequalities embedded in the global capitalist marine economy. These injustices are manifested through socio-environmental conflicts, which have been studied and mapped in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) together with other social actors’ resistances. This article examines 120 fisher folk conflicts that have been identified, documented and mapped in the EJAtlas, while proposing a Blue Justice framework to understand their underlying causes and how fisher people confront such injustices. As a grounded theoretical approach emerging from the scrutiny of fisher resistances and building on environmental justice, critical marine sociology and political economy literatures, the Blue Justice framework proposed here focuses on three dimensions: (i) material and biophysical dimension, (ii) spatial justice, and (iii) autonomy and sovereignty. In adopting this framework, this analysis reveals the blue layers of environmental justice by uncovering both the causes of conflicts faced by fisher communities and their political agency.

Extractivism of the poor: Natural resource commodification and its discontents

In a recent series of articles, ecological distribution conflicts scholars present descriptive statistical analyses backing Joan Martinez-Alier (2002)’s thesis on the environmentalism of the poor. In their collaborative Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), their Peru sample reports a success rate of 24% in stopping projects. We contend that successful resistance represents only 2-5% of the total universe of Peru mining conflicts. Our claim is built on the study of 517 conflicts in Peru between 2005 and 2019, as registered by the Ombudsperson's Office. The evidence suggests, moreover, that contentious collective action commonly subordinates environmental justice causes to conventional economic concerns and resolutions, resulting in mining conflicts unfolding into compensation schemes and better deal settlements. Our straightforward interpretation is that while negative impacts are complex phenomena not homogeneously experienced among and within local communities, across space and over time, natural resource commodification brings with it the promise of local development opportunities. We draw a complementary extractivism of the poor hypothesis: there are diverse forms of (bitter) accommodation with or (structured) involvement in natural resource commodification of the poor and the indigenous.

Resistance as governance: Transformative strategies forged on the frontlines of extractivism in Canada

Attempts in Canada to include citizens in decision-making around extractive processes have been tokenistic at best and generally fail to meaningfully include the voices, opinions, and rights of people on whose land a given project is being planned. Therefore, informal avenues for influencing decision-making are being taken by communities, often Indigenous communities and often in the form of resistance. In this article we argue that resistance, in the form of blockades, occupations and other strategies are powerfully shaping outcomes in Canada, and indeed constitute a form of governance in and of themselves, helping drive the urgently needed transformative change that formal governance systems continue to fail to bring about. Our argument is based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 57 cases of environmental conflict in Canada, accessed through the Global Environmental Justice Atlas. These cases provide concrete examples of this bottom-up, land-based governance through resistance led by communities on the front lines of extractivism. These diverse and inspiring cases ground our theorizing and raise important insights and lessons for understanding resistance as transformative governance.

Commons grabbing and agribusiness: Violence, resistance and social mobilization

The recent phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) is associated with what has been described as a global agrarian transition. New forms of land exploitation and concentration have led to profound socio-environmental transformations of rural production systems in Latin America, South-East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. Scholars have pointed out that the expansion of transnational land investments is often associated with detrimental social outcomes, has negative environmental impacts and can represent a potential impediment to the achievement of many SDGs. In this paper, our primary concern is on the mounting evidence that LSLAs preferentially target the commons, in the process altering long-standing customary resource governance systems. While it has been shown that in many instances of commons grabbing associated with LSLAs, different types of social conflict emerge, it is less clear what forms of social mobilization and organized collective re-actions are taking place to defend the commons and contest such processes of dispossession and enclosure. The main aim of this contribution is to fill this gap by synthesizing and describing the different typologies of social mobilization and collective re-actions that emerge as a result of commons grabbing associated with the transnational expansion of the agribusiness frontier. In order to do this our research synthesizes information from the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) shedding light on some of the key characteristics associated with the different forms and dynamics of social mobilization that are organized in reaction to agribusiness-related commons grabbing.

Conflictos ambientales en Centroamérica y las Antillas: un rápido toxic tour

In political ecology there is need for more empirical work on the large world resistance movement born from the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous. The environmental conflicts collected in the Environmental Justice Atlas (www.ejatlas.org), 3,300 in October 2020 include about 130 from Mexico and 120 from Central America and the Caribbean, each one with a data sheet of 5 to 6 pages. This article puts Mexico aside because it is well covered in this issue of Ecología Política. I focus on Central America and the Caribbean briefly analyzing about twenty conflicts. Many of them are failures in environmental justice but some are encouragingly successful: for instance, Pacific Rim in El Salvador; Cerro Blanco in Guatemala and El Salvador; Crucitas in Costa Rica, and the Canal of Nicaragua that seemingly has been stopped. Also cases against Cemex in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the maroon people of Cockpit Country in Jamaica against bauxite mining, and Vieques in Puerto Rio against militarization. In the Conclusion I list some characteristics of the political ecology of the region.

Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview

Recent research and policies recognize the importance of environmental defenders for global sustainability and emphasize their need for protection against violence and repression. However, effective support may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts, as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable environmental defenders to mobilize successfully. We have created the global Environmental Justice Atlas to address this knowledge gap. Here we present a large-n analysis of 2743 cases that sheds light on the characteristics of environmental conflicts and the environmental defenders involved, as well as on successful mobilization strategies. We find that bottom-up mobilizations for more sustainable and socially just uses of the environment occur worldwide across all income groups, testifying to the global existence of various forms of grassroots environmentalism as a promising force for sustainability. Environmental defenders are frequently members of vulnerable groups who employ largely non-violent protest forms. In 11% of cases globally, they contributed to halt environmentally destructive and socially conflictive projects, defending the environment and livelihoods. Combining strategies of preventive mobilization, protest diversification and litigation can increase this success rate significantly to up to 27%. However, defenders face globally also high rates of criminalization (20% of cases), physical violence (18%), and assassinations (13%), which significantly increase when Indigenous people are involved. Our results call for targeted actions to enhance the conditions enabling successful mobilizations, and for specific support for Indigenous environmental defenders.

Learning and Teaching Through the Online Environmental Justice Atlas: From Empowering Activists to Motivating Students

AbstractThe chapter analyzes how the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas.org), an online interactive platform developed to visualize and study struggles against environmental injustices worldwide, is used in higher education curricula to teach environmental justice and sustainability themes.

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

Environmental protection or subversion in mining? Planning challenges, perspectives and actors at the largest gold deposit in Europe

The gold ores in Roşia Montană have been intensely mined for the last two thousand years, as this mining district was one of the richest gold deposits in the Apuseni Mountains (the so-called Golden Quadrangle of Romania). Itis currently considered the largest gold deposit in Europe. Up until a few decades ago, gold mines had a relatively predictable path, which began with exploration and ended with abandonment. This has since changed, once the impact of abusive past or current exploitation methods and technologies has been deemed unacceptable by the state and the public. With its millennia-old history of mining, Roșia Montană raises the intriguing question of what does the future hold for different actors in a situation that is clearly unsustainable, but which may be continued through environmental rehabilitation, or even a larger mine. We address the question for this particular mine by drawing on a worldwide database of similar cases contained in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas). We consider three scenarios, namely: 1) continued degradation with no intervention; 2) approval of large-scale mining, due to international arbitration; 3) environmental rehabilitation. These capture the most plausible future scenarios of the Roșia Montană case and, by relating them to the relevant transnational environmental justice context, we aim at assessing their implications for different actors and also the extent to which they are illustrative for the fate of other mines worldwide. Mine closure and the rehabilitation of the environment, regardless how distant they may seem at the beginning of the prospection and extraction stage, are imminent in the mine life cycle and a mandatory step of the environmental management process. We conclude by suggesting under which governance regimes each scenario is likely to unfold and what implications can be drawn for public policy.

