Transnational Mining Companies Research Articles

Der Einfluss transnationaler Unternehmen auf lokale Politik in Bergbauregionen

AbstractThis paper analyses how transnational mining companies influence decision-making processes and public policies in communities adjacent to industrial gold mines. Most social science research on mining focuses on the emergence and dynamics of social conflicts over mining and overlooks the political influence mining companies exert by implementing development programmes to gain social acceptance. This paper fills this gap and develops a refined understanding of the multiple layers of political influence of companies in mining areas. It finds that mining companies spatialise corporate interests, contribute to an informalisation of political decision-making, assume quasi-governmental functions and, in this way, intensify the privatisation of local politics. This paper draws on approaches from critical governance research, critical geography and participation theory. It analyses corporate influence by distinguishing between socio-spatial, political-institutional and political-developmental forms of influence that companies use to create social acceptance for their particular mining project. Empirically, this paper is based on a comparative case study of corporate influence in communities near industrial gold mines in the Argentine north-west and southern Patagonia. For conflict research, the article offers a novel framework for shedding light on the workings of corporate micropolitics in mining areas beyond manifest conflicts. This contribution illustrates that mining companies have the capacity to mould political institutions and public policies by implementing development programmes that are in fact designed to serve corporate purposes.

Modes of Extraction in Latin America’s Lithium Triangle: Explaining Negotiated, Unnegotiated, and Aborted Mining Projects

ABSTRACTMitigating climate change requires a global transition from fossil fuels to a “green economy” driven by renewable energies. This shift has fostered massive investments in mining resources, notably lithium in South America, needed to store renewable energies. These mining ventures often produce harmful externalities where lithium is located. In Argentina, a major producer, striking variation has occurred in the fortunes of lithium-mining projects. In some instances, mining companies offered concessions that mitigated environmental damage and improved local socioeconomic conditions. In others, companies made minimal concessions, and in a third set they halted projects in response to local resistance. Why do mining ventures result alternatively in negotiated, unnegotiated, or aborted extraction? The article proposes a new typology of modes of extraction together with a multilevel explanatory framework that centers on the strengths and strategies of transnational mining companies, subnational governments, and local communities in setting the terms for extracting lithium.

Chinese Mining Companies in Peru: Is There a Single Cause of Problems?

China’s dependence on the supply of mineral resources is becoming stronger than ever. The activity of Chinese investors in the mining industry on a global scale has increased significantly during the last years. Moreover, the activity of Chinese mining investors in the developing countries has some special characteristics such as large-scale projects and protests of local communities during their implementation. This article discusses the activities of Chinese mining companies in Peru, in which both of these conditions were present. The author analyzes the activities of “Shougang”, “Chinalco” and “MMG Ltd” in Peru. The hypothesis is as follows. If there is a special Chinese way of investing, the problems of listed investors (which lead to conflict with local communities) should have a single reason that is unique for all Chinese enterprises. In these conditions, investors should keep the distance between themselves and Peruvian authorities and the local citizens. As a result of the study, the conclusion is made that such reason cannot be identified at this stage. The causes of problems for each of the considered enterprises are unique, but not common for all of them. The origins of these problems are the economic situation, the bureaucratic problems of the Peruvian authorities, as well as the general trends in the relations between transnational mining companies and the Peruvians. At the same time, Chinese companies try to take into account the experience of their predecessors. Most likely, in the future that could possibly lead to greater openness and expansion of dialogue between investors, government and the public worldwide.

Under African skies – mining TNCs in Africa and the Sustainable Development Goals

Interaction between transnational mining companies (mining TNCs), governments, mining industry bodies and local communities is critical to advancing several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Mining TNCs may be leaders or conspicuous laggards in this regard. Some larger mining companies have made significant corporate social responsibility (CSR) progress and implemented effective sustainable development, thereby boosting their legitimacy. Individually, some African countries have established global, standard, mining codes of conduct; collectively, African governments are organizing to establish regional licensing standards, CSR guidelines and codes of conduct such as the Africa Mining Vision. Comparing two mining TNCs cases, we illustrate paths of progress and problems and predict their directions in Africa. Although we expect the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative to remain the main vehicles and provide benchmarks that move the mining industry towards achieving the SDGs, these vehicles need to be expanded to include targets that currently are only implicit, such as gender equality and sustainable community development.

The glocalization of mining conflict: Cases from Peru

Investments in extractive industries, predominantly mining, have catalyzed significant economic growth at the national level in Latin America. However, they have also been met with opposition and resistance from many local communities. This paper argues that global extractive industries have not only introduced radical changes and territorial pressures across many local communities but have also introduced important changes in the “dynamics of contention.” The paper analyzes the ‘glocalization’ of mining conflict, examining, on one hand, the globalization of communities' mobilization against mining, and on the other, the localization and fragmentation of these protests domestically. It argues that the combination of three conditions has provoked these simultaneous and paradoxical characteristics. First, technological changes within the mining industry have led to an increasing geographical extension of mining operations, reaching small localities where the industry had never arrived before. Second, the centrality of the industry in the economy of the country has resulted in a direct institutional nexus and in a contentious ‘counterpoint' between scattered mining communities and agencies of the central government. Third, rural communities opposing transnational mining companies have become allied to transnational networks of activism injecting mobilization resources and facilitating international media coverage.

Geographies of the labour process: automation and the spatiality of mining

Productive ways of thinking about work have emerged from the recent engagement between scholars in employment relations and human geography without any sustained attention to the spatiality of the labour process itself. Arguing that where work literally ‘takes place’ is important, this article explores the spatial nature of the labour process through an examination of automation in one of the world’s largest transnational mining companies, Rio Tinto. To read the labour process in spatial terms, work must be understood in the context of global production networks, the peculiarities of national ‘space economies’ and arguments about the claimed ‘hyper-mobility’ of globalized capital as well as labour geography itself. In this case, automation and a reworking of the geography of the labour process in an industry often seen as constrained by physical geography have implications for assessing labour’s agency and power amid more general changes to the spatiality of work.

Cooperative miners and the politics of abandonment in Bolivia

In Bolivia, cooperative activities wield significant influence over national mining politics. They have become a powerful representational voice for the mining sector, generally supporting, rather than opposing, foreign investment. I use examples from cooperative partnerships with the transnational mining company, Coeur Mines, and draw on newly-released census data and findings from several visits to Bolivian underground mines to demonstrate how cooperative mining realities are intricately linked to those of the private and State-owned sectors. I argue that the historical development of cooperative miners, coupled with their experiences of poverty and exploitation, has shaped their experiences with, and thus reactions to, foreign investors following neoliberal restructuring. I conclude the article by drawing attention to the recent general strikes in Potosi as a way of challenging how much the situation has really changed for Bolivian mining cooperatives since the election of Evo Morales.

Turning Protesters into Monitors: Appraising Critical Collaboration in the Mining Industry

Academic appraisals of collaborations between transnational mining companies and community organizations are often skeptical, pointing to tenacious imbalances of power among the actors that can result in the corporate capture of the criticism aimed at their operations. This article analyzes a mine fight in the Pacific Northwest that involved a widely publicized protest movement and an unprecedented settlement between the company and the grassroots environmental coalition that had successfully halted a previously proposed mine from opening on the same site. Drawing on ethnographic research, I propose a specific kind of corporate/community relationship—called critical collaboration—that presents a unique opportunity to maintain the autonomy of community groups that work with transnational industries.

Sustainable development for whose benefit? Brazil's economic power and human rights violations in the Amazon and Mozambique

The Brazilian government, led for two consecutive terms by the socialist Partido Trabalhadores (Worker's Party), is enabling an overwhelmingly state-funded public–private partnership (PPP) to perpetrate human rights abuses against indigenous peoples and riparian communities in its Amazon region. This article considers the human cost of facilitating an explicitly neoliberal form of economic development for the benefit of large corporations – the primary vehicle through which states grow and develop their economies. It will also show how the world's second-largest transnational mining company, Brazilian Vale SA, undermines human rights and positive state obligations in Mozambique, in exploiting the coal reserves there. The article frames this complex scenario within the business and human rights discourse, with an emphasis on the political economy of human rights violations. It first defines the role of the corporation within neoliberalism, then assesses whether international human rights law is able to prevent corporate human rights violations, or violations of the rights of specially protected indigenous citizens. This article concludes that Brazil's economic development policy and the actions of its leading transnational corporation – due to extensive allegations of human rights violations at home and abroad – are inimical to the principles of truly sustainable development.

The ‘new extractivism’ in Ghana: A critical review of its development prospects

Since the 1980s all Ghanaian governments have promoted large-scale mining by transnational mining companies (TNMCs) as a fundamental development strategy. This is consistent with the euphoria in the international development community about the development potential of extractive industries. Paradoxically, this ‘new extractivism’ has spawned horrific injustices against peasants and artisanal and small-scale miners, a segment of the citizenry whose wellbeing development is supposed to promote. These injustices, particularly land-dispossessions, are similar to the violence of primitive accumulation that created the agrarian transformations in some core Western countries, leading to capitalism and capitalist development. This paper critically examines the capitalist development potential of mining-extractivism in Ghana. Based on the theory of ‘uneven and combined development’, the specificity of foreign capital accumulation in Africa within a globalised capitalist economy, and the way in which these have shaped the integration of African economies into the global economy, the paper concludes that the prospects for capitalist development in Ghana from extractivism agrarian change are dismal.

Informal Mining in Livelihood Diversification

In the context of mineral extraction in South East Asia, the rural poor are generally portrayed as victims of large, invading corporatized mining enterprises. However, this paper argues that local villagers have also shown considerable agency in taking advantage of the mineral resource boom by diversifying their livelihoods to include informal mining. In South East Asia, the growth of informal mining has occurred within the overall process of agrarian transition. This paper focuses on a mineral-rich valley in southern Laos to highlight the location-specific nature of such transitions. The valley's environmental transformation has both caused and accompanied a modification in the peasant ways of life, and the recent entry of transnational mining companies and the growing market price of tin have fundamentally altered the relationships of the peasants with place, while at the same time encouraging them to claim mineral resource rights in ways that are not accommodated in conventional mining legislation. To conclude, the paper notes the multiple interpretations and contradictions of the increasing mineral dependence among Lao peasants in a rapidly changing world.

In the face of reform: What future for ASM in the eastern DRC?

This article aims to assess, on the basis of empirical evidence from South Kivu, what the future may hold for artisanal mining in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The eastern Congolese mining sector is undergoing a period of profound change. Industrial exploitation, while still nascent in the Kivu provinces, appears poised to expand with a number of transnational mining companies currently exploring vast concessions. At the same time, there is a range of new initiatives to regulate and formalise the artisanal mining sector, but early evidence shows that they have failed to have a positive impact. We identify a number of factors hindering the effective implementation of these initiatives, namely state capacity and political will, the complex dynamics and power relations in the current system of artisanal mining and trade, the importance of these activities for livelihoods and the lack of alternative livelihoods. We also provide suggestions for future interventions, including initiatives to promote a viable artisanal mining sector which contributes to broader local development.

Brazilian Gold, Cuban Copper and the Final Frontier of British Anti-Slavery

This paper concerns the problems that transnational mining companies posed for British abolitionists in the years after emancipation in Britain's Caribbean empire. British-owned mines, operating in Cuba and Brazil, were the largest slave enterprises in the western hemisphere c. 1840. Abolitionists were, of course, outraged by the existence of London-based companies that exploited slave labour, but an attempt in 1843 to prohibit the owning of slaves by British subjects anywhere in the world, regardless of local jurisdiction, proved ineffectual. This paper explores the reasons for this failure and raises questions about the potency of abolitionism within early Victorian political culture.

Mozambique – not then but now

Mozambique – not then but now

‘HIV/AIDS is our business’: the moral economy of treatment in a transnational mining company

This article is concerned with the moral economy of HIV treatment in a transnational mining company. Based on multi‐sited ethnography in the world's third biggest mining company, I explore how relations between employer and employee are being transformed as a result of corporate HIV programmes, creating connections between the personal realm of sexual conduct and family life and the political economy of global corporate capitalism. I argue that corporate social responsibility serves as a mechanism through which the company consolidates its authority over a particular field of society, in this case its workforce, conflating the exigencies of human care with the interests of capital.RésuméLe présent article concerne l'économie morale du traitement du VIH au sein d'une société minière internationale. Sur la base d'une ethnographie multi‐site de la troisième société minière mondiale, l'auteur explore la manière dont les relations entre employeur et employé se transforment sous l'effet des programmes de lutte contre le VIH mis en place par l'entreprise. Ils créent des liens entre le domaine personnel du comportement sexuel et de la vie familiale et l'économie politique du capitalisme mondialisé. L'auteur avance que la responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise est instrumentalisée par celle‐ci pour renforcer son autorité sur un secteur particulier de la société, en l'occurrence sa main‐d'œuvre, télescopant ainsi les exigences humanitaires du soin et les intérêts du capitalisme d'entreprise.

Indigenous People's Struggles Against Transnational Mining Companies in Guatemala: The Sipakapa People vs GoldCorp Mining Company

The global context has a decisive influence on the form and content of people's struggles. The cycle of social struggles currently underway in Guatemala is partly a response to structural and histo...

Borders which unite and disunite: Mobilities and development of new territorialities on the Chile ‐ Argentina frontier

Upon the establishment of National States in the Southern Cone, borders started to be considered as differentiation settings and, according to circumstances, international cooperation areas. Integration processes and neo‐liberal policies implemented in the region in the 1990's, however, nurtured discourses encouraging the constitution of a common territory and the end of National State borders. These discourses and their associated rules paved the way for the creation of a new territory on a binational area. Thus, the Veladero and Pascua‐Lama mining complexes (Iglesia, San Juan, Argentina ‐ Regions III and IV, Chile) became geographical settings where only one transnational mining company may “use, influence upon, control people, phenomena, and relationships” (Sack 1986). While production and reproduction areas can be defined almost freely by transnational capital, the traditionally transhumant inhabitants of the Andes have seen their border mobility restricted by a set of sanitary rules hampering the performance of their activity, e.g. the placement of a portion of their handmade production on non‐local markets. What strategies, then, have been devised by these transhumant social groups in order to continue to carry out their family economic activity, which is actually a legacy from their ancestors?

Transnational Law and Local Struggles: Mining Communities and the World Bank. By David Szablowski. Oxford, United Kingdom: Hart Publishing, 2007. Pp. 352. $70.00 cloth; $40.00 paper.

Transnational Law and Local Struggles: Mining Communities and the World Bank. By David Szablowski. Oxford, United Kingdom: Hart Publishing, 2007. Pp. 352. $70.00 cloth; $40.00 paper. Theoretically and empirically, this book offers a provocative and rich discussion on the intersection between transnational law and local struggles that emerge in a transnational mining project in the global south. Empirically, by presenting a highly contextual, specific analysis (p. 289), Szablowski identifies the benefits and dangers of such intersections by carefully tracing the interaction of the actors involved (i.e., the transnational mining company, the local population, and the World Bank). Szablowski examines the dynamics of legitimation, its connection to regulation, and how it is pursued both inside and outside state structures. The book is divided into two parts. The first examines the development of transnational legal regimes and their relationship to other forms of law, while the second part delves into the practical concerns of transnational legal ordering in regulating local environments. The first part comprises four chapters. The first addresses how law is internalized into informal legal process and legitimated. The proliferation of transnational law creates particular types of political identities and political engagement. In the second chapter, Szablowski shows how the Peruvian state takes either a prominent or distant role in mediating corporate/community claims. In either case, he exposes the lack of participation by the local population in the process. Further, when the state is distant, the mining company takes a great deal of the responsibility for mediation, developing a local space of informal legal ordering to deal with local interests. Therefore, the mining company controls and regulates, while community actors find their rights circumscribed with limited possibilities for bargaining. The third chapter focuses on transnational legal regimes aimed at mining and community conflicts. As globalization opens up possibilities for transnational companies, it also enables the formation of transnational advocacy networks to censor their activities. On the one hand, companies are working with transnational organizations to develop legal standards for global industries called certification institutions. Transnational firms adopt certification institutions to diffuse critics, and to provide legitimacy to the industry. Most certification institutions tend to rely on the firm's discretion to interpret and implement standards, avoiding the language of rights and obligations. World Bank agencies have become certification institutions, enforcing mandatory safeguard policies for the projects they finance. Important to note, these policies provide procedural definitions of social responsibility. On the other hand, critics challenge certification institutions, arguing that self-regulation is comparable to no regulation (with the implicit intention to regulate the industry). Chapter four looks at the World Bank safeguard policy's structure and characteristics to assess its regulatory credibility. …

Minerals-based sustainable development — One viable alternative

Anti-mining sentiments are rife in Europe and North America. Environmental accidents associated with mining activities in numerous countries and resource wars in Africa have triggered harsh criticism, not only of mining but also of the metal industries in general. The purpose of this article is to discuss mining industry practices and responsibilities and to consider the options available for using mineral wealth as a lever for economic, social and cultural development. Our conclusions are that not only are minerals indispensable to such development, but possibly the only viable alternative for a better global standard of living. The article is organised into four sections: 1. First, the back ground to the current situation is reviewed; 2. The sustainability concept as applied to mining is discussed; 3. Transnational mining companies are key players and the target of much of the criticism and their role is analysed in the third section; 4. We consider the issue of poverty reduction and resources development.

A Note on Minerals‐based Sustainable Development: One Viable Alternative

Anti‐mining sentiments are rife in Europe and North America. Environmental accidents associated with mining activities in numerous countries and resource wars in Africa have triggered harsh criticism, not only of mining but also of the metals industries in general. The purpose of this article is to discuss mining industry practices and responsibilities and to consider the options available for using mineral wealth as a lever for economic, social and cultural development. Our conclusions are that not only are minerals indispensable to such development, but possibly the only viable alternative for a better global standard of living. The article is organised into four sections: 1) First, the background to the current situation is reviewed; 2) The sustainability concept as applied to mining is discussed; 3) Transnational mining companies (mining TNCs) are key players and the target of much of the criticism and their role is analysed in the third section; 4) We consider the issue of poverty reduction and resou...