Industrial Resource Extraction Research Articles

The Anthropocene and a Small Place in China

This article explores the concept of the Anthropocene through the case of Baiyin, a significant mining city in the western Chinese province of Gansu. Baiyin’s history, from its industrial birth in the 1950s to its current environmental remediation and economic diversification efforts, highlights how urban communities built around industrial resource extraction have blurred both physically and conceptually the dichotomy between urban and hinterland. Baiyin’s role in the larger, global dissolution of the urban/hinterland divide draws attention, moreover, to the nonlinearity and complexity of Anthropocene processes at the level of the city. The article contributes to our understanding of the multifaceted nature and local manifestations of the Anthropocene and offers a case study through which to view the planetary integration of urban and hinterland environments.

Pluralist Ethnobiology: Between Philosophical Reflection and Transdisciplinary Action

In the introduction to this special issue on ethnobiology and philosophy, we consider how the included papers show that ethnobiology is an inherently pluralist project that has a unique potential to foster inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives on issues such as the complex multispecies relations between humans and non-humans that one finds in livelihood practices such as farming and fishing, in conservation management, or in industrial resource extraction, which need to be addressed to deal with planetary challenges from climate change to food inequality. We also argue that a pluralist ethnobiology moves beyond priority disputes between different disciplines by recognizing that its foundations are inherently diverse but still embraces intellectual synthesis that brings insights from various fields together. We provide, finally, an overview of the contributions to the special issue.

Holes in Time: Conrad and the Sacrifice Zones of Standard Time

Abstract: This essay reads Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907) as a meditation on the system of imperial temporality that facilitated the rise of industrial resource extraction across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pushing back against studies that have interpreted the novel as a modernist critique of standardization, I seek to reveal a more dynamic cultural engagement with the idea of time. The characters' many fruitless appeals to time for meaning articulate the heterodox cultural and ideological uses of time during the period, as opposed to its imagined homogenization. By isolating extractive time as a tool and reimagining time and space as resources at the level of the planetary, the novel's confusing scenes of suffering are brought into focus as the outcome of structured sacrifice zones.

Technologies of Quiescence: Measuring Biodiversity, “Intactness,” and Extractive Industry in Canada

Debates over the environmental costs of industrial resource extraction in Alberta, Canada—home to a petrochemical industry that plays an outsize economic and political role—are reaching a fever pitch in response to government regulations on industry, data on climate change threats, and social movements pushing for environmental protection. Away from the news headlines, scientists are developing new metrics and models to calculate biodiversity loss and other outcomes of industrial environmental contamination. But these data are not only used to provide evidence of environmental harm. Practitioners of settler science like the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute employ such data in combination with the metaphor of environmental “intactness,” generating colonial mythologies of terra nullius anew, and enabling industrial extraction to continue. This paper theorizes a technology of settler colonial concealment. It shows how settler technologies of quiescence operate through the strategic use of scientific metrics, thereby concealing evidence of colonial harm and promoting a fiction of environmental “intactness” in a province that is home to one of the most environmentally destructive industries in the world.

Stairway to heaven or highway to hell? How characteristics of forest roads shape their use by large mammals in the boreal forest

Decades of expansion of industrial resource extraction in boreal forests have resulted in the legacy of thousands of kilometers of linear features (seismic lines, forest roads) that have fragmented several wildlife habitats. The decommissioning of anthropogenic linear features and the restoration of suitable habitat are top priorities for the recovery of several species at risk, among which, the threatened populations of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). However, the decommissioning of linear features found in caribou range is expensive, and determining which characteristics make them more beneficial to caribou predators and competitors could assist in prioritizing those that may be most critical for boreal caribou habitat restoration. We thus aimed to determine how fine-scale forest road characteristics influence their use by gray wolf (Canis lupus), black bear (Ursus americanus), moose (Alces americanus) and caribou. We used camera traps and generalized linear mixed models to test the effect of road-scale characteristics on the use of forest roads by wolves, bears and moose while also considering larger-scale covariates. Wolves had a greater probability of using roads that were surrounded by wetlands and had a low lateral cover density. For bears, the intensity of use was lower on 20+ year-old roads when compared to 0–10-year-old roads, and higher on roads surrounded by coniferous stands. Moose intensity of use was higher on 11–20-year-old roads and lower on 30+ year-old roads, and decreased on roads surrounded by clearcuts and with a lower number of deciduous stems growing on them. We could not test for caribou use as we did not capture enough events. Nevertheless, by showing which forest roads are more used by caribou predators (wolves and bears) and its apparent competitor (moose), our study highlights the importance of considering both road-scale characteristics and the landscape context in which roads are built to prioritize the most detrimental roads to caribou conservation and guide efficient restoration efforts of its habitat.

Tailings and tracings: using art and social science to explore the limits of visual methods at mining and industrial ruins

This article examines a novel approach to visual methods that artist Ben Davis has developed based on sociologist Kevin Walby’s research into decommissioned industrial sites, which is referred to here as tracing. Disrupting the over-reliance on photographic representation in visual methods in the social sciences, the authors integrate audio recordings of interviews, as well as photos, maps, and building plans for pop-up mining communities into visual art works to provide a counter-visual analysis of the landscapes depicted in Kevin Walby’s photographs of Uranium City. After reviewing literature on environmental degradation and on visual methods, the article elaborates on Ben Davis’s practice of tracing as a technique representing the feeling of decomposition and decay generated by the harms of industrial resource extraction. The authors argue that the technique of tracing excavates layered histories of place, providing a way of creating new interpretations of social and environmental issues. They then discuss how this counter-visual analysis and approach to tracing enables a trans-disciplinary and dialogical space for engagement with academics, artists, and activists to explore issues centered on land, contamination, and justice.

Counter-institutionalizing First Nation–Crown relations in British Columbia

In Canada, the advance of industrial resource extraction has been moderated by a series of key legal decisions that have found that development activities within the traditional territories of Indigenous Nations may infringe on Aboriginal and treaty rights, requiring a duty to consult and potentially accommodate those affected. In British Columbia this duty is primarily satisfied through the Crown referrals process, whereby affected First Nation groups are notified by the Crown regarding potential rights-affecting decisions and are given an opportunity to formulate a response. This form of institutionalized engagement presents an ongoing challenge for First Nation groups who struggle to manage the influx of Crown referrals, as well as a dilemma for those who question its fairness and inherent colonial structure. For others, it is seen as an opportunity to leverage the duty to consult and accommodate in order to strengthen territorial self-governance. In this paper we introduce the idea of counter-institutionalizing and explore the conditions under which the Crown referrals process is being redrawn to better address, and not, the ability of First Nation groups to improve territorial self-governance and the trade-offs involved.

Scaling up forest landscape restoration in Canada in an era of cumulative effects and climate change

While the global restoration movement is rapidly gaining momentum, understanding the concept and benefits of forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is paramount to safeguarding the natural capital of Canada's forests. In the face of increasing cumulative effects, we investigated the opportunities for scaling up FLR efforts in Canadian forests. The pace of industrial natural resource extraction developments (logging, agriculture, mining, and energy sector), and their overlapping in time and space with the impacts of climate change have resulted in ecosystem function and services alteration, as well as changes in natural disturbance regimes (e.g., wildland fire and pests). These dramatic and synergistic changes to environmental, socio-economic and cultural values occurring in the landscape need to be considered in land use planning but are highly variable and uncertain. We suggested that adding FLR to the land use agenda could offer a clear pathway to transform degraded landscapes into functional landscapes that deliver co-benefits and livelihoods to multiple land users. Supported by existing policies, the practices and goals of FLR initiatives dovetail with Canadian national conservation priorities such as national woodland caribou recovery as well as the development of Indigenous protected areas and nature-based climate solutions. At the international level, involvement in FLR initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge could advance Canadian climate change and ecosystem degradation commitments identified in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals as well as in the Convention on Biological Diversity. To inform policymakers and practitioners, we suggested key collaborative actions to move towards a national restoration framework. Given competing land uses and values, a successful FLR strategy will require a multi-stakeholder governance approach supported by the different levels of government as well as other land users including extractive industries and Indigenous communities. Assessing socio-economic trade-offs around planning, funding, implementing, and monitoring restoration efforts is also crucial.

Towards Understanding Benefit Sharing between Extractive Industries and Indigenous/Local Communities in the Arctic

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide a comprehensive view of the benefit sharing and compensation mechanisms for the Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions due to industrial resource extraction. The papers cover the following topics: (1) Benefit-sharing frameworks in the Arctic. (2) Corporate social responsibility standards and benefit sharing by extractive industries in the Arctic. (3) Benefit sharing and international and national legislation. (4) The practice of implementing legislation to support Indigenous and local interests. (5) The methodologies for assessing compensation to Indigenous communities from extractive industries.

Corrigendum to “Counter-conducts and the green grab: Forest peoples’ resistance to industrial resource extraction in the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, Brazilian Amazonia” [Global Environmental Change Volume 56, May 2019, 124–133](S0959378018311701)(10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.04.004)

The authors regret to inform readers that a correction was missed to be performed in the 4th para in the section titled “Rights claims as counter-conducts”. The sentence “They were only recognised as an identity category under the amorphous signifier “traditional populations” by Decree 6.040 in 2007.” had to be changed to “They were only recognised under the identity category “traditional communities” by Decree 6.040 in 2007.” The following sentence has been removed: “Their heterogeneous origins, including European, African and Native Amazonian heritages, from the perspective of states, governments and international law are impossible to fit into essentialised ‘indigenous’ or ‘tribal’ categories used in the ILO169 and the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 (Fraser, 2018).” The authors apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Counter-conducts and the green grab: Forest peoples’ resistance to industrial resource extraction in the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, Brazilian Amazonia

This paper contributes to the theory of environmentality – the ‘conduct of conduct’ with regard to the environment – by incorporating Foucault’s notion of counter-conducts to elucidate the political subjectivities emergent from the performance of dissent in relation to different forms of power – sovereign, disciplinary and biopower – through which a spatialized rational-technical governmentality of ‘green’ mining and logging is enacted in Saracá-Taquera National Forest (FLONA), Brazilian Amazonia. We analyse the counter-conductive subjectivities emergent from forest peoples’ political articulation through identity categories riberinhos and quilombolas (enshrined in the 1988 Constitution and subsequent laws), claiming of rights to delimit areas of traditional use and ancestral territories, along with direct action, critical discourse and reassertion of agroecological knowledge against industrial resource extraction. To capture the dynamic relation of the conduct of conduct to counter-conducts we draw on a late Foucauldian model of a self, wherein his earlier focus on how the Panopticon shapes self-discipline is complemented by a turn to care for and ethics of the self - practices of freedom through which subjects have the potential to transcend self-discipline. We use this lens to illuminate two case-studies, one focusing on mining, the other on timber, exploring how in this protected area - which permits the ‘sustainable’ industrial extraction of natural resources - the state, companies and an NGO try to shape forest peoples as ‘green’ subjects. Counter-conducts provide the theory of environmentality with a broader perspective on resistance foregrounding the production of political subjectivities in dissent whilst breaking with the resistance-domination binary.

The Rhetoric of Fascism: Or, This Is the Way the World Ends

The next decade will be one of the most decisive periods in human history. We currently face the reality of a coming climate catastrophe brought about by centuries of industrial resource extraction...

Land-use planning and designated national interests in Sweden: arctic perspectives on landscape multifunctionality

Rural land-use planning should handle land-use interests, such as nature-based tourism, biodiversity preservation and industrial resource extraction, on an appropriate level of scale. Management for multifunctionality represents an option in factually multifunctional landscapes. The Swedish policy of national interests, as applied in the context of the three northernmost municipalities’ statutory comprehensive plan-making, provides an attempt in this direction. Based on mapping and practitioner interviews, the study reveals that the vague ‘practical’ implications of the omnipresent land-use designations under the policy complicate the task of local-level spatial planning. Integrated consideration of multiple uses (or use options), implicated by policy principles, was found to fall back into case-by-case assessments. Land-use designation can be worked into a tool for the governance of multifunctional landscapes when care is taken to manage the aspects outlined in the study, among others interagency orchestration and explicit regulation of co-existence.

Algonquin Provincial Park as Policed Space

This paper explores the creation of Algonquin Park, and its social and economic exclusion of local people, including the people after which the park was named, in favour of industrial resource exploitation. The very foundation of the park in 1893 was a form of exclusion, though Aboriginal people were so socially marginalized that their existence was only subsequently recognized through the casting of their everyday behaviours as deviant. Non‐Aboriginal trappers were also confronted with the prohibition of their primary economic activity. Surveillance and law enforcement became important as hunting and simply entering the space without permission were criminalized. Official publications and brochures highlight the public and recreational aspects of the park, but industrial resource extraction, particularly clear cut logging by private lease‐holding companies, was deemed a legitimate activity. This reflects the related capitalist and colonial values of the provincial government and suggests that the creation of Algonquin Provincial Park was hegemonic and economic. The record of legislation, policy construction and enforcement in the park provide an excellent testimony of this reality.8

Interactions between macroclimate, microclimate, and anthropogenic disturbance affect the distribution of aspen near its northern edge in Quebec: Implications for climate change related range expansions

Policy to address the shifting tree species distributions anticipated in coming decades requires a sound understanding of how forests respond to environmental change. Using a combination of remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS) analysis, and ground-based techniques, we explored the environmental factors associated with the distribution and abundance of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) across regional gradients near its northern range limit in northwestern Quebec, Canada. Although not regionally abundant, aspen is the main deciduous tree species in this conifer-dominated landscape. Regionally, the ∼51,200-km2 study area has very few settlements or roads, and little industrial resource extraction. Most of the region is inaccessible to humans except by foot or water travel. We utilized Landsat Thematic Mapper images from 2010 and 2011, and a robust collection of ground reference data developed from aerial photography, supported by field verification (vegetation sampling) where access permitted, to construct a thematic map of 11 land cover classes. The map highlights the spatial distribution of aspen, which represents only 0.3% of the study area. Map validation indicated an overall mapping accuracy of 74%, and the aspen predicted class was determined to be over 77% accurate. The regional-scale distribution of aspen stands ⩾0.5ha within the study area shows two patterns: (1) a shift toward greatest abundance on south-facing aspects with increasing latitude; and (2) a highly clustered pattern with a strong signal of concentration in areas of human activity. These patterns suggest that aspen range expansion due to climate warming will vary with topographic and other microclimatic factors (i.e. be a function of climate change interacting with landscapes) and that anthropogenic activities have the potential to influence future aspen abundance independently of climate. Forest management policies concerned with changing forest composition in these northern landscapes should recognize the potentially important role of human activity in driving the abundance of aspen.

"El tabaco se ha mulato": Globalizing Race, Viruses, and Scientific Observation in the Late Nineteenth Century

This article traces the earliest identified recorded descriptor for viral infection: the racialized Spanish expression "el tabaco se ha mulato" ("the tobacco has become mulatto"). The phrase appears in the late nineteenth-century travel writing of French colonial scientist Jules Crevaux, written as he journeyed through post-Spanish Independence Colombia and observed the demise of the once-thriving tobacco industry. I theorize the literary translations and visualizations, or what I call "visual translations," of the phrase across scientific and historical texts that cite Crevaux to track the refraction of racial, gender, and sexual discourses in virology. I argue that the phrase refers to the historically dispossessed Indigenous and Black subjects of the nascent Colombian republic and their resistance to subjection when forced to work the tobacco fields. The article historicizes virus discovery at the juncture between science, nation-building, global industrialization, and the disciplining of race and sex under the long shadow of Euro-American empire. Drawing upon Ed Cohen's concept of "viral paradox," Nayan Shah's notion of "strangerhood," and Mel Y. Chen's framework for thinking about "queer animacies," I deconstruct the visual, conceptual, and etymological roots of the phrase "el tabaco se ha mulato" to argue that the expression renders the virus as both "queer" and "strange" to the nation. The virus signifies the mulato subject as a stubborn challenge to racial hierarchies and to the host-guest-parasite relation, both of which are foundational to the social organization of the nation and polis. This signification insistently refuses the human/non-human binary that undergirds racial regimes and biological conceptions of life. In turn, I expand historical thinking about race, submit that pandemics result from global industrial resource extraction rather than merely poor hygiene, and offer a framework for "queer decolonizing."

Building the regional perspective: platforms for success

ABSTRACTRegional approaches to protecting the marine environment have gathered momentum over the past 40 years. Pioneered by UNEP's Regional Seas Programme, such approaches have broadened their remit from pollution prevention to the conservation of biodiversity, promoting management tools such as networks of marine protected areas (MPAs).Formal intergovernmental approaches are increasingly complemented by a range of regional projects committed to ambitious targets to establish MPAs and Local Marine Managed Areas (LMMAs). These regional efforts have been inspired by political leaders, non‐governmental organizations, coastal communities and committed individuals.Regional networks of MPA managers have drawn together professionals to share good practice and further develop management tools. They focus on partnerships and capacity building opportunities with support from international donors and implementing agencies.Collective ecosystem‐based management delivered using a regional approach is identified as a preferred solution to environmental challenges in polar regions. Crossing boundaries and fostering regional synergies can help ensure ecologically coherent regional networks and support resilience. There is also the potential to reap tangible rewards from applying such a regional approach in many other areas.Regional coherence of MPA network design, compliance and enforcement policies, and information sharing is an optimal way to understand and counter commercial and industrial resource extraction forces actively working against sustainable development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Southern Appalachia's Nineteenth-Century Bright Tobacco Boom: Industrialization, Urbanization, and the Culture of Tobacco

Over the past three decades, scholars have delved deeply into the post–Civil War industrialization of Appalachia. Although often they have identified agricultural conditions in the mountains as a major factor shaping the emergence of industry in the region, they have paid less attention to the agricultural history of the area. As a result, much about agricultural choices and rural life in the region remains unexplored, and our understanding remains incomplete. The story of bright tobacco in southern Appalachia serves as a reminder that some Appalachian farmers, rather than merely subsistence-oriented mountain folk, participated in agricultural trends and a network of market connections common to the South and the nation in the late nineteenth century. Tobacco culture bound them to the capital resources, marketing operations, and consumer goods of urban centers, even as the profits reaped from tobacco fueled local, urban-led campaigns for industrial development and resource extraction that accompanied the creation of an Appalachian stereotype mocking rural mountain people.

Cover Caption

Cover description: In a remote area on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, the women of Marau Sound have been growing corals for the marine aquarium trade for nearly two decades. While these female entrepreneurs have had their fair share of challenges ranging from logistical hurdles to armed conflict, they continue to gather regularly to “sew” coral frags onto racks, tend to the coral gardens they have planted, and, harvest market sized corals for sale. Using the simplest of materials, they have learned to develop innovative relationships with reef resources that have actually yielded new reefs and have provided a salable, sustainable product that has brought real and consistent income to the village. As any outsider would observe, sitting on the beach watching the women work whilst their children splashed about them in the surf, you are instantly impressed by how well this community‐based approach worked, in fact, it has worked far better than the numerous get‐rich quick schemes, high‐dollar industrial scale resource extraction ventures, or foreign NGO projects that litter the region. While it's not perfect, the lady coral farmers of Marau Sound, Solomon Islands, are proving that the aquarium trade can provide simultaneous economic and ecological benefi ts that other small rural communities should emulate. Photo was taken by Ret Talbot (http://www.RetTalbot.com) in Marau Sound, Guadalcanal, Solomon Island in March 2011.

“You spoil everything!” Indigenous peoples and the consequences of industrial development in British Columbia

This article discusses the perspectives of two First Nations of Canada, northeastern British Columbia’s West Moberly First Nations, Halfway River First Nation, and Treaty 8 Tribal Council, regarding the impacts of industrial resource extraction in lands critical to their traditional cultures and subsistence activities. This collaborative project interviewed First Nation government officials and staff as well as community members and Elders, which created a complex picture of physical impacts of industrial development as well as psychological and cultural concerns. In addition, we briefly explore the impacts of First Nations being required to constantly participate in consultative processes, such as environmental assessment, designed to predict potential impacts. We conclude that recognizing and meaningfully addressing all types of impacts that First Nations experience is critical, both for ensuring environmental justice for indigenous peoples and for recognizing that some land and resources must remain for indigenous peoples to continue to practice their traditional culture. We note, as well, that if there is no room amidst industrial resource extraction activities for indigenous peoples, there is also no room for other environmentally critical values such as healthy ecosystems.