Environmental Impacts of Transnational Corporations in the Global South 9781787560352, 9781787560345, 9781787560369

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ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY Series Editor: Paul Zarembka State University of New York at Buffalo, USA Recent Volumes: Volume 21:

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD GENERAL EDITOR Paul Zarembka State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

EDITORIAL BOARD Paul Cooney Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Argentina

Jie Meng Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

Radhika Desai University of Manitoba, Canada

Isabel Monal University of Havana, Cuba

Thomas Ferguson University of Massachusetts at Boston, USA

Ozgur Orhangazi Kadir Has University, Turkey

Seongjin Jeong Gyeongsang National University, South Korea

Jan Toporowski The School of Oriental and African Studies, UK

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RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY VOLUME 33

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH EDITED BY

PAUL COONEY Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Argentina

WILLIAM SACHER FRESLON Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador

United Kingdom
North America
Japan India
Malaysia
China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2019 Copyright r 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78756-035-2 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78756-034-5 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78756-036-9 (Epub) ISSN: 0161-7230 (Series)

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CONTENTS About the Authors

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Introduction Paul Cooney and William Sacher Freslon

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PART I EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES, SOCIAL CONFLICT AND DISPOSSESSION IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH Chapter 1 Transnational Mining and Accumulation by Dispossession William Sacher Freslon and Paul Cooney

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Chapter 2 Mining Giants, Indigenous Peoples and Art: Challenging Settler Colonialism in Northern Australia Through Story Painting Seán Kerins and Kirrily Jordan

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Chapter 3 Ecological-Economic Narratives for Resisting Extractive Industries in Africa Patrick Bond

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Chapter 4 Petroleum Accidents in the Global South Franklin Obeng-Odoom

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PART II ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS AND TRANSNATIONAL VALUE CHAINS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH Chapter 5 Transnational Corporations, Violence and Suffering: The Environmental, Public Health and Social Impacts From Comparative Case Studies in Zimbabwe and Uganda Fernanda Claudio and Kristen Lyons

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Chapter 6 Environmental Injustice in Northeast Brazil: The Pecém Industrial and Shipping Complex Antônio Jeovah de Andrade Meireles, João Alfredo Telles Melo and Magnólia Azevedo Said

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Chapter 7 Family Farming, the Environment and the Global Food Chain Sérgio Pedro

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Index

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Chapter 1 Paul Cooney received his PhD in Economics from the New School, after obtaining his MS in Chemical Engineering. From 2006 to 2014, he was an Associate Professor at the UFPA in the Brazilian Amazon and since 2014, he is a Professor at the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS) in Buenos Aires (Argentina). William Sacher Freslon holds two PhDs in atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and in economics. He works as a Professor at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador. He is the author of ≪Ofensiva Megaminera China en Los Andes≫ (Abya-Yala, 2017), ≪Imperial Canada Inc.≫ (Talonbooks, 2012), and ≪Noir Canada≫ (Ecosociété, 2008). Chapter 2 Dr Seán Kerins is a Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at The Australian National University. Seán has worked with Indigenous Peoples and local communities for the last 25 years on cultural and natural resource management issues (Australia). Dr Kirrily Jordan is a Political Economist and Visual Artist at the Australian National University. Her research includes policy analysis focused on the Australian Government’s approach to “work,” “welfare,” and “development” for Australia’s First Nations peoples, and the role of visual and performing arts in advocating for improved policy-making (Australia). Chapter 3 Patrick Bond is Professor of Political Economy, University of the Witwatersrand, School of Governance, South Africa. His books include Elite Transition (3rd edn, 2014), Politics of Climate Justice (2012), Talk Left, Walk Right (2006), Against Global Apartheid (2003), and Uneven Development (1998) (South Africa). Chapter 4 Franklin Obeng-Odoom holds a PhD in Political Economy from the University of Sydney in Australia. Currently Associate Professor with Development Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, and member of Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Finland, he is the author of Oiling the Urban Economy (Routledge, 2014), the substantive editor of African Review of Economics and Finance, and Associate Editor of the Forum for Social ix

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Economics. Dr Obeng-Odoom is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (Finland). Chapter 5 Kristen Lyons is an Environment and Development Sociologist as an Associate Professor based at the University of Queensland in Australia. Her work is focused in Asia and the Pacific, and relates to agriculture and food, mining and extractivism, and forestry and carbon markets (Australia). Fernanda Claudio is a Medical Anthropologist who is based in Montreal, Canada. Her work focuses on the health of vulnerable groups including refugees, ex-prisoners with intellectual disability, and populations facing results of development. Chapter 6 Antônio Jeovah de Andrade Meireles is a Professor in the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) (Brazil). He has experience in Geography, focusing on environmental impacts and integrated environmental processes and also in traditional and ethnic communities in conflicts with large economic enterprises in their ancestral territories. João Alfredo Telles Melo is an Attorney and Professor of Environmental Law at the September 7th University Center (UNI7); Phd student in PRODEMA (Sustainable Development and Environment Program) at the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil, and a professor of Environmental Law at Centro Universitario 7 de Setembro, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. Magnólia Azevedo Said is an Attorney with specializations in Health, Labor, and the Environment for Sustainable Development and Ecological Economics from UFC and Center for Research and Advisory, ESPLAR (Brazil). Chapter 7 Sérgio Filipe Pedro, holds a Master Degree in Public Law from the Law Faculty of the New University of Lisbon. Advocacy Officer of FIAN Portugal and member of the Ecology and Society Department, of the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra.

INTRODUCTION Paul Cooney and William Sacher Freslon

This Volume 33 of Research in Political Economy is a collection of chapters addressing environmental impacts of transnational corporations, focusing on the global South under neoliberal globalization. We have been fortunate in obtaining a range of interesting papers from several continents, addressing a number of important themes related to the environment in a global economy increasingly dominated by TNCs. Many of the social and environmental issues addressed illustrate the negative impacts on the environment, ecosystems and ways of living for many people across the globe and this is reflected in the struggle between corporate interests versus social movements and human rights. We received several proposals addressing transnational extractive activity, especially mining and oil corporations, primarily in Latin America, Australia, and Africa. These are presented in the first part of the volume, entitled “Part 1 Extractive Industries, Social Conflicts and Dispossession in the Global South”. A series of other pieces are gathered under a second part, called “Environmental Conflicts and Transnational Value Chains in the Global South”. They address other dimensions of the impact of transnational capital on the environment, and indigenous or traditional populations, for instance the role of the colonial and often racist structures of national and multilateral institutions, projects of “development”, the global food chain, and the impact on family food production. In the agricultural sector, the main concerns are related to transgenic organisms and control over seeds, not to mention the continually worsening problem of agrotoxics that dominate our food chain given the rapacious nature of the transnational agroindustry in the current epoch. There is also the role played by international institutions. This issue is covered in various pieces of Part I and Part II of the volume. Besides the problematic role played by the International Monetary Fund throughout the globe for many decades there is now the increasing problem of the role played by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has transformed the global landscape.

Environmental Impacts of Transnational Corporations in the Global South Research in Political Economy, Volume 33, 1
8 Copyright r 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-723020180000033001

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The combination of the rules and potential sanctions by the WTO has worked hand in hand with the ever greater hegemony of TNCs and thus, for instance, severely limiting national sovereignty and any attempts at industrial policies pursued by countries in the periphery. All of these changes have been supported by the Washington Consensus and neoliberal policies, dominating the globe for close to forty years, even in many Latin American countries where a series of nationalist, popular or even socialist political programs were implemented over the past ten to fifteen years. As the book is organized in two parts, we present the summaries of the varied contributions in two separate sections.

PART I EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES, SOCIAL CONFLICT AND DISPOSSESSION IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH The first chapter examines the current tendencies associated with transnational mining in the context of neoliberal globalization dominated by TNCs, and examines the usefulness of the category accumulation by dispossession by Harvey. It also presents arguments for considering the present phase of transnational mining as one of mega-mining, if not giga-mining. In addition, this paper examines the conflicts addressing the social and environmental impacts, which have resulted from these recent tendencies. The chapter begins with an examination of Marx’s analyses of original accumulation, followed by an analysis of Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession. For the latter, Harvey built upon Marx´s concept, and also discussions and advances by Luxemburg and Arendt, recognizing the role of the State and the use of violence in the modern day and the parallels in carrying out expropriation of populations that occupy the territory where transnational companies seek access to water or land, be it for the soil or subsoil, or the drive to convert peasants into wage laborers. The paper assesses to what extent the mega-mining is an example of accumulation by dispossession. It links this analysis to an examination of the social and environmental impacts as a result of the expansion of transnational mining, mainly in Latin America, though also considered in terms of global expansion, especially during the last super-cycle of commodities/minerals. In this discussion the mobilization by peasants and indigenous groups around these issues has led to significant resistance movements. Moreover, in response to resistance, Latin America and elsewhere have witnessed the increased use of State repression, corporate management of social resistance, and in particular, the criminalization of resistance movements. An important aspect of the analysis is also the level of scale which has become necessary for mega-mining. This is particularly important when considering the declines in the quality of mineral deposits and the associated increase in waste and thus the negative consequences in terms of the environment. This impacts the communities in the nearby vicinities and comes to jeopardize cultural livelihoods, access to clean water, and uncontaminated soil, not to mention a range of other cultural issues. Thus, the use of repression and criminalization of the resistance movements seeking to thwart the expropriation of people from their regions is key for understanding the present reality and strengthening the

Introduction

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claim that Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession is clearly relevant for understanding struggles and conflicts in the present day. The paper also examines the issue of reprimarization, which in recent decades, has been a development trajectory, increasingly dominant in places such as Argentina and Brazil where industrialization had achieved some degree of success. The tendency of reprimarization goes hand in hand with the analysis relating to expropriation, be it for mines or hydroelectric dams, increasingly necessary for mining operations, being rather electricity-intensive. Moreover, there is the concern that the reprimarization tendency, which also includes the expansion of transgenic soy, livestock and other extractive activities, has particularly detrimental effects for the environment. In the second chapter, “Mining Giants, Indigenous peoples and Art: Challenging settler colonialism in northern Australia through story painting” Seán Kerins and Kirrily Jordan make a presentation of the problems associated with mining TNCs in Australia and their negative social and environmental impacts on the homelands of aboriginal people. The chapter offers a serious analysis of the violation of indigenous rights of the aboriginals of Australia as a result of mining projects. The TNCs often pay lip service to the concerns of indigenous populations and yet employ manipulation and misrepresentation in order to achieve higher profits and often use political savvy and corruption against the interests of the local populations. The authors provide detailed historical elements which help them to analyze the resistance to the invasion and dispossession in these regions and conclude that “the settler colonial logic of eliminating native societies to gain unrestricted access to their territory is not a phenomenon confined to the distant past”. There are a range of problems faced by these populations, as a result of the negative impacts upon their livelihood, culture, sacred lands, and their environment, including clean and pollution-free water and soil. They have pursued a range of legal means and the authors demonstrate the extent to which politicians and lawmakers have abused these population’s rights through legal manipulation and also illegal actions. The specific case of the Gulf of Carpentaria region in Australia’s Northern Territory is examined, where “settler colonial logic of elimination” continues through the implementation of mining projects. These projects extract capital for transnational corporations while contaminating Indigenous land, undermining their livelihoods, and overriding Indigenous law and custom. The authors are interested in a range of ethnic groups (Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples) who are using creative ways to resist transnational capital, exhibiting “story paintings” to show how their people experience the destructive impacts of mining. The chapter shows several examples of painting in the traditional sense, as well as body art that these aboriginal communities use to confront or present the devastation and violation of their rights that has taken place over many decades. The authors recognize that identifying the full impact of this creative activism is a major task they were not able to realize. They conclude however, that people´s body of work have “the potential to challenge colonial institutions from below, inspiring growing networks of resistance and a collective meaning-

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making through storytelling that is led by Indigenous peoples on behalf of the living world”. As the authors argue, this constitutes another clear example of the relevance of the concept of accumulation by dispossession as elaborated upon by Harvey, given the expropriation and violence incurred by these populations’ lands and territories. It is hoped that the presentation of different art forms will help to convince other Australians primarily to reflect on other values of communities that are also a part of Australia and to take their view into account politically. The third chapter is a contribution by Patrick Bond titled “Ecological Economic Narratives for Resisting Extractive Industries in Africa”. Bond has been carrying out extensive research for both South Africa and for the region as a whole for many years, combining an analysis of political economy with that of environmental and ecological analysis necessary for understanding the ever more complex reality across the globe. In this chapter, he uses the concept of “natural capital”, to address the loss of wealth by African countries, due to extractive industries. This concept comes from ecological economics and is a controversial one even within heterodox economics. It nevertheless allows Bond to reach insightful conclusions on the destruction of the environment in Africa. Bond considers the World Bank’s partial environmental accounting and presents the extent to which Africa’s natural capital has been depleted without the expected returns, and shows how Adjusted Net Savings (ANS), a mainstream category, experienced a significant decline in recent decades. He cites the World Bank’s report on “[…]the Changing Wealth of Nations 2018” which concludes that “Africa loses more than US$100 billion annually from minerals, oil and gas extraction, according to (quite conservatively framed) environmentally sensitive adjustments of wealth”. In spite of the neoliberal orientation of the World Bank, this narrative actually draws attention to the problem of extractive industries in Africa, even according to the mainstream. Bond goes on to examine the problems for Africa as a result of fossil fuel and mineral extraction and how this connects up to both problems in the present and in the near future with respect to climate change. He presents an interesting discussion about how Africa is portrayed as both “victim and fossil-extraction villain” in the context of specific threats associated with climate change and pending catastrophe. Bond points to the growing popular opposition on the African continent, given the range of socioeconomic, political, and ecological problems. The context is one of increasing resistance at the grassroots level and confronting the narrative of so-called “ecological modernization” strategies, as advocated by technocrats and international agencies. He presents recent evidence of increasing resistance to a number of the most negative social and environmental impacts resulting from the domination of extractive activities in a number of African countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Concomitant with the increased resistance has been the increase in repression to attempt to squash or eliminate the resistance movements. However, Bond argues that “between the grassroots and technocratic standpoints, a layer of nongovernmental organizations do not yet appear capable of grappling with anti-extractivist politics with either sufficient intellectual tools or political courage”. According to him, they instead