Environmental Injustices in European Climate Hotspots

This paper starts from the observation that development projects that create various forms of environmental injustice in Europe are an integral part of the process of biospheric expulsions, that is of pushing out groups from adequate land, water or air, as described by Saskia Sassen (2014). Apart from the environmental, socio-economic and health-impacts of ecologically destructive projects, there is an added dimension of concern that has been less obvious in the past, but tends to become increasingly pronounced in a warming world. Is it possible that accumulating environmental inequalities and forms of injustice can create new and “unnatural” vulnerabilities to the projected climate change impacts? The first question that we tackle is whether environmental justice conflicts in Europe tend to take place disproportionately in climate hotspot areas, which are geographic spaces with above-average social sensitivity, potential vulnerability, potential social impact, potential environmental impacts or response capacity (ESPON, 2011). The second question concerns the distribution of different characteristics of projects and of their associated conflicts in climate hotspot vs. non-hotspot areas. The final goal is to establish, at a preliminary level, the emergence of a climate edge in Europe, a spatial configuration in which vulnerability to climate change impacts is shaped by processes of biospheric expulsion, as postulated at a general level by Sassen. For the analysis, the most current data on environmental justice conflicts (444) from the Environmental Justice Atlas and ESPON climate impact projections, mapped on the Climate Adapt platform, are used. The expected result is to provide a preliminary description of the postulated climate edge.

The Global Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas): ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability

The Global Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas): ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability

Environmental justice and the expanding geography of wind power conflicts

Wind power is expanding globally. Simultaneously, a growing number of conflicts against large-scale wind farms are emerging in multiple locations around the world. As these processes occur, new questions arise on how electricity from wind is being generated, how such energy is flowing within societies, and how these production-flows are being shaped by specific power structures. The present paper explores the expanding geography of wind energy conflicts by analyzing 20 case studies from across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. Based on the Environmental Justice Atlas database, it reflects on how land pressures and patterns of uneven development emerge as two features of the current expansion of wind farms. Following a relational analysis, these patterns are examined to interpret the plural instances of opposition emerging throughout the rural spaces of the world. The article argues that previously unexplored forms of collective action are expanding the scope and content of the “wind energy debate”. In addition to the claims of “landscape” and “wildlife protection” addressed by the existing literature, this study sheds light on the rural/peripheral contexts where opposition emerges through the defense of indigenous territories, local livelihoods and communal development projects. The study contends that these “emerging storylines” embrace an environmental justice perspective when challenging the socially unequal and geographically uneven patterns reproduced by the ecological modernization paradigm. From this lens, cases of local opposition are not interpreted as selfish forces blocking a low-carbon transition, but instead, are understood as political instances that enable a wider discussion about the ways such transition should take place.

Ecological distribution conflicts and sustainability: lessons from the post-socialist European semi-periphery

Understanding how ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) have changed through the transition from socialism to capitalism in the European semi-periphery can provide valuable lessons for global efforts towards sustainability. This article traces the social, political and economic origins of EDCs, and evaluates the outcomes of the 74 most illustrative cases of such conflicts from five ex-Yugoslav countries reported in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJatlas): Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. It analyses how the occurrence and characteristics of the conflicts changed through three distinct phases in the region’s history, i.e., the periods of Socialism (1945–1990), Transition (1991–2003), and EU-accession (2004–present), each characterised by different socio-metabolic, political and institutional profiles. The article also evaluates the level of environmental justice (EJ) in the region. The greatest diversity of conflicts were identified in the last phase, a period characterised by an increase in material and energy flows through a number of controversial projects, many of which arose as a result of ‘modernisation’. Fortunately, the resulting ‘unsustainabilities’ were immediately politicised by EJ movements, whose composition, demands and success differed in line with changing dominant political and institutional conditions. Currently, the EJ movements in ex-Yugoslavia are led by national NGOs, while urban movements embrace the broadest spectrum of socio-environmental issues. Timely mobilisation and support from local authorities have been crucial for the successful resolution of conflicts. However, EJ movements have proved impotent to resist projects deemed to be of national economic interest in contexts characterised by high levels of corruption and low political accountability. Stronger alliances among different movements would assure more EJ and lasting sustainability solutions in the region.