Introduction

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“revert to easier terrains within ecological modernization: revenue transparency, project damage mitigation, Free Prior and Informed Consent (community consultation and permission) and other assimilationist reforms”. The article also elaborates in depth upon a range of important issues and considers more critical narratives, which address environmental problems, concerns over increasing repression, growing debt, etc. Bond presents the case of the natural capital of Zambia and its depletion as a result of transnational investments. He then carries out an examination of the problems associated with the economic crises of recent years and the problems of imbalances with respect to trade, investment, or in fact, disinvestment and growing debt. Lastly, there is an examination considering another concept coming from ecological economics, “unequal ecological exchange,” as used by several authors and the extent to which this fits or not with different narratives regarding Africa’s future development. In summary, it is Bond´s opinion, there is clear evidence that we are witnessing another wave of pillaging and exploitation of the African continent, reminiscent of the colonial expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. The fourth chapter is titled “Petroleum Accidents in the Global South” written by Franklin Obeng-Odoom, a scholar from Ghana, currently working in Helsinki, Finland. This piece considers the petroleum industry and begins with an inquiry on the determinants of the high number of accidents in the oil industry, first globally and then in the context of Ghana. Obeng-Odoom employs Molotch’s (1970) political economy methodology of “accident research,” and overall argues in the paper that “such ‘accidents’ are, in fact, routine, and part and parcel of the entire value chain of the oil industry. Obeng-Odoom argues that even though the oil sector is characterized by major accidents, “oil-based developmentalist narratives claim that such accidents are merely isolated incidents that can be administratively addressed, redressed behaviorally through education of certain individuals, or corrected through individually targeted postevent legislation.” The author is highly critical of this standpoint and develops an analysis that aims to show to what extent accidents are structural and have to be treated as such in any policy or legislation that want to tackle this problem and its dramatic consequences. Obeng-Odoom considers especially the situation of the TNC-led oil investments in Ghana which were widely encouraged as a mechanism for development. In the analysis of the role of TNCs, he points to the clear support from military governments, but also from the World Bank, in promoting primary extractivism in this country. He then addresses the environmental costs of the model of accumulation associated with the expansion of the petroleum industry. After providing a critical assessment of the social and environmental problems related to oil, the author proceeds toward considering a range of alternatives to the dominant model. Considering the problem of accidents in the oil industry, an assessment of the limitations and errors of actual policies is considered, followed by a presentation of policy alternatives to better address this problem. Obeng-Odoom argues that the previous attempts of “improving technology, instituting and enforcing more

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environmental regulations, and the pursuit of economic nationalism in the form of withdrawing from globalization” have been ineffective. He claims that in a context of the search for ever better returns and efficient capital accumulation the pursuit of slow growth has more potency to address the enigma of petroleum accidents in the global south. This “slow growth” would be “characterized by breaking the chains of monopoly and oligopoly, putting commonly generated rent to common uses, and freeing labour from regulations that rob it of its produce”.” In summary, the paper calls into question the TNC dominated model of developmentalism and what he criticizes as the ideology of growth or accumulation. Obeng-Odoom claims that this model has been supported through modern forms of colonialism and a blind drive toward growth, and has been the main cause of oil accidents with their concomitant environmental disasters.

PART II ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS AND TRANSNATIONAL VALUE CHAINS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH In the fifth chapter, Fernanda Claudio and Kristen Lyons, two Australian authors, examine the impacts of initiatives driven by global political and economic agendas and transnational capital interests on local communities in two African countries, which have come as a result of both colonial history and development schemes. The first case presents the role of neoliberal structural adjustment programs in the case of the Zambezi Valley in Zimbabwe. The second case is that of the push for industrial plantation forestry in Uganda in the present day. Their analysis employs a methodology derived from a theoretical lens of structural violence from various authors like Galtung, Kleinmen, and others. It draws particular attention to the role of TNCs in driving this structural violence and its effects. They examine the disruptions to social, health and communities’ livelihood, addressing the issue of violence and suffering which these communities have had to endure. The authors argue that these initiatives disrupted local economies and modified environments, therefore causing profound effects on livelihoods. They argue that “these effects were experienced as structural violence, and have produced social suffering through the decades”. Thus they provide strong examples of how neoliberal policies combined with transnational interests showing utter disregard for local and in particular, traditional communities all in the name of progress and modernization, similar to that discussed by Bond in Chapter 3. The authors argue that in spite of their specificities, the two studied cases “are comparable in the domains of environmental impacts, disruptions to societies, coopting of local economies, disordering of systems of meaning and social reproduction, and nefarious effects on well-being”. The sixth chapter of this volume is a study which evaluates the principal forms of socioenvironmental damage suffered by local traditional populations and indigenous communities in the context of the installation of a major Industrial and Shipping Complex in Pecém, Ceará, in the Northeast of Brazil.

Introduction

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Meireles, Melo, and Azevedo Said employ a theoretical framework based on the concepts of environmental justice and environmental racism to analyze such impacts. They describe the transition for these communities as part of a process of “deterritorialization” which has resulted in extensive impacts on the natural environment, as well as on the way of life and productive practices of these communities. The traditional and indigenous communities of the area had a socioeconomic formation, characterized by non-capitalist exploitation of “natural resources”, such as artisanal fisheries, subsistence farming, and in general the use of the commons. A major problem the authors analyze is that of pollution in a number of local municipalities in Ceará and the destruction of the natural setting which provided a basis for their livelihoods. They present a strong argument that this process is constitutive of environmental injustice and environmental racism. As several other papers in this volume, they show how these traditional communities resist and struggle against another case of expropriation and violation of basic human rights linked to TNC investments and associated activities. Once again local communities are seen as “the other” all in the interest of the expansion of capitalist accumulation by transnational interests. Of note, the main transnational actor in this case is the mining giant Vale do Rio Doce, formerly a public enterprise which was privatized at even lower than bargain basement prices. Since then, Vale has shown much more conviction in obtaining high levels of profits by operating in China and elsewhere as opposed to any accommodation to its country of origin, or to the Brazilian population that was ripped off as a result of its privatization. In the last chapter, title “Transnational Corporations, Family Farming and the Environment, Pedro examines a range of topics related to the global food chain and the implications for family farming, which still constitutes over 70% of the world´s food production. The author engages with a number of discussions in the legal realm, examining a number of relevant issues from international law, in the areas of Human Rights, including environmental laws and treaties but especially the current neoliberal international trade and investment legal framework (arguably transnational law). For him, this framework “constitutes a legal niche” and accommodates the accumulation and expansion of transnational agribusiness, much more than any family farms or food consumers globally. He also presents the action research methodology and the experience of mobilizing participation in the Civil Society Network for Food and Nutrition Security in the context of the Community of Countries of the Portuguese Language (CCPL). Pedro provides a history of the agricultural industry from the twentieth and into the twenty-first century and in this, he presents the evolution of the global food chain. He presents substantial information regarding family farming historically, first overall and then followed by an emphasis on the CCPL and in particular, a number of important issues for several African countries and Brazil. The third section of this chapter offers an evaluation of the influence of neoliberalism and the growing domination of TNCs, with emphasis on the global farming model. As mentioned above, there is an emphasis on legal issues or

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developments, related to international law and food certification systems, not to mention, the case of the Monsanto Tribunal. The author concludes with a presentation of the environmental impacts of agribusiness today, ranging from discussions of the carbon footprint, biodiversity, agrotoxics, and public health.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS The variety of contributions of the present volume spans a broad range of issues linked to transnational capital interests and their impacts on the environment. They show how environmental impacts are invariably intertwined with many other dimensions. This includes global capital dynamics; colonial heritages, culture and structures; the ever larger scale of industrial and extractive processes; plundering and unequal ecological exchanges; public health, as well as the use of physical and symbolic violence; the role of national states and the power of multilateral institutions in promoting TNCs investments; the destruction of precapitalist or small-scale systems of production; and of course the intensity of social conflicts, the original political subjectivity and ways to struggle associated with these conflicts as well as state and corporate strategies to repress them. These dimensions linked to environmental impacts are captured by various theoretical frameworks, for example, Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession, ecological economics’ “natural capital”, environmental justice and environmental racism, or sociology of the arts. It shows, in our opinion, how environmental destruction, and its everincreasing intensity and extensiveness linked to TNCs capital accumulation, cannot be thought of in an isolated manner or through a framework that is “purely” ecological. The complexity of the interrelation between environmental and social dimensions of TNCs interests and activities evidenced here show the dialectical character of social and ecological problems and invites us to continue analyzing the destruction of the environment from both a radical and multidisciplinary approach.

PART I EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES, SOCIAL CONFLICT AND DISPOSSESSION IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

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CHAPTER 1 TRANSNATIONAL MINING AND ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSSESSION William Sacher Freslon and Paul Cooney

ABSTRACT This paper examines the current tendencies associated with transnational mining capital in the context of the current period of neoliberal globalization dominated by transnational corporations, and examines the usefulness of the category accumulation by dispossession, Harvey’s adapted version of Marx’s original accumulation. After a review of the original concept by Marx an evaluation of Harvey’s concept is presented. The current state of affairs in the mining industry is examined, in particular, considering the present level of large scale mining or mega-mining. In addition, this paper examines the associated social conflicts addressing the social and environmental impacts, which have resulted from these recent tendencies, not to mention the problems of increased use of corporate management of social resistance, and repression, on the part of the State, especially with regards to the criminalization of social protest. Moreover, the tendency toward reprimarization in several countries is considered and the degree to which this coincides with ongoing expropriation by the State is addressed, followed by an assessment of the relevance of the concept of accumulation by dispossession in the present day. Keywords: TNCs; transnational mining; accumulation by dispossession; environmental impacts; social conflict; extractivism

Environmental Impacts of Transnational Corporations in the Global South Research in Political Economy, Volume 33, 11
34 Copyright r 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-723020180000033002

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INTRODUCTION Modern large-scale mining is probably one of the more destructive activities human societies have ever developed. The size of present open-pit mines and the magnitude of their environmental and social impacts appear as unprecedented in the history of humanity. In the present paper, we propose to analyze these socioenvironmental impacts and the gigantic character of their magnitude from a marxist political economy perspective. More specifically, we use David Harvey’s theory of accumulation by dispossession to analyze the violence, forced expropriation, landgrabbing, resource appropriation, and community destruction associated with the implementation of large-scale mining in Latin America. In recent decades, with the neoliberalization of the transnational mining investment frameworks in the global South (e.g. Campbell, 2010; Chaparro, 2002; Naito, Remy, & Williams, 2001), as well as the “commodity boom” beginning in the decade 2000s (ECLAC, 2013; Jenkins, 2011), mining exploration and exploitation investment have skyrocketed. For instance, between 1991 and 1999, Latin America went from being the fourth to the first most common destination for investment in mineral exploration, as a result of a 500% increase in investment. The growth of China then led to the surge in the prices of metals at the world level, quadrupling between 2002 and 2007 (Rosenau-Tornow, Buchholz, Riemann, & Wagner, 2009). The main actors of these new waves of investments have been transnational corporations (TNCs), mainly from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, but also, more recently, from China. Most of these investments took place in areas that up to now were free of large-scale mining activities, in peasant communities or indigenous territories, located in deserts, the Andean Altiplano, cloud forests, and the Amazon. They have almost invariably led to resistance movements, social conflicts and a variety of responses, be it through “dialogue” or repression by the State and private companies heading up mining megaprojects. To what extent does Marx’s theory of original accumulation and transition to capitalism, and Harvey’s contemporaneous update of it help capture the role of the State and capital and the social and environmental processes at work in these affected territories? This is the main question we wish to address in the present text. We do so by first briefly studying the articulation between Marx’s original theory and the recent contribution of Harvey to this field, then documenting and analyzing the main (violent) dispossession processes at work with large-scale mining projects and finally reflecting on the role of the State in terms of legitimating transnational mining activities, as well as the management and repression of social conflicts. We also examine the economic model that results from the implementation of such a large-scale mining model exploiting natural resources.

ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSSESSION1 There are innumerable cases of populations being displaced or pushed off their lands in order for transnational companies to obtain access to them and to carry

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out large-scale mining or oil activities across the globe. These activities imply the employing of both legal and illegal means, by the State and capital and corporate interests, and with outright violence. This fits the description associated with Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession. In our analysis of mega-mining in recent decades, this concept has proved useful in advancing our understanding of such processes for several global regions (see, e.g., Rivero & Cooney Seisdedos, 2010; Sacher, 2015, 2017). The main impacts regarding recent changes associated with extractivism or reprimarization, has been upon the general population and the environment. The concept “accumulation by dispossession” was coined by Harvey in 2003 in his book The New Imperialism.2 It is Harvey’s adaptation or updated form of Marx’s “original accumulation”, resulting from an historical analysis of capitalism, and incorporating contributions made by Luxemburg and Arendt. He considers this type of accumulation to clearly have grown in relation to “normal” accumulation, which sometimes is referred to as expanded reproduction as in Volume 2 of Capital by Marx. In the present section, we want to consider the main aspects of “accumulation by dispossession” as Harvey’s interpretation of current trends of capital accumulation, and discuss how it is derived from the theory of original accumulation by Marx, to which we now turn. Marx’s Analysis of Original (Primitive3) Accumulation Marx argued that capitalist accumulation assumes the existence of both the production of surplus value and a class of wage laborers, among other requirements such as a division of labor, markets, the rule of law, etc. Yet, for society to reach this point of accumulation, there is a need for both an “original” or previous accumulation4 to have taken place and the existence of a class of “free” wage laborers to be available for capitalist exploitation. This is the basis of Marx’s discussion, “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation,” in Chapter 26 of Volume 1 of Capital. Consider the following description by Marx: […]original accumulation (the ‟previous accumulation” of Adam Smith (Bk. II, Introduction) which precedes capitalist accumulation; an accumulation which is not the result of the capitalist mode of production but its point of departure.5

Later in the same chapter, he then refers to forced expropriation of workers as a key element of “original accumulation”: “So-called original accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as “original” because it forms the pre-history of capital, and of the mode of production corresponding to capital.” (emphasis added by authors)6

Marx is arguing that in order for full-fledged capitalist production and accumulation to come into existence, there had to be both a previous accumulation of wealth under noncapitalist conditions and the transformation of laborers or freeholders into wage laborers. In this latter sense, there must be wage laborers who do not own the means of production, which they must have in order to produce for themselves. These wage laborers are “free” in a twofold sense: they are

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free, unlike serfs or slaves, who are tied to the land or to a master, and they are also “free” of the means of production necessary to produce their own subsistence, which means they must sell their labor power in order to survive. In Chapter 27, “The Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land,” and Chapter 28, “Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated since the End of the 15th Century,”7 Marx elaborates on the use of legislation, illegal schemes, fraud, and violent means
often outright pillaging
employed in the historical transition toward capitalism. He presents the classic example of England and the Enclosure movement, considering the period from the end of the fifteenth century through the eighteenth century: a massive expropriation of peasants from their lands, which forced them to become wage laborers. He elaborates on the range of means the state used to achieve this violent transformation. The original accumulation that precedes capitalism, as referred to in the first citation of Marx above, may be distinguished from the accumulation obtained through subsequent expropriation of populations once capitalist relations are established in a given region. Therefore, we refer to original accumulation preceding capitalism as original accumulation in the strict economic sense; the interpretation that emphasizes the historical expropriation of populations constitutes original accumulation in the broad political economy sense (see Rivero & Cooney Seisdedos, 2010). Many of the analyses of transitions to capitalism or expansion of capitalism into areas not dominated by modern industrial capitalism have used the category of original (primitive) accumulation for describing the types of major historical transformations that Marx describes (see Luxemburg, 1968). Yet, if one were to interpret the concept of original accumulation as only that accumulation of wealth required prior to the existence of capitalist relations of production, many historical examples would not be original accumulation in the strict economic sense, but rather only in the broad political economy sense. In the particular case of large-scale mining and many others, this is increasing relevant given the fact that for TNCs the need for expropriation does not always come from the need to force the creation of free wage laborers (which is usually already available because of the existence of labor markets), as was necessary during the Enclosures. Rather, TNCs often are primarily seeking access to land which the peasants, indigenous or even small-scale mining communities occupy, to obtain access to a particular resource, which is not reproducible in general, be it a mineral, oil, or highly fertile soil. This will vary by situations, but is a clear variant from the main example Marx used for the concept of original accumulation. Luxemburg’s Contribution In her classic work, The Accumulation of Capital,8 Rosa Luxemburg presented an insightful analysis of the interaction between established imperial powers and the pursuit of economic and political control of territories at the time often still dominated by noncapitalist relations of production. She argued that the relations between capitalism and noncapitalist modes of production is characterized by violence, often involving the use of “force, fraud, oppression, and looting.”

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Moreover, she argued that the category of original accumulation is not only relevant for analyzing an earlier period of pre-capitalist history but that it is essential in understanding the functioning of modern capitalism. However, the latter is in contrast to what we call a strict economic interpretation of Marx’s concept. Luxemburg, for instance, argues that two great mechanisms of accumulation, “dialectically intertwined“ are coexisting in capitalism: (1) a continuous original accumulation process and (2) the exploitation of wage labor, or simply accumulation (Harvey, 2003, pp. 137
138 and 176). One can argue that this may have been relevant for the period Luxemburg was writing, but since there are no longer countries dominated by noncapitalist relations, it is no longer useful in analyzing actual historical processes taking place today. However, the issue is not simply one of the presence or domination of capitalist relations of production, but rather the strategies and tactics pursued by both capital and supporting states in establishing the conditions which facilitate capitalist accumulation. In this regard, the parallels between the broad sense of original accumulation and present-day accumulation by dispossession, remain valid for our understanding of transformative historical processes that involve the expropriation of populations, as has often been the case for transnational mega-mining. The Concept of Accumulation by Dispossession in Harvey In the work mentioned above, The New Imperialism, David Harvey considers the category of original accumulation. He cites Luxemburg and Arendt, who both argued that this concept is relevant in analyzing historical transformations involving major dislocations of populations and the privatizing of the commons, and thus crucial for our understanding of accumulation in modern capitalism. For example, he refers to the following interpretation by Arendt: “The processes that Marx, following Adam Smith, referred to as “primitive” or “original” accumulation constitute, in Arendt’s view, an important and continuing force in the historical geography of capital accumulation through imperialism[…]. If those assets, such as empty land or new raw material sources, do not lie to hand, then capitalism must somehow produce them.”9 As Harvey points out, the transformative processes involving fraud, pillage, and violent uprooting of thousands of freeholders, as in pre-capitalist England, continued to exist well beyond the establishment of capitalism in many parts of the globe and through to the present day. Harvey further argues for the need to analyze those historical processes that do not fit into a strict economic interpretation of capitalism’s functioning “under conditions of peace, property and equality.” He points to the limitation of Marx’s analysis in Capital, where the assumptions made correspond to classical political economy, namely, the establishment of capitalist markets, rule of law, etc. In light of this limitation, Harvey introduces the new concept of accumulation by dispossession: The disadvantage of these assumptions (classical political economy) is that they relegate accumulation based upon predation, fraud, and violence to an “original stage” that is considered no longer relevant or, as with Luxemburg, as being somehow “outside of” capitalism as a

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WILLIAM SACHER FRESLON AND PAUL COONEY closed system. A general re-evaluation of the continuous role and persistence of the predatory practices of “primitive” or “original” accumulation within the long historical geography of capital accumulation is, therefore, very much in order, as several commentators have recently observed. Since it seems peculiar to call an ongoing process “primitive” or “original,” I shall in what follows substitute these terms by the concept of “accumulation by dispossession.”10 (emphasis added by authors.)

Harvey argues that Marx’s analysis of original accumulation includes a “wide range of processes,” in particular, “the commodification and privatization of land, and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations suppression of rights to the commons.” Harvey goes on to include in his concept, contemporary and current forms of accumulation that operate “extraeconomically,” that is to say, without resorting to the exploitation of wage labor, or basic capitalist accumulation. Among these current forms, Harvey identifies methods that do resemble those described by Marx in Capital, and others that do not: the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; the conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; the suppression of rights to the commons; the commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); the monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade and usury, the national debt, and ultimately the credit system as radical means of primitive accumulation (Harvey, 2003, p. 145).

However, he argues that in recent decades, with the implementation of the neoliberal project, the methods of accumulation by dispossession have multiplied and diversified, leading to a “new wave of enclosure of the commons” (2003, p.148), that is to say, an extension of the “commodification“ of public goods, of nature and of life, to new domains (through, for instance, bio-piracy, the green economy or the privatization of public services (Harvey, 2003, p. 148). The privatization of state-own companies, for example, has led to “special deals”, in which private capitalists purchased public assets at fire sale prices, and then take advantage of buying cheap to maximize their profits. Given what appears as a laundry list of items, compared to original accumulation, it could be argued that there is a need for a strict sense of Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession, since the all-inclusive broad definition goes too far, becomes diluted and thus loses its analytical power, as has been argued by Brenner and others (Ashman & Callinicos, 2006, pp. 119
120; Brenner, 2006, pp. 101
102; Buck, 2009, p. 98; Fine, 2006, p. 143). For the purposes of this paper, this discussion is not essential, as we are concentrating on the expropriation of populations for the purposes of mega-mining activities. The expropriation of peasant or indigenous populations is another way of acquiring at a very low price large tracts of land, whose control is essential for the implementation of for example extractive and industrial megaprojects. These processes, as Marx recalls, require the use of deception, physical and symbolic violence, and even war. According to Harvey, the recent waves of dispossession generated a “volatile mix of protest movements“ (Harvey, 2003, pp. 166
167), which are not constitutive of the typical struggle between capital and labor, but

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of a struggle against “accumulation by dispossession“. Along with Marx, Harvey highlights the importance of the role of the State in these processes, as it provides political, financial, military, judicial, and moral support to the accumulation of capital through dispossession, and argues that the state, which has both a monopoly of violence but also dictates laws and whether or not to enforce them was crucial for the establishment of capitalist relations and continues to be so for the continued expansion of capital across the globe: The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these processes and […] there is considerable evidence that the transition to capitalist development was and continues to be vitally contingent upon the stance of the state. The developmental role of the state goes back a long way, keeping the territorial and capitalistic logics of power always intertwined though not necessarily concordant (Harvey, 2003, p. 145).

Harvey argues that the increased relevance of accumulation by dispossession is in part a result of the global crisis of accumulation of the 1970s. In the decades that followed, the dispossession of common and public goods is seen as a mechanism of accumulation by dispossession which allowed the capitals of these countries to proceed with multiple “spatio-temporal fixes” thanks to neoliberal policies imposed by multilateral agencies in numerous countries, particularly of the global south (for instance using debt as a tool of political pressure). There is substantial debate over the extent to which accumulation by dispossession has become the dominant form of accumulation (Ashman & Callinicos, 2006, pp. 108, 129; Dunn, 2007, p. 10; Fine, 2006, p. 144) and exactly at what point does accumulation by dispossession end and normal accumulation begin, as in the case of the State securing access and a concession to a transnational mining company which then extracts minerals and wealth for several decades, for example. Of course, addressing the “dominant” character of “accumulation by dispossession” as a contemporary accumulation process would require a more precise definition of the concept. And the possible excessive “broadness” of the definition given by Harvey of accumulation by dispossession may allow him to affirm its dominance (Brenner, 2006, p. 102). Although we find these debates relevant, we prefer not to elaborate upon them and instead reflect on the adequacy of Harvey’s concept in understanding the socioenvironmental impacts of megamining.

MEGA-MINING: ACCUMULATION, DISPOSSESSION AND THE ENVIRONMENT The exploitation of minerals, oil and gas is traditionally sectors in which the rates of profit can be very high, especially where ground rent is incorporated into profits. The initiation of these extractive activities requires, in turn, processes of dispossession and often plunder, in particular land-grabbing, control, and occupation of large areas of land and of natural resources like water. For capital, the less expensive the inputs, and the greater the control over land ownership, the more profitable their investments become. In this sense, the so-called “mining codes” promoted by the World Bank and promulgated in the global

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south in the 1980s and 1990s and beyond, offered a legal framework tailored for transnational mining capital (Sacher, 2015). On the other hand, in the 2000s, the rise in the prices of numerous raw materials linked to the outstanding growth in China, has led to a “mining supercycle”.11 In this context, the number of mining exploration and exploitation megaprojects skyrocketed in the global South. For instance, Latin America today concentrates 30% of the investment in global mining exploration (S&P Global, 2018). Due to mega-mining’s tendency toward larger and larger scale production, there is a need to have more and more territories available to implement these projects. Additionally, new deposits are often identified in indigenous or peasant territories, with a set of specific cultural and ecological concerns.12 Under these circumstances, dispossession of local people, land, resources, and basic material conditions of life are inherent to the installation of large-scale mining in a given territory (Gordon & Webber, 2008, pp. 67
68). A previous systematic review of the academic literature that analyzes the socioenvironmental conflicts associated with mining megaprojects, in light of the concept of accumulation by dispossession can be found in Sacher (2015). The main forms of dispossession associated with mega-mining are: dispossessions of lands and territories, of communal goods and natural resources. Several Latin American scholars argue that the mega-mining boom of the last 20 years, as a whole, is an example of accumulation by dispossession and that the numerous anti-mining struggles that have multiplied in the region and on a global scale in the same period can be interpreted as responses to this accumulation mechanism.13 Processes constitutive of accumulation by dispossession associated with largescale mining have been documented in many territories, in the global north and south, and can often be understood, as Harvey suggests, as one solution for transnational capital
be it from the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and now even from China14
to find highly profitable new opportunities of investment (Sacher, 2017). In the present section, we examine the characteristics of modern large-scale capitalist mining and assess to what extent the concept of accumulation by dispossession is relevant for our understanding of this activity and associated processes. “Mega-Mining”: Putting a Name on the Modern Large-scale Mining Model Mining, that is to say the extraction of minerals from the subsoil as a result of a set of physical and chemical processes, means nowadays giant industrial installations. Large-scale mining has probably become one of the most intensive and remarkable forms of human intervention regarding the environment (Lottermoser, 2010). The annual quantity of waste produced by this activity worldwide amounts to 15
20 billion tons, that is to say more than any other industry (Douglas y Lawson, 2000; Lottermoser, 2010).15 Although the perpetual search for increasing profits and the continued expansion of mineral production partly explains this trend towards large-scale mining, it reflects the exploitation of increasingly lower

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quality or “low mineral grade“ deposits (Lottermoser, 2010, p. 11; Prior, Giurco, Mudd, Mason, & Behrisch, 2012).16 Nowadays, if a set of conditions are met, of physical, economic, technological, political, and social nature, it may be profitable to extract copper in ores that contain the metal in a concentration as low as 0.7%. In the case of gold, another important precious metal, it is much worse: deposits that contain only 0.3 part per million (ppm) of the yellow metal become profitable. This results in a constant increase in the so-called waste-to-ore-ratio.17 In terms of size, the current industrial mining model presents a “quantum leap” compared to the dimensions with industrial mines in operation up until the 1970s. For example, as shown by Gavin Mudd (2009), in the case of Australia, averaged annual volumes of “waste” rock (solid waste associated with untreated rock) produced by copper industrial mining jumped from 4.75 million to more than 127 million tons between 1965 and 2005, i.e., an increase by a factor of more than 25 (Mudd, 2009, pp. 70, 186). This trend is observable in all types of metals and for other large mining countries such as Canada, United States, and Papua New Guinea (Mudd, 2007). In the 1990s, in Canada, a country with a long historical tradition of industrial mining, it was estimated that for one ton of rock removed, one produced an average of 420 kg of “waste” rock, 520 kg of treatment waste, 40 kg of metallurgical processing waste and only 20 kg of ore of marketable interest (Ripley, Redman, & Crowder, 1996, cited in Bridge, 2004, p. 211). The situation probably worsened in the last two decades. Current largescale mines can only operate using (and therefore, contaminating) tens of millions of liters of fresh water per day (Mudd, 2009). Meanwhile, mining exploration activities need to get access and control over millions of hectares. In Mexico, for example, one of the countries with the highest investment in the large-scale mining sector in recent years, concessions of 52 million hectares have been granted since the beginning of the 2000s, which constitutes 25% of the national territory (Roux, 2012, p. 8). Representing these figures, as well as the extension of the associated industrial facilities, is almost beyond the capacities of human sense, and usually requires the use of aerial photos or satellites (see for instance Figure 1.1, which shows Los Pelambres, (Chile) one of the largest copper mines in the world. Modern mines often consist of open pits of hundreds of meters deep and several kilometers in diameter, dams of hundreds of millions of cubic meters of toxic and acid-generating wastes, and transport and energy infrastructures necessary for such dimensions. To construct and run such industrial capacities requires investments that often reach several billion dollars (US$). In other words, the order of magnitude necessary to describe this is systematically “millions”. This is why we consider it appropriate to speak about “mega-mining”18 as many Spanish-speaking authors systematically use the term “mega-minería” (although some actually refer to “giga-mining”).19 We also find this term useful, because it allows one to qualify the current industrial mining model, and helps to distinguish this large-scale form of mining from artisanal or small-scale mining, activities that are precisely often threatened by the presence and activities of large

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Fig. 1.1

WILLIAM SACHER FRESLON AND PAUL COONEY

Los Pelambres, open-pit copper mine in Chile. Author: Aurélie Chopard.

TNCs, whose financial and political weight
without possible comparison with that of small mining entrepreneurs
is tailored to mega-mining. The trend towards a mega-mining model and the space which has to be produced to implement it, has meant an increasing use of chemical reagents to carry on the mineral extraction form the ore, the pollution of an increasing amount of water, the concession of increasing areas of land, and all impacts related to the building and production of the necessary mega-structures for mega-mining to operate. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the mining industry is the most important source of toxic pollutants in the United States. For example, the Cyprus Miami Copper Mine in Arizona emits twice as much toxic waste per year as all industries in the state of New York altogether (Moran, 2000, p. 6). This trend towards mega-mining, which has been accelerating since the beginning of the 1980s, implies increasing the magnitude of both the inputs necessary for the extraction of minerals and the volumes of waste produced. Mega-Mining and Its (Large-scale) Impacts Numerous articles, books, and other academic studies around the world provided evidence of the broad variety and scope of the impacts produced by mega-mining at a political, economic, environmental, social, cultural, and psychosocial and public health level.20 This documentation demonstrates how the massive removal of rocks (typically various tens of thousands of metric tons a day, and up to hundreds of thousands in the case of the biggest mines) as well as the use of toxic reagents release large quantities of pollutants and acidifies the environment with the phenomenon of acid rock drainage.21 These contaminations usually have irreversible consequences for water (in qualitative as well as quantitative terms), air, soil, and the ecosystems and biodiversity in general. The

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pollutions come from chronic release of pollutants in the environment as well as accidents, typically with the breakdown of tailings dams22 containing the toxic wastes as a consequence of earthquakes, flooding, and human negligence. This documentation also shows how the pollution generated by mega-mining can affect areas located at tens or even hundreds of kilometers away from the extraction sites. The industrial activities also contribute to sound pollution and are a source of intensive deforestation and biodiversity loss. With these various forms of toxic pollution, mega-mining generates disastrous impacts on public health, such as cancer, skin and respiratory diseases, nervous and reproductive disorders; serious pathologies at the level of psychological health and even the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Specific sectors of the population may be more exposed to these impacts. Recent research around large-scale copper mining projects in Ecuador show that the impacts affect women and children in a differentiated and more serious manner (Sacher, 2017). Mega-mining presence and activities tend to go hand-in-hand with militarization and the presence of a large population of young male workers. This leads to the intensification of pre-existing patriarchal dynamics, with degraded living conditions for women. For local communities, the economic consequences of the production of a “mega-mining space” may be dramatic. For instance, in many cases, due to pollution and the hoarding of land by companies, the capacity of agricultural production is lost. Soon the local economy revolves around a business piloted by foreign interests and a productive activity that in many cases has little to do with local needs. Of course, all these impacts are commonly associated with mining. Nevertheless, given its magnitude, the industrial model is likely to lead to negative impacts for a much larger proportion of the population, land and surrounding environs.

MEGA-MINING AND EXPROPRIATION From that perspective, the extension of the area dedicated to the “mega-mining space“ exceeds by many orders of magnitude the area typically affected by local or in many cases national mining installations. As we saw earlier, the dynamics of capital at the global level and the physical conditions imposed by the increasingly lower quality of deposits jointly lead to an extensive industrial model that needs an increasingly larger area to be developed and implemented. In Latin America as well as other regions of the world, mega-mining has been synonymous with the hoarding of tens of millions of hectares in the form of mining concessions. These appropriations of land are usually associated with the violent expropriation of peasants, indigenous, and artisanal miners and massive losses of commons and collective, and private lands, including individual private lands. For instance, in the case of Peru, where mining has been systematically and historically synonymous with land dispossession and cultural destruction, more than 26 million hectares (20%) of the national territory are under concession, an area in constant growth (Cruz Ayala & Quishpe Canchanya, 2014). In recent years massive expropriations of peasants and indigenous people from their

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lands have taken place, particularly through the process of converting communal property titles into private titles (Sosa & Zwarteveen, 2009). Mining megaprojects in the construction or exploitation phase have caused the forced eviction of thousands of families. This was the case of the “displacement” of the whole city of Morococha, in order to allow China’s giant mining company, Chinalco to develop the Toromocho megaproject (Sacher, 2017). In another Andean country, Ecuador, mining concessions have been granted for roughly 15% of the national territory, or for concessions that are in the process of being granted. During the term of the former “leftist” president Rafael Correa, the Ecuadorian government carried out violent evictions of peasant and the Shuar indigenous population, in the Cordillera del Cóndor, an Amazonian mountain range in the southern part of the country, to allow for the Mirador and Panantza - San Carlos copper megaprojects of the Chinese state companies Tongling and CRCC (Sacher, 2017). In Colombia, the concession of millions of hectares of land to transnational mining companies and mass expropriation of peasants has been reported (Vega Cantor, 2012, pp. 9
10), while numerous artisanal miners are declared illegal and dispossessed of their territories, through the use of power and/or economic pressures (Guttiérrez-Gómez, 2012, p. 57). In Mexico, one of the main targets of junior mining companies in the past years (mostly for Canada, a “judicial haven” for the global mining sector), concessions have been granted for 52 million hectares, namely 25% of the national territory, since the beginning of 2000 (Roux, 2012, p. 8) and at least a dozen mining megaprojects have involved multiple dispossessions of ejidos and sacred lands (Garibay Orozco, 2010, p. 142; Roux, 2012, p. 8; Tetreault, 2012, p. 21). In Haiti, concessions have been granted for 15% of the country to junior and major gold mining TNCs from Canada and the United States, in the wake of the earthquake in 2010 (see, for example, Schuller & Morales, 2012). The situation is comparable in the rest of the countries of the region,23 as well as for other regions of the global South.24 Although the areas where concessions have been granted for mining exploration and extraction, they almost never end up fully dedicated to mining activities. Instead, the companies that acquire such legal titles may claim a series of benefits and rights as owners of the land. In the first place, once it is officially registered, a concession title may immediately become an asset for the mining company. Junior companies, for instance, use these assets to convince new investors to buy shares on Stock Exchanges such as the TSX in Toronto. The concession titles as official mining assets form the legal and material basis on which shareholders of mining companies expect to earn millionaire speculative profits, about which local and national populations of the affected regions or countries on the ground, may never even know about. Second, by law, a concession title also generally guarantees unconditional access to the subsoil, the right to cross, occupied and use private properties and commons, and the possibility of forcefully displacing the populations living on the surface. The tens of millions of hectares which have been granted concessions in the region, therefore represent a latent threat for any community living in the affected territories. In addition, the limits of a mining concession is usually defined from offices of companies

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and the government in large urban centers, without consulting or notifying the affected populations. The concession of land for mega-mining activities leads to a de facto commodification and grabbing of the land in a very classical colonial manner. In other words, mining concessions can be seen as analogous to the massive dispossession of land, the Enclosure movement, in England, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, as described by Marx in Capital. In the case of mining, mega-projects under construction or in operation, the populations and communities living in territories where mining TNCs are operating are often forced by different coercive means. The latter are strategies designed by the State and mining companies, pushing the local populations to abandon their agricultural and other productive activities. The similarities with the dispossession processes that occurred in Europe in past centuries are striking, for instance with those that Marx narrates in his famous articles on the debates on “the law on wood theft“ in the Rhenish Diet in Germany, in which he presented the criminalization process of the traditional collection of firewood in the commons (Bensaïd, 2008). The large-scale pollution associated with mining, particularly the pollution of water, often only deepens and intensifies the negative impacts of these dispossession and migration processes. In a previous study (Sacher, 2015), we showed how the dispossession processes implied by mega-mining activities are not only associated with the massive land grabbing that we have just described, but also with the destruction of the environment and the hoarding or contamination of vital resources, water being the most illustrative case. From this perspective, it is appropriate to consider the destruction of the environment in general as accompanying the processes of dispossession in the context of mining operations. The environmental impacts affect more directly and dramatically the peasant and indigenous communities, which are particularly vulnerable to the destruction of ecosystems and the depletion of aquifers. Moreover, there are the indirect impacts for urban populations that depend on remote areas for their drinking water supply (Galafassi, 2010; Garibay Orozco, 2010; Perreault, 2013; Gordon & Webber, 2008; Machado Aráoz, 2010).

MEGA-MINING AND SOCIAL CONFLICT Given what precedes, we argue that these expropriations necessary for megamining to be run profitably, fit with Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession”. Harvey refers to the violence associated with accumulation of capital through dispossession, and how this often leads to social protest and struggle and possibly “insurgent movements”. As Harvey argues, these do not follow the same path as in the case of established labor movements against normal accumulation (Harvey, 2003, p. 166). Another of their characteristics would be that “they are all part of a volatile mix” that involves a large array of demands that may be difficult to articulate (Harvey, 2003, pp. 166
167). Latin America is probably the region with the most virulent and organized social protests against mega-mining projects. With the generalization of the mega-mining model and its extensive and intensive characteristics, the social

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unrest associated with mining projects in the region has reached unprecedented levels during the last two decades. Several sources show its continuous increase, for instance the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America counted a total of 245 mining conflicts throughout Latin America,25 while another initiative, the Atlas of Environmental Justice speaks of a total of 248 conflicts associated with several mining activities.26 Other references reach similar conclusions (McGill Research Group Investigating Canadian Mining in Latin America of Canada). However, social movements of resistance to mega-mining that are born of this antagonism usually intervene within a context of great power asymmetry; for example, comparing the power of communities and social movements on the one hand and transnational mining capital on the other hand, (Svampa, 2012, p. 19). This struggle can be interpreted as social resistance to the extensive “accumulation by dispossession” processes associated with mega-mining. As we saw, in the territories where they carry out their activities, mining companies need to ensure control over large areas of land (typically thousands, and even tens of thousands of hectares for one single project). This control has to be total and unconditional on the sites of the mining facilities and around the energy and transport infrastructures. In the affected territories and all the space that surrounds them, it seems imperative from the very early stages of a mining project to start to produce a “mega-mining space”, in the sense of the “space production” of the geographer Henri Lefèbvre (2000). In territories with no mining history as in many areas of the Amazon and the Andean mountain ranges and glaciers, the production of this new “mega-mining space” reveals itself incompatible with metabolism, modes of appropriation, and existing modes of production of space. In these circumstances, it is hard for a mining company not to encounter resistance to its presence and activities. As a matter of fact, the invention of a concept as “social license to operate” by the transnational mining sector to qualify this resistance shows its systematic character (Sacher, 2016). Besides resistance to the occupation, transformation and total control of the territory and the production of an alienating mega-mining space as a whole, people also anticipate and oppose socio-environmental impacts such as destruction of the environment, particularly, land and water, and their material, cultural and symbolic means of existence (EJOLT et al. 2012, p. 96; Svampa & Antonelli, 2009, p. 50; Veltmeyer, 2012, p. 40). In the discourse of the social movements opposed to mining, postures with “post-modern” tendencies have emerged or have been consolidated, along decolonization lines. Other reclaim autonomy and popular democratic processes, economic justice, respect of human rights, defense of national sovereignty, and local cultures, emancipation from patriarchy and male domination, advocacy for common goods, local production, food sovereignty, and worry about future generations (Bebbington & Bebbington, 2009, p. 119; Davis & Franks, 2014, p. 16; EJOLT et al., 2012, pp. 94, 108; Svampa, 2012, pp. 19
22). The social movements express their claims through diverse actions
direct and indirect
at the local, national, and international level, as well as “judicial activism” (Sacher, 2016; Svampa, Bottaro, & Álvarez, 2009,

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p. 130; Veltmeyer, 2013, p. 89). The alliances between the different social movements around the region and the world, have often had more failures than successes. The subjectivities within the movements in resistance against megamining, are dynamic and tend to oscillate (sometimes even causing a reversal or mine blockage) according to the groups involved, the stage of the project, and macroeconomic factors at a national and global level. Then, in sectors opposed to mining activity, in many cases conflicting impressions, aspirations, and dynamics coexist. The diversity of demands, political positions and cultures present in social movements opposed to mega-mining, is associated with a wide variety of actors: indigenous and peasant movements; human rights and national and international environmentalist NGOs; intellectuals, scientific and legal experts; social and collective urban movements and even small and artisanal miners (Bebbington et al., 2008, pp. 971, 980; Svampa, 2012, p. 20; Veltmeyer, 2012, pp. 37
38). As Harvey points out, the consolidation of this mixture of movements is a difficult and undeveloped task. There are, nevertheless, examples of articulation on a national scale that demonstrate its feasibility. In Peru, the National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining has been active since 1999; while in Argentina (and neighboring countries) the Union of Citizen Assemblies has been organizing movements of resistance to mega-mining, oil exploitation, large dams, urban pollution, and industrial monocultures since 2006. In Mexico, the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining, created in 2008, is associated with the Mexican Movement of People Affected by Dams and in Defense of the Rivers (Mapder). Few, however, are initiatives at the regional level, yet the CAOI (Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations), brings together organizations from Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, and advocates the creation of an International Court of Environmental Crimes. (Svampa, 2012, p. 21). The Mesoamerican Movement against the Mining Extractive Model (M4) represents one of the most forceful attempts of international articulation of anti-mining struggles in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dismantle, Repress and Criminalize Resistance Movements The processes of dispossession described in the preceding section have to be seen as a necessary material pre-condition for the future accumulation of capital in mining, namely through mineral extraction. The conflicts and social resistance generated by these processes of “accumulation by dispossession” are seen
from the point of view of mining capital
as a social “disorder” and a source of uncertainties, with parallels with conflicts with labor associated with basic capitalist accumulation. As a result, transnational capitals develop various strategies and methods to curb, discipline, dismantle, repress, and criminalize this resistance. The methods employed include lobbying political authorities; hiring of paramilitaries to intimidate and repress; death threats; kidnappings; sexual harassment; torture and even extrajudicial executions and assassinations of opponents but also false accusations; strategic lawsuits against leaders and public participation in general; infiltration and espionage of movements;

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corruption of authorities, and actors of local political, social, and cultural life; financing and creation of local social groups without democratic legitimacy (Echave de, Hoetmer, & Panéz, 2009, pp. 54
59; EJOLT et al., 2012, p. 105; Wagner, 2014, p. 136; Veltmeyer, 2012, pp. 39
40). The criminalization of social protest and violent repression against critical actors of large-scale mining has been in constant growth in recent decades (Svampa, 2012, p. 35). All these means used by the State are to be understood, however, as part of a more general tendency to attempt to monitor and control social conflict, and a continuous diversification and sophistication of disciplinary processes. Increasingly, companies are developing strategies to prevent open social conflicts, with the aim of minimizing costs, expenses and losses that these usually involve. In another text (Sacher, 2016), we study to what extent social conflict associated with mining can be understood as a manifestation of the “second contradiction of capitalism” (in the sense proposed by James O’Connor). We show how as a set of actors related to the extractive sector (lawyers, academics, social scientists, etc.) developed over the last decade, what we called an engineering of protest management and social conflict. Faced with an always latent social conflict and which details are nowadays easily broadcasted on a national and international scale, the objectives of this engineering, as an emerging discipline, are: (1) identify the minimum degree of discipline, control and/or resignation of the communities directly affected (and other critical actors of provincial or national scope) that companies need to reach to prevent acts of resistance that would lead to unacceptable costs, expenses, and losses for transnational mining capital and; (2) identify the set of strategies and methods to achieve this minimum. A concept coined by the same transnational mining sector, the socalled Social License to Operate, can, for example, be understood as a product of this engineering (Sacher, 2016). We argued that it has to be understood as a threshold of acceptability, social legitimacy, as well as discipline and resignation of the communities directly affected, above which the companies have to maintain the populations, to prevent open social conflicts from breaking out in the near future.

THE STATE AS A PROMOTER OF “ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSSESSION” AND REPRIMARIZATION Within the framework of the application of these repressive mechanisms as well as the execution of the processes of dispossession itself, transnational mining capital has received sustained support from the governments and States in Latin America. Governments do not hesitate to place, for example, the judicial system and the public force at the service of mega-mining interests (Sacher, 2015, 2017). Numerous studies highlight, in fact, the key role played by the State in promoting, implementing, and legitimizing dispossession processes and the transfer of public mining assets to transnational mining companies, thanks in particular to the application of the neoliberal mining codes as mentioned in the introduction (see examples in Sacher, 2015). This situation, however, is not specific to the “neoliberal” era. It has taken place previously, though more prevalent in the “post-neoliberal” era. For example, in Ecuador, the “left” government of Rafael Correa has built a “new mining

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institutionality” placed at the service of Chinese, Canadian, and Chilean mining capital. He also mobilized both the judicial system, public force, and the communications apparatus of the State, to criminalize and evict indigenous and peasant communities opposed to mega-mining (Sacher, 2017). However, the State not only provides public force but also places State mining institutions at the service of transnational capital. Governments usually mobilize other ministries and other components of the institutional, financial, educational, and academic, legal, and communicational apparatus of the State to provide the mining capitals physical, financial, political, and moral support. In the case of territories newly exposed to mining megaprojects, the governments of the region also systematically place significant portions of the state apparatus to facilitate the material and social pre-conditions for generating “megamining space” necessary for future exploitation. Effectively, they are doing their best to insure high profitability for the mining TNCs. This proactive stance by the government and its use of the State apparatus echoes the key role explicitly attributed to it by Marx and Harvey in their respective discussions on original accumulation, and accumulation by dispossession, as discussed in the first section. The governments’ concern to maintain an “investment climate” attractive in legal, economic, political, and social terms for large mining companies is also constant. In other words, over recent decades, Latin American states often responded to the needs and demands of transnational capital and their need to maintain and pursue profitable opportunities created by the “mining super-cycle” at a global level. This means that states, governments and their representatives mobilized numerous public institutions, to promote and legitimize mega-mining, the sustaining of mining activities when replacing, constructing and implementing the mechanisms designed for disciplining and controlling the population mentioned above. It implied, for example, the construction of specific mining institutions, designed to favor mega-mining and the enactment of laws favorable to mining investments and against social mobilization but also the use of public forces against social protest and to evict communities. There is often dissemination of propaganda, promoting a range of concepts: “sustainable” or “responsible” mining; legitimizing mega-mining; massive investment in large infrastructure works needed for mega-mining (financed with public debt); public policies that aim to promote the mining sector, etc. (Deneault & Sacher, 2012; Sacher, 2018). The promotion by the State can lead to specialization or a strong orientation of the economy for a particular commodity or set of commodities. Economic consequences include the “reprimarization” of the economy. In the next section, we document how this was the case for some Latin American states. The Tendency Toward (Re)primarization and Its Consequences for the Environment During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the commodities boom, of which the mining “super-cycle” was part, could be seen as a great advantage in terms of capacity for countries to export agricultural products, minerals and other raw materials. For Latin American countries that had managed to build

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an industrial sector in the past decades, such as Argentina and Brazil, the dynamic of growth of both the agroindustrial sector and other primary good sectors, such as minerals and oil, constitute the reprimarization of their economies.27 In the case of Argentina, a process of deindustrialization actually began at the end of the 1970s, while Brazil made structural changes starting at the end of the 1980s. In any case, since the beginning of the 1990s, the economic policies being implemented throughout most Latin American countries and in fact the globe, correspond to the framework of neoliberal globalization. These processes are also strongly influenced by the options, or lack of options, that come as a result of the rules regarding protection and subsidies to which countries must adhere, as members of the WTO, which have been in effect as of 1996, and of increased importance since 2001, when China joined. The upshot is that in general, independent industrial policies fomenting local industry in a serious way are no longer feasible for countries of the periphery. The possibilities of competing in manufacturing at a global level have changed significantly, between major advances in productivity, but also given the role of one of the most powerful international institutions today, namely the WTO, which has resulted in severely limiting the autonomy of most countries of the global south.28 Very much related to the WTO control is the need to accommodate transnational capital and thus fit into the global value chains of TNCs. The latter dominate the industrial and development policies of most countries in the periphery, in part, as a result of the increasing role of the transnational capitalist class, whether that involves foreign or local investors. Given the transnational dimension of the economic interests of local politicians, it can be argued that the interests reflected in current governments correspond more with transnational interests, which tend to get better deals than national companies, as opposed to the traditional national interests associated with the ISI period (Robinson, 2004). Of major concern is the increased degree of dependence of these economies with respect to agribusiness, mining and other extractive sectors, and at the expense of the manufacturing sector. In this sense, the rates of growth for the primary sectors have been higher as a result of the commodities boom on world markets in the last decade or so, primarily as a result of the growth in China. For many countries of the global south, their relation with China was the most notable change of trade relations since the beginning of the twenty-first century, especially for the continents of Africa and Latin America. The latter has experienced a very strong growth of trade with China during the last decade.29 China is interested in securing the supply of a range of raw materials and in order to achieve this they are insuring solid trading partners. Moreover, China is providing loans and expertise for infrastructure projects in addition to purchasing lands and brokering development projects, often involving mega-mining, as well as major hydroelectric dam projects. Their main interest is obtaining control over primary products: minerals, soy and related products, beef, and other food products, oil, natural gas, etc. The concern of this development is that much of Latin America and Africa are orienting themselves so as to concentrate growth in the raw materials sector more and more, and secondly in the industrial sectors

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with low technological content and based on natural products, such as the food and beverage sector. Reprimarization and the Environment30 This section examines the implications for the environment, as a result of reprimarization tendencies in Argentina and Brazil, which in part is clearly related to mega-mining. There are a range of key impacts on the environment that deserve examination, the most notable being: (1) deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest linked to the expansion of mining, lumber, cattle, and soy; (2) air, water, and soil pollution as a result of mining and the use of pesticides in agriculture, especially for soy; (3) soil erosion as a result of mining and soy. There are also major socioenvironmental issues around the issue of hydroelectric dams, strongly tied to mining in Brazil and other Latin American countries. The case of the deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest, and the other environmental problems just mentioned are clearly examples showing the relevance of the concept of accumulation by dispossession, in the context of the mining, oil, and agroindustry sectors. As has been argued elsewhere, the Amazon currently constitutes a frontier for capital accumulation, with an ever growing presence of TNCs, and given the economic expansion in the Amazon in recent decades, having been increasingly integrated with world markets, primarily for soy, cattle, lumber, and minerals.31

CONCLUSIONS In the present text, we have shown how the processes associated with large-scale mining projects currently operating in Latin America and elsewhere can be interpreted as examples of what marxist geographer David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession”. In the last decades, there was a “quantum leap” in the magnitude of the mining operations, as well as the concessions granted to mining TNC. This is related to the exploitation of ever worsening quality ores (deposits), to the tendency to construct mines of ever increasing size, and the tendency to produce environmental impacts of ever increasing magnitude. The global political, legal, and economic context of the past three decades has led to a considerable increase in mining investments and therefore, a generalization of what we here refer to as a “mega-mining” model. During this period, the transnational mega-mining exploration and exploitation activities have led to diverse processes of large-scale dispossession of peasants, small-scale miners and indigenous communities in the Andean Altiplano, deserts, cloud forests, and the Amazon. These dispossessions are the necessary conditions for large-scale mining projects to be implemented, anticipating high profitability, especially given the role of ground rent in this traditionally highly profitable sector. Dispossessions take the form of forced eviction of lands, large-scale land grabbing, loss of territories, and genocides. Moreover, these projects are strongly linked to the negative environmental impacts involving pollution of water, soil, air, and ecosystems. The role of the state was also examined and shown to provide legal, extralegal and institutional support to transnational mining companies, as well as

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putting its apparatus at the service of the repression and discipline of critical actors and social movements. In addition, these dispossession processes tend to generate resistance on the part of the communities, negatively impacted in many ways by such processes. In the light of these analyses, we suggest that Marx’s theory of original accumulation as well as Harvey’s theory of “accumulation by dispossession” contribute to our understanding of the dynamics at work in the occupation and appropriation of lands and resources by transnational mining corporations. These appropriation have been made possible by the implementation of systems of expropriation that allowed mining corporations to control, rob and then contaminate significant swaths of the land mass of Latin American countries.

NOTES 1. Much of the subsequent discussion on Marx’s original accumulation and Harvey´s concept of accumulation by dispossession are derived from an earlier piece addressing this issue in the context of the Brazilian Amazon (see Rivero and Cooney Seisdedos). 2. Harvey (2003). 3. The traditional English translation of the German term ursprungliche akumulation, was “primitive accumulation.” However, in our view and others, including Harvey, the term “original accumulation” seems more adequate, since Marx is attempting to analyze the accumulation that preceded full-fledged capitalist accumulation. Therefore, throughout this paper where the term original accumulation is used, one should understand it to be referring to the traditional term, primitive accumulation. 4. See Marx’s reference to Adam Smith’s term “previous accumulation,” Capital (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), Ch. 26, p. 874. 5. Marx (1977), p. 873. 6. Ibid., pp. 874
875. 7. Marx (1977). 8. Luxemburg (1968). 9. Harvey (2003), p. 143. 10. Harvey (2003), p. 144. 11. That is to say a period of continuously increasing prices of metals, see for instance Rosenau-Tornow et al. (2012). 12. There is the risk of these cultures being threatened given the dependence on both economic activity, such as hunting, but the risk of the eradication of the material basis of their cultures. For instance, indigenous people could be impacted in terms of maintaining customs, language and livelihood. In terms of ecological concerns, the habitats of endangered or endemic species become threatened and this ties in with the livelihood and cultures of local populations. 13. See for instance Galafassi (2010, p. 464), Machado and Aráoz (2010, p. 78), Bebbington, Hinojosa, Humphreys Bebbington, Burneo, and Warnaars (2008, p. 22) and many others quoted in Sacher (2015). 14. We analyze the processes of accumulation by dispossession related to Chinese large-scale mining investments in Ecuador and Peru in the book “Ofensiva Megaminería China en los Andes. Acumulación por Desposesión en el Ecuador de la Revolución Ciudadana“ (Sacher, 2017). 15. For instance, the mining industry of Australia produces 1,750 Mt of mine waste per year, the largest producer of solid, liquid and gaseous waste. As a comparison, the municipal wastes amount to 1,300 Mt (Megatons) a year (Lottermoser, 2010:10).

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16. As shown by many authors (e.g., Mudd, 2007; Prior et al., 2012), for all metals, in general, there is a marked tendency of having to exploit ever lower quality deposits. During the last 100 years roughly, the quality of basic metal deposit quality was reduced by a factor of 3, on average, and by a factor of 15 in the case of gold ore. 17. This refers to the actual volume or weight of waste (solid rock waste) in relation to the volume or weight of mineral ore. 18. 1 mega ¼ 106 ¼ 1 million. 19. For instance, Svampa and Antonnelli (2009), Machado Áraoz (2010), and others. 20. An extract of the relevant bibliography is available in Sacher (2018). 21. Acid Mine Drainage is the generation of a flow of acid water that results from the contact of air and natural waters (rain, rivers and streams, aquifers, etc.) with “sulfides“ extracted from the subsoil by the mining exploitation, and therefore exposed at the surface to atmospheric conditions. The natural waters that come into contact with these sulfides become acidic and acidify the groundwater and surface water downstream. Typically, we find sulfides in significant amounts in the “tailings” and “tailings”, as well as in the walls of the pit in the case of an open pit mine. Acid mine drainage is one of the most problematic pollution sources related to large-scale mining (Adam, Kourtis, Gazea, & Kontopoulos,1997; Aubertin, Bussière, & Bernier, 2002; Blowes et al., 2014). 22. A tailings dam is typically an earth-fill embankment dam used to store by-products of mining operations after separating the ore from the gangue. 23. Composto (2012), Bebbington et al. (2008). 24. See for example, Deneault, Sacher, and Abadie (2008), EJOLT et al. (2012) and the Atlas for Environmental Justice, https://ejatlas.org/. 25. OCMAL online 2018. 26. Atlas for Environmental Justice, https://ejatlas.org/. 27. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil, there has been a process of reprimarization, however, for many countries there has simply been an intensification of primarization of their economies. For a discussion of reprimarization in Argentina and Brazil, see Trindade, Cooney, and Pereira (2016), Cooney (2016), and Cooney (2017). 28. In fact, if the WTO rules were in effect in the nineteenth century, it is unlikely that either the US, or Germany could have come to have the success they did in competing against Great Britain (Chang, 2002). 29. During the last decade, China became the first or second trading partner for both imports and exports for almost all countries of Latin America. (Slipak, 2014, p. 49). 30. Parts of the text in this section are derived from a previous article (Cooney, 2016). 31. For further discussion on the Amazon and deforestation see Rivero and Cooney Seisdedos (2010).

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50. Svampa, M. y., & Antonelli, M. (2009). Minería transnacional, narrativas del desarrollo y resistencias sociales. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Tetreault, D. V. (2012). The political ecology of mining in Mexico. Documento de trabajo. Canada: St. Mary’s University. Trindade, J. R., Cooney, P., & Pereira, W. (2016). Industrial trajectory and economic development: dilemma of the re-primarization of the Brazilian economy. Review of Radical Political Economics, 48(2), Spring 2016. Vega Cantor, R. (2012). Colombia, un ejemplo contemporáneo de acumulación por desposesión. Theomai, 26. Veltmeyer, H. (2012). The Natural Resource Dynamics of Post-Neoliberalism in Latin America: New Developmentalism or Canadian Extractivist Imperialism? Draft prepared for presentation and discus. Veltmeyer, H. (2013). The political economy of natural resource extraction: A new model or extractive imperialism? Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 34(1), 79–95. Wagner, L. (2014). Conflictos Socioambientales. La megaminería en Mendoza, 1884–2011. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes Editorial.

CHAPTER 2 MINING GIANTS, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND ART: CHALLENGING SETTLER COLONIALISM IN NORTHERN AUSTRALIA THROUGH STORY PAINTING Seán Kerins and Kirrily Jordan

ABSTRACT The historian Patrick Wolfe reminds us that the settler colonial logic of eliminating native societies to gain unrestricted access to their territory is not a phenomenon confined to the distant past. As Wolfe (2006, p. 388) writes, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event.” In the Gulf of Carpentaria region in Australia’s Northern Territory this settler colonial “logic of elimination” continues through mining projects that extract capital for transnational corporations while contaminating Indigenous land, overriding Indigenous law and custom and undermining Indigenous livelihoods. However, some Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples are using creative ways to fight back, exhibiting “story paintings” to show how their people experience the destructive impacts of mining. We cannot know yet the full impact of this creative activism. But their body of work suggests it has the potential to challenge colonial institutions from below, inspiring growing networks of resistance and a collective meaning-making through storytelling that is led by Indigenous peoples on behalf of the living world. Keywords: Art; resistance; transnational mining; settler colonialism in Australia; Indigenous peoples; environmental issues

Environmental Impacts of Transnational Corporations in the Global South Research in Political Economy, Volume 33, 35
71 Copyright r 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-723020180000033003

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INTRODUCTION The historian Patrick Wolfe reminds us that the settler colonial logic of eliminating native societies to gain unrestricted access to their territory is not a phenomenon confined to the distant past. As Wolfe writes, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 388). In the Gulf of Carpentaria region in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), this settler colonial “logic of elimination” began in the 1870s. At that time, settler colonizers attempted to clear the country of Indigenous people1 with guns, poison, and intimidation, to make way for the first wave of European capital in the form of cattle (Roberts, 2005). Today, some Indigenous people of the region see the massive increase in mining and resource extraction projects as serving a similar function: growing the capital of outsiders (this time transnational corporations with global reach) while contaminating Indigenous land, overriding Indigenous law and custom and undermining traditional livelihoods. Projects such as Glencore’s McArthur River Mine (MRM), which have been facilitated by successive NT and Australian governments, are plagued by reports of serious environmental problems and accusations of “reckless political choices” that privilege the mining industry over environmental issues and sustainable Indigenous livelihoods2 (Young, 2015). Species that the region’s Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples once hunted, fished, and gathered are quickly disappearing, and many of their important fishing and hunting places are now off limits because of contamination or access restrictions. When the miners have gone and the investors have made their profit, it will be the region’s Indigenous peoples who will bear the final cost of this development project for generations to come. As well as fighting for legal rights in court, a number of Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples are using creative ways to fight back. Since many senior people have limited literacy in reading and writing English, they are using their artwork
including painting, singing, and dance
as a key strategy in having their voices heard. Artists Jacky Green, Nancy McDinny, and Stewart Hoosan use painting to depict the destruction of land, culture, and sacred sites in the name of money. They exhibit their work as a political protest to speak directly to a non-Indigenous audience, asking them to see their country as more than just “a collection of natural resources to be dug up and sold” (The Cross Art Projects, 2016). Similarly, Gadrian Hoosan (2014) uses the power of music to help protect the land from mining companies, telling stories about culture in traditional language as the lead singer in the Sandridge Band, and using the band’s profile to call for action to protect the land: “the government and mining companies need to know that we are going to fight to protect [our land], for future generations both black and white.” As the environmental degradation continues, these artists are calling on all concerned people to “stand up together and fight” (Green, 2015a). In this paper, we explore the context of these artists’ work. The first section provides a brief summary of the contested land use in the Gulf region. We note that this is an ecologically sensitive region in which traditional owners have

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made land-based livelihoods for millennia. These livelihoods, along with important ecological and cultural values, are now threatened by the serious environmental impacts of transnational mining companies including Glencore. In the second section, we situate this contested land use in its historical and institutional context, from the beginning of conflicts over land and water in the 1870s, through the period of “self-determination” and land rights from the 1970s, to the establishment of MRM in 1995. The third section further explores the controversial relationship between the mine and the state. The latter has often seemed to privilege mining interests over all others, with little obvious benefit to the public, the environment, or even in royalties to themselves. We frame this in relation to two concepts that we see as complementary: Wolfe’s (2006) notion of settler colonialism and Harvey’s (2003) concept of accumulation by dispossession. In the fourth and final section, we detail one way in which some of the region’s Indigenous peoples are fighting back, attempting to resist corporate and state oppression through the power of storytelling through art. We conclude that although the precise impact of this work is unknowable, it has significant potential to challenge colonial institutions from below.

CONTESTED VALUES IN THE GULF OF CARPENTARIA REGION In early September 2015, Gadrian Hoosan presented a petition to the government of Australia’s NT. Bearing 3,600 signatures, it called for prosecution of mining transnational Glencore for environmental damage at its MRM. As he presented the petition Hoosan, a young Garawa leader whose traditional country is adjacent to the mine site, laid out some of his concerns. “They had no right to contaminate that river, because we live downstream […] That river was our livelihood and they took that away from us. People used to fish from top to bottom, and no-one fishes there anymore” (Hoosan in Schubert, 2015). Hoosan’s petition was just one expression of an ongoing campaign led by some Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples to protect the region from the MRM’s environmental and cultural impacts, and the profound consequences for their ability to live on their land. The region in question
often referred to as the “Gulf country” or “Gulf region”
sits on the southwest shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, extending approximately 500 km along Australia’s north coast, from south of the Roper River in the west to the NT/ Queensland border in the east (Fig. 2.1). Today there are about 1,200 people who live in southwest Gulf region surrounding the McArthur River. A thousand of these people are Indigenous. It is a young population with about 60% aged under 24 years. The largest town in the region is Borroloola, with a total population of around 900 people. Around 75% of Borroloola’s population are Indigenous (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2017a), with almost 700 Indigenous people living in overcrowded and poor-quality housing at the four “town camps” that immediately surround the township. Another 220, mostly Garawa people, live at Robinson River, with the remainder of the Indigenous population living at over 25 very remote

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Fig. 2.1.

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The Gulf of Carpentaria Region. Source: Adapted from Kerins and Green (forthcoming).

“homeland” communities on Indigenous-owned land throughout the region, usually in small family groups (ABS, 2016, 2017b). Land tenure in the Gulf country includes a mix of pastoral and other leases, conservation reserves and land held by traditional Aboriginal owners under two pieces of Australian government legislation: the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976 (ALRA) and Native Title Act 1993.3 Glencore’s McArthur River Mine Of all the development projects in the southwest Gulf region, Glencore’s MRM poses the most serious and long-term legacy issue for Indigenous people. An open cut mine, it is the world’s second largest zinc resource and produces zinc, lead, and silver. Known since the 1960s to be a significant deposit, it was leased by the NT government to Mt Isa Mines (MIM). At that time, MIM was Australia’s largest mining company, having been established in 1924 to take advantage of the rich zinc
lead deposits in the region (Glencore, 2017a).

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Aboriginal people in the Gulf country held different views about the mining project, with some looking forward to potential benefits in employment and other financial incentives. The Yanyuwa and Garawa peoples, in particular, held concerns about the potential environmental impacts on the river (Young, 2015). Despite these concerns the mining development proceeded: in 1992 MIM formed a joint venture with ANT Minerals, a Japanese consortium comprising Nippon, Mitsui and Marubeni. McArthur River Mining Pty Ltd was created to operate the mine on behalf of the joint venture partners (Glencore, 2017b). In 1993, the NT and Australian governments ratified the mining approvals with special legislation (Young, 2015), and MRM began operation as an underground mine in 1995. In 2003, just as the accessible underground ore was diminishing and becoming uneconomical to extract, MIM was acquired by the Anglo-Swiss mining transnational Xstrata PLC (Somagani, 2016, p. 11). Two years later Xstrata bought out ANT Minerals’ share in the mine to wholly own the operation, and began exploring options to convert it to an open cut mine and extend its life from 2010 to 2027. In 2013, Xstrata merged with Glencore to create the “mining titan” Glencore Xstrata PLC, which changed its name to Glencore in 2014. Glencore, the world’s biggest commodity trader, now lists MRM as a “key operation” in its global portfolio (Glencore, 2017b). Despite substantial evidence of environmental problems, in 2013 the NT government approved a further expansion of the MRM, more than doubling the mining rate to 5.5 million tonnes of ore per year, expanding the waste rock dump and tailings storage facility (TSF), and extending the life of the mine to 2036 (Young, 2015). A Record of Environmental Problems When Hoosan presented his petition to the NT government there were good grounds for his concerns. Much of the Gulf country is of important ecological value. It is home to many significant, vulnerable, or endangered native fauna and flora species including the orange horseshoe bat, Gouldian finch, vulnerable freshwater sawfish, and nationally endangered little tern. The Sir Edward Pellew Islands, opposite the mouth of the McArthur River, are a refuge for fauna species that are extinct on the mainland. The islands were listed on the National Heritage register because of their outstanding natural values. The surrounding shallow waters are home to protected dugong and threatened flatback and green turtle (Young, 2015). In the year leading up to Hoosan’s petition, an independent monitoring report prepared by ERIAS Group had found that 90% of fish tested in a creek near the MRM had dangerously high levels of lead (Dunlevie & Daly, 2014). Lead levels in fish in the mine’s diversion channel exceeded the maximum permitted by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (ERIAS Group, 2014, p. 193). The independent monitor raised concern that “ore-derived” lead “may be entering aquatic biota” even if it was being diluted downstream (ERIAS Group, 2014, p. 193). A health warning was released advising adults
who had

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long relied on the rivers as a primary source of food
to limit fish intake to three times a week, and children to even less (Bardon, 2015a). Just weeks before the petition was delivered, it emerged that Glencore had failed to act on recommendations from the NT’s Chief Health Officer to erect signs at three locations advising people not to eat fish from those waters (Bardon, 2015a). This angered Aboriginal landowners who wanted to know why it had taken over a year for them to be told that their fish had become a public health risk. Heightened levels of lead in fish was not the only problem ERIAS Group reported. Its 2014 report also outlined how both Glencore and the NT Department of Mines and Energy were failing in their environmental management of MRM. The report catalogued “serious and persistent environmental problems at the mine” and a failure to remedy them (Young, 2015). Unrectified problems from previous years included “uncontrolled seepage” from the TSF, risk of failure of the TSF embankment, failure of revegetation, and ongoing erosion of the McArthur River diversion (Young, 2015). There were also new problems identified in the 2014 report. It described how pyrite in the overburden, or waste rock pile, was spontaneously combusting, bellowing clouds of sulphur dioxide for months and affecting Aboriginal residents at a nearby homeland (Young, 2015). Although Glencore reported in May 2015 that the burning was under control, new burning was reported in July 2016 (Bardon, 2016). Early estimates of potentially acid-forming material at the mine site were thought to be around 10%, but this significantly increased to over 50%, with a further 30% of the waste rock now recognized as having potential to form saline and metalliferous drainage. The 2014 independent monitor’s report dramatically escalated the risk assessment from the waste rock dump to “extreme,” with “likely” “catastrophic” consequences including local species destruction and severe local and regional environmental impacts (Young, 2015). While the mine had been attempting to halt potentially toxic emissions, the clay cap laid over the waste rock had been poorly compacted. Over time, monsoon rains will likely penetrate the clay cap and reach the potentially acid-forming rock below the surface, which will then leach acid, saline and metalliferous drainage into the groundwater (ERIAS Group, 2014). This, combined with the surface run-off, will in all likelihood make its way into the streams and rivers of the region and pollute the waters that Aboriginal people have relied on for thousands of years for food. Following the release of the 2014 report, the NT’s Environmental Defender’s Office
a not-for-profit community legal centre acting for the region’s traditional land owners
said it was “extraordinary” the mine was still operational: What we’ve known for some time […] is just the systemic non-compliance with environmental and health regulation at McArthur River Mine […] The Government’s failure to come down hard on them when faced with that wilful disregard is quite extraordinary (Morris, in Bardon, 2015a).

The mine has continued to be plagued by reports of environmental problems (e.g. Bardon, 2015b; Davidson, 2017; ERIAS Group, 2015, 2016, 2017) and there is significant concern this may get worse. The most recent independent

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monitor’s report identifies three areas of “extreme risk” and 27 of “high risk” (ERIAS Group, 2017, pp. 4
1). MRM has recognized that the mine site will likely require monitoring and maintenance for hundreds of years (ERIAS Group, 2017, ES-1). Some of the region’s Indigenous peoples are deeply concerned that long after the mine has gone, their families will be left bearing the cost. Indigenous Life Projects in the Gulf Region The struggle over large-scale development in the Gulf country should not be seen as only a two-sided conflict between economics and ecology. It has another important dimension
namely the cultural. With occupation dating back tens of thousands of years, the economies, knowledges, and cultural identities of Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples are deeply enmeshed in these lands and waters. The Yanyuwa and Marra refer to themselves as saltwater people, with lands centering on the coastal and marine environments of the region including the off-shore islands (Bradley & Yanyuwa families, 2010; Dickson, 2015). Garawa lands include the coastal environment as well as the river systems and vast plains of the tropical savanna (Pickering, 1994), and Gudanji country centers on the escarpment and headwaters of the mighty McArthur River system (Avery, 1985). Together the Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples have relied on these lands and waters for their livelihoods and well-being for millennia. Indigenous livelihoods include the diverse activities in which people engage to sustain themselves. They incorporate “tangible economic activities” related to the customary economy including hunting, fishing, and gathering, and aspects of the cash economy including paid work (e.g., in land management), social security payments and commercial and social enterprise (such as small scale cultural tourism). They also incorporate “intangible aspects of social life” that are reliant on “symbolic resources” (Scambary, 2013, pp. 18
19). This includes “networks of relatedness” to kin and Country and entails a “complex of obligations defined by a corpus of Indigenous Law and custom” (Scambary, 2013, pp. 18
19). “Country” in Aboriginal English encompasses a universe whose ecology consists of many diverse forms that include the lands, waters, culture, nature, and Laws as well as spirit beings, ancestral aspects of flora and fauna, human beings, and natural phenomena. All of these are interconnected and interact with each other. Country is not a generalized place but a “living entity,” it has “a consciousness, and a will toward life” (Rose, 1996, p. 7). It was formed by creation ancestors who travelled the land in the Wangagala
often known in English as the Dreaming or Dreamtime
and whose powers are still present in the land, sky, and waters. The Dreaming is not an event of the past, but a period that embraces past, present, and future and that is a “lived daily reality,” providing a moral code for living (Nungarrayi in Nicholls, 2014). The travels of the ancestral beings in the Wangagala form a network of important cultural and sacred places across the entire Gulf region: These sacred sites were put down in The Dreamtime when the old people travelled through the land. Those Dreamings travelled like human beings and their spirit is still there in the

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SEÁN KERINS AND KIRRILY JORDAN country. We talk to them as our own relations and we believe their spirits come back into our families in the new generations that are born (Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, 1991).

The ethnoecological identity of Yanyuwa, Marra, Garawa, Gudanji, and Waanyi peoples is shaped by these unique human
environment relationships, and is central to understanding their view of the world and their life projects. They imbue the environment with “meaning-making practices” that “define the terms and values that regulate social life concerning economy, ecology, personhood, body, knowledge, and property” (Escobar, 2008, p. 12). Although speaking their own languages, the different Aboriginal groups in the region are closely related through marriage, ceremony, Law, and their connections to Country (Green, Morrison, & Kerins, 2012). People can belong to one or more of the groups and maintain complex social networks across the region. Country is not seen primarily as a set of discrete named blocks, but rather, as an open network of named places. Some places have “big names”, that is, they are powerful and sacred places, while others are of local significance. As well as being connected to the places of local significance some people may also be connected to, and have customary Law responsibilities for, places across the region. For example, people belonging to different countries on the same Dreaming path through their fathers are said to have “one ceremony.” They may call each other “fathers” or “brothers” and “sisters,” even if they speak different languages. Just as an up-river development, such as an in-river mine, may have a negative impact on the peoples’ livelihoods downstream, so too does a development project that impacts on a “big name” place in one area negatively affect the cultural rights of numerous peoples across the region who are connected to that place through the Dreaming path and its related Law, songs, and ceremonies. The MRM site is a “big name” place that is the resting place of the rainbow serpent, a spiritually powerful ancestral being. In 2003, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s NT Stateline program interviewed Harry Lansen, a Gudanji man whose traditional country included this site. Under Aboriginal law, Harry Lansen and others held responsibility for protecting and nurturing the rainbow serpent with song and ceremony, and guarding its resting place from disturbance, just as their ancestors had done for tens of thousands of years. He was asked about the expansion of MRM. During the interview, he told the audience: If they’re going to make a big river down there, big dam, they’re going to kill me, my spirit’s still there you know, my song and my spirit […] I’ll be sick if they cut the place, you know because my spirit’s there, all my songs for crossing the river (in Green & Kerins, 2015).

Defending McArthur River and its surrounding country had been a life project for Harry Lansen, along with many other Aboriginal people from the Gulf. In “Two laws”, a film made in 1981 by four Indigenous groups in the southwest Gulf to explain to European Australians their law, culture, and effects of settler colonialism on their livelihoods, a young, dark-haired Harry Lansen stands barefoot on a thick concrete slab, with a large metal pipe embedded into its side, which runs down into the water of the McArthur River behind Harry. He looks at the camera and he says:

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This here pipe is right in the mouth of the Snake [rainbow serpent] Dreaming. We told them [Mt Isa Mines] before, when no pipe was ever here. Miner, they wouldn’t listen. I went to Darwin to a meeting up there, and we came back and we see this thing put up here, right in The Dreaming place.

It is with some disbelief that Harry Lansen once again says “The pipe, it’s right in the mouth, right in the mouth of the snake. I reckon it’s bad to do that.” In 2011 in an interview in Borroloola, Harry again spoke of the ominous consequences that interfering with the resting place of the rainbow serpent would have for him and his family (in Green & Kerins, 2015). He said: I come from McArthur River; that’s my land, all my Country around there. Then this mine come along and took over the place. They didn’t see us traditional owner, they never come tell us, they just go ahead with the mine, digging that hole there. When that happen [the conversion from an underground mine to an open-cut mine] it mucked me up and make it no good, you know, get sick […] They diggin’ that hole, one of my heart been there and it’s no good. It’s like some other traditional owners been dead there. That’s my father’s land, that my family land, that my hunting land, you know, we all been together there, like ceremony, you know. That mine been affecting me and all my family and all my kids. All them kids look smaller now. They not like ceremony people, we just only nothing, because of the mine. It takes the life away from me. They take my land away, mining company, they just worried about this: money, money, money, all the time. I not worried about money
I worried about that land and what that land been do for me.

In October 2011, with the sacred site and its surrounds freshly disturbed, Harry Lansen died. The next section situates the long battle of Lansen, Hoosan, and many others in the historical and institutional context of Australian settler colonialism and the notion of accumulation by dispossession. It underlines that Lansen’s battle was not only against a mining company, but also against a “facilitative” state. Despite claims to legal due process and corporate social responsibility, these parties have actively participated in an ongoing structural violence that has disempowered Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples at almost every turn.

SITUATING THE McARTHUR RIVER MINE IN ITS INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT For Lansen, Hoosan and other campaigners trying to protect culture and Country, the actions of Glencore situate it squarely within a longer history of colonial dispossession and exploitation. This is a history in which Europeans have claimed the lands of the region’s Indigenous peoples for private capital accumulation, first by seizing control through frontier violence, and then by undermining their ability to live on the land through more indirect means
environmental pollution that makes land-based livelihoods increasingly untenable, and what are often seen as “divide and conquer” tactics that pit traditional owners against each other. Some local people see this as a clear continuation of structural violence that initially killed people for their land with bullets, and then with cultural savagery and toxic runoff (see Hoosan, 2017; McDinny, 2017). To understand this perspective requires historical and institutional context.

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The First Wave of Colonization The conflict between settler society and Indigenous peoples over access to and control over resources in the Gulf region has been occurring since Europeans first entered the lands, weaving a complex web of capitalism, colonialism, and power that stamps some parts of Australia with characteristics akin to the Global South. These conflicts emerged almost a century after the colonization of the southeast of Australia by the British in 1788, as European industry and occupation spread north and west across the continent. In the 1870s, the rise of the pastoral industry in the Gulf country saw the beginning of conflicts over land and water in that region: vast pastoral stations with an average size of almost 16,000 square kilometres were established over Aboriginal peoples’ lands, and within a few short years the entire region was leased to just 14 landlords, all but two of whom were wealthy businessmen and investors from the British colonies on Australia’s east coast. Essential Indigenous food resources along with important cultural sites were damaged by thousands of cattle, and with food swiftly disappearing some Aboriginal groups mobilized to resist the destructive aspects of capitalism and protect their ecological and cultural systems. The consequence of resisting large scale European development was swift and brutal, as the colonizers sought to eliminate the Indigenous population through shooting and poisoning. Estimates suggest that at least 600 men, women, children, and babies (or about one-sixth of the population) were killed in the Gulf country between 1870 and 1910 (Roberts, 2009). The Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa people call this period from the 1870s to 1910 the “wild time.” For them it was a time of murder, mayhem, and chaos. Some groups ceased to exist as identifiable peoples. For others to survive, many Aboriginal people were forced to provide their labor on cattle stations for rations and meagre wages. Still others were forced off their country and scattered in church-run missions elsewhere. Although engaged in unequal labor relations or corralled into missions, the Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa never surrendered. While life on some pastoral stations was one of paternalism and often violent, many families maintained connections to their ancestral Country, and maintained their Laws, cultures, knowledge, ceremonies, and songs to survive as distinct groups. After 100 years of having their lives and country dominated by pastoralists, police, missionaries, welfare officers, and government bureaucrats, things began to change in the 1970s. At the Australian government level, this period saw the election of the reformist and socially progressive Whitlam Labor Government, and the enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) (ALRA). Contested Land Rights In many ways, changes to Australian government policy in this period were profound. Moves towards a policy of “self-determination” from the 1970s included the introduction of ALRA to recognize Aboriginal land rights in the NT, and support for the establishment of Indigenous community-controlled organizations.4 Four Aboriginal Land Councils were founded to represent the views and

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interests of the NT’s Aboriginal peoples in claims under ALRA, with the Northern Land Council (NLC) given responsibility to assist traditional land owners in the Gulf country with land claims and express their wishes in relation to management of their land. Aboriginal people in the Gulf country lodged some of the first land claims under ALRA, and after regaining ownership of some of their ancestral lands many Aboriginal families returned to live on them. For a period of time, with the support of the Australian government through the public provision of housing, health, education, and social security, life on their ancestral countries was again possible. Families lived on their land in small communities often near “big name” places. Most Aboriginal families who returned to their country set about running small herds of cattle, undertaking community development projects, keeping gardens, hunting, fishing and gathering, and taking care of their sacred places. These developments occurred alongside moves towards “decolonization” and independence movements elsewhere in the world. However, they have been contested vigorously by different levels of government, different government agencies, and different administrations over time. For example, while the Australian government initially supported the re-emergence of Aboriginal homeland communities, the NT government provided little support and implemented a “policy of extensive legal challenges to land claims” (NLC, 2018). They opposed all land claims under the ALRA and quickly vested substantial areas of unalienated Crown land in the region in the NT Land Corporation and the Conservation Land Corporation, thereby making the land unavailable for claim by traditional Aboriginal owners. The McArthur River ore deposit was central to NT government policy and action. Successive NT governments were determined to see a MRM go ahead, such that they “suppressed, by whatever means were at hand, the attempts of Aboriginal people to control their traditional land and sea country” (Young, 2015). In these efforts, the “weapons of the colonizer” were not guns but mining management plans and special legislation, and Indigenous traditional owners were “subject to governmental pressure, obstruction, and chicanery at almost every turn” (Young, 2015). The first land claim launched by the Yanyuwa under the ALRA in 1977 included the Pellew Islands. It was actively opposed by both the NT government and MIM. Although the Australian government’s Aboriginal Land Commissioner recommended the granting of some tracts of land to the Yanyuwa, he refused to recommend granting the central Pellew Islands on the basis that the Yanyuwa’s traditional attachment to the islands was insufficiently strong. These islands were the core of the Yanyuwa claim but also the land that MIM intended to use for a town, port, and railway. When the Yanyuwa appealed the decision, the NT government declared the area to be the “Town of Pellew,” since town land was exempt from claims under the ALRA. At the time it was declared a town, the only man-made structure within it was a meteorological observation facility. Following repeat claims, the land was finally granted to the Yanyuwa in 2006, nearly 30 years after their original claim (Young, 2015).

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At the Australian government level, a nationwide scheme for recognizing Indigenous land rights
the Native Title Act (Cth)
was introduced in 1993. This was a celebratory moment for many Indigenous peoples across the country, who could now claim rights to have their native title to land recognized under Australian law where they could prove continuous cultural connection. In the same year, MIM decided to proceed with development of the MRM. The NLC wrote twice to both the NT and Australian governments, acting on behalf of the Gudanji (traditional owners of the mine site) and Yanyuwa (traditional owners of the Pellew Islands and McArthur River mouth) and seeking to be heard on the environmental and social impacts of the proposed mine (Young, 2015). Rather than respond to the NLC, the NT government worked with their federal colleagues
a new Labor government and now the vanguard of Australian neoliberalism
to fast-track the development of MRM and attempt to prevent a future native title claim. The NT Chief Minister at the time, Marshall Perron, boasted that the NT was “a vast region rich in resources where we do not ask what’s wrong with a development project but what can be done to ensure it proceeds” (in Green & Kerins, 2015). At the same time, MIM purchased three pastoral properties in the region, beating Aboriginal groups who were in the eleventh hour of negotiations to purchase the leases to secure their ancestral lands. Both these actions ensured that Aboriginal people would have no opportunity to have “exclusive possession” native title to those lands recognized or to negotiate social, cultural, and environmental conditions associated with the proposed mining development. In 2015, native title was determined over the land MRM sits on, including the mineral lease areas, on a “non-exclusive” basis (National Native Title Tribunal, 2015). This means that while the traditional owners have rights to hunt, fish, gather food, and teach Law and custom on country, they have no right to control access to, and use of, the area. MRM is not required to enter into any agreement with the native title holders in order to continue operating the mine (Glencore, 2017c, pp. 2
3). If there is any conflict between the rights and interests of the native title holders and the rights and interests held by Glencore in MRM, the latter prevail (National Native Title Tribunal, 2015). Native title will enter into full force when the MRM mineral leases come to an end in 2043 (NLC, 2017). The actions of the state, in this case both the NT and Australian governments, have clearly privileged commercial access to, and exploitation of the mineral resources, over any other interests or values (see also O’Faircheallaigh, 2006). Just as state actors have tried to limit Indigenous peoples’ rights to land, they have also sought to facilitate the mining development in spite of serious concerns raised under the relevant environmental legislation. The Facilitative State and Environmental Legislation The MRM is subject to several pieces of Australian and NT government legislation relating to environmental and heritage management. These include the Australian government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation

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Act 1999 (EPBC) and the NT Environmental Assessment Act 1982. The EPBC is designed to manage and protect “matters of national environmental significance” including nationally and internationally important flora, fauna, ecological communities, and heritage places (Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy, n.d.). In relation to MRM, the EPBC means that the Australian government is responsible for the protection of threatened species such as the freshwater sawfish and migratory birds (Young, 2010). The NT Environmental Assessment Act governs the assessment of environmental impacts of proposed development projects, with responsibility vested in the NT Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). The Act is designed to ensure that all matters “capable of having a significant effect” on the environment are taken into account in decisions made by the NT government (NT Environmental Protection Authority, 2006, p. 6). The NT Environmental Defenders Office (EDO, 2018a) notes that the NT “does not have a strong regulatory regime for environment protection.” For example, there are no laws that define what a “significant” environmental impact is (EDO, 2018b). None of the NT laws relating to mining refer to the principle of ecologically sustainable development, and the participation of the public in decisionmaking is very limited. There are no appeal rights for third parties for a merits review of mining approvals, meaning the only recourse for a public challenge to a mining approval is a judicial review of the legality of the decision in the NT Supreme Court (EDO, 2018a). In 2003, the NT and Australian governments concluded a bilateral agreement in relation to the proposed MRM open cut expansion that assigned responsibility to the NT EPA for supervision of the environmental assessment of the project (Young, 2010). Their joint approval of MRM’s open cut expansion has raised serious concerns about the state’s role in facilitating the development. The open cut expansion was first approved in 2006 by both the NT and Australian governments. MRM began diverting a 5-km section of the McArthur River to make way for the massive open cut pit in the river bed and building a huge levee wall
up to 100 m wide and 60 m high
to keep out the monsoonal wet season flow (Young, 2015). Only two years later, in 2008, mining was suspended on the basis of legal questions about the approval process for the open cut development and river diversion as Gurdanji, Garawa, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples challenged the validity of the approvals through the courts. The court proceedings noted that the NT Labor Government under Claire Martin had initially rejected the proposal for the river diversion on environmental grounds. Referring to concerns outlined by the NT EPA through its impact assessment under the Environmental Assessment Act, environment minister Marion Scrymgour (in Somagani, 2016, p. 13) had said the EPA’s assessment provided “a compelling argument for caution:” The assessment concludes that there are significant uncertainties over the long term environmental impact associated with diverting the McArthur River and managing an open mine pit in the river flood plain. The proposal does not therefore meet the test of sustainability.

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The Australian government, now a conservative Coalition government under John Howard, wrote to Claire Martin urging her to reconsider her decision and allow the river diversion to proceed (Young, 2015, p. 3). The NT government invited Glencore to submit an amended proposal. The NT EPA was again critical of this second proposal, noting that removing 5 km of riverine vegetation would create a barrier to wildlife, and that there was “significant risk that contaminated seepage from the mining and milling operations would enter regional groundwater” (Young, 2015). It also noted concerns over the mine’s proposed approach of waiting until environmental impacts occurred and then taking remedial action, rather than taking a precautionary approach to minimize the occurrence of environmental problems. It suggested that this had the potential to “shift the risk associated with dealing with any long term environmental damage from the proponent to Government” (Young, 2015). It noted this reactionary approach was not industry best practice risk management, but that it was preferred by MRM because it avoided or deferred initial capital outlay (NT Environmental Protection Authority, 2006, p. 17). Despite the EPA’s continued concerns and its critical role under the Environmental Assessment Act, the NT government approved the river diversion and the conversion to an open pit mine, identifying additional conditions such as an environmental security bond and independent monitoring of the environmental impacts of the mine. The Gurdanji, Garawa, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples commenced a series of court actions, including action in the Supreme Court arguing that the NT government should not have approved the expansion, since by law it required a new mining authorization and not just an amendment to the original mining management plan. The Supreme Court found in favor of the Indigenous claimants. In what seemed like a repeat of earlier actions by the NT government as it sought to prevent Indigenous claims to land under the ALRA and Native Title, the NT government now rushed through special legislation that overturned the Supreme Court decision, retrospectively validating the approval for mine expansion and declaring that the mine management plans were “valid for all purposes” and the approvals could not be challenged in any court (Young, 2015). Although this special legislation passed, three Indigenous members of the Labor government crossed the floor to vote against it, with the Indigenous environment minister abstaining from the vote (O’Brien, 2007). Simultaneously to their Supreme Court bid, the Gurdanji, Garawa, Yanyuwa, and Marra launched a case in the Federal Court, challenging the approval of the open pit proposal by the Australian government. Like the Supreme Court, the Federal Court’s findings went against the government, this time on the grounds that the Australian government environment minister had failed to take into account the NT government’s conditions for independent monitoring as required. The court overturned the Australian government minister’s decision to approve the mine and ordered the decision must be made again according to law and taking these conditions properly into account. In December 2008, work on the open cut expansion stopped (Young, 2015). Although Gurdanji, Garawa, Yanyuwa, and Marra people felt they had won a reprieve, the Australian government again

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approved the mine subject to additional conditions relating to monitoring of freshwater sawfish and migratory birds, and by February 2009 work at the mine was able to resume (Young, 2015). The relationships between the NT and Australian governments and MRM have continued to raise suspicions. In 2006, a leaked document from NT Treasury showed the mine had never recorded a profit, and it had never paid a royalty to the NT government (O’Brien, 2007). The document also showed the NT Government had subsidized the mine to the value of $AUD 5 million each year for electricity since 1995, and that over the life of the mine the subsidy was expected to reach almost $AUD 100 million (Young, 2015). Although Glencore made $AUD 23 billion in revenue in 2014, it reported only $AUD 296 million in profit and paid only $AUD 55 million in tax (Four Corners and ICIJ, 2017). In 2015 and 2016, Glencore again paid no royalties to the NT Government for its MRM operation, having offset its capital investments to reduce its royalty’s bill to zero (Doherty, 2017). In 2017, the “Paradise Papers” revealed that Glencore is one of the largest clients of offshore law firm Appleby, and that Glencore Australia has been involved in very large cross-currency interest rate swaps. While these swaps are lawful, there is widespread suspicion the instruments are used to minimize tax by moving profits from high-tax to low-tax jurisdictions (Doherty, 2017). Despite substantial evidence of environmental problems, in 2013 the NT government approved a further expansion of the MRM, more than doubling the mining rate to 5.5 million tonnes of ore per year, expanding the waste rock dump and TSF, and extending the life of the mine to 2036 (Young, 2015). Concerning practices by both MRM and the responsible government authorities persisted. A 2014 order from the NT government’s own Mines Department to MRM citing risks to the environment and a lack of adequate environmental controls at the mine was overruled by the government-appointed Mining Board. At the time, the majority of the board’s members were current or former mining industry executives. In the same year, MRM did comply with a government request to have the mine’s TSF certified. However, to undertake this certification MRM contracted the same company that had designed the TSF (Everingham, 2016). Although approval of the open pit development was conditional upon MRM establishing an environmental security bond, the independent monitor of the mine has pointed to a “high risk” that the bond will be inadequate to redress the serious environmental impacts that will remain upon mine closure (Young, 2015). After attempting to supress the value of the bond through the courts, MRM has recently been required by the NT government to publicly disclose the figure, of $AUD 476 million (Fitzgerald & Beavan, 2017). A 2016 report by Australian non-government organization Mineral Policy Institute argued that MRM’s plan to leave an open cut pit and waste rock pile upon mine closure is not viable because of the high proportion of acid-forming rock which would leach acid into the environment, and that the only viable option is to back fill the pit (Mudd, 2016). The report’s author estimated the possible cost of this remediation at up to $AUD 1 billion (Slezak, 2016).

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Darwin barrister Anthony Young (2015) argues that, in the case of MRM, its history is one of “reckless political choices, ignoring scientific and expert advice,” and shows “that governments are willing to sacrifice the health of the environment and of those directly reliant on it, such as the Aboriginal people of the region, to the mining industry and economic interest.”

TRANSNATIONAL MINING COMPANIES, McARTHUR RIVER MINE AND THE STATE As is the case in resource exploitation projects elsewhere (see Hall, 2013, p. 383), it is clear that the state has been an active player in the development of MRM rather than a “neutral arbitrator.” The actions of MIM, and subsequently Glencore, as well as several NT and Australian government authorities and agencies over the last two decades show an enormous asymmetry of power when compared to any other interests, including the region’s Indigenous peoples. As Hall (2013, p. 381) describes of mining in Canada’s Northwest Territories, it illuminates a “broader political and economic asymmetry” based on the ongoing colonial relationship between state and capital on the one hand, and Aboriginal communities determined to defend their lives against “colonial assaults” on the other. To argue that “this asymmetry can be challenged simply through policy or procedural change” is to miss this structural condition altogether (Hall, 2013, p. 381). In this section, we reflect on two conceptualizations that can help to illuminate this structural condition: Wolfe’s (2006) “settler colonialism” and Harvey’s (2003) “accumulation by dispossession.” Australian Settler Colonialism In popular Australian culture, colonialism is understood as something that happened in the now distant past. However, the notion of settler colonialism signifies a colonial relationship in which “the ‘settler culture’ seeks a permanent place in the colonial setting” (Hinkson, 2012, p. 4). The colonial power’s claim to authority hinges on attitudes and assumptions about the lesser value of other cultural and economic systems. In Australia, this has taken multiple forms, including explicit physical violence, the denial of access to traditional livelihoods and natural resources, and the insistence that a Western order (including capitalism, liberalism, and resource extraction) is in the best interests of unenlightened Indigenous peoples who had failed to use the land in a way recognized as productive. Hinkson (2012, p. 4) characterizes the organizing principle of settler colonialism as “an unrelenting cultural logic of misrecognition and blindness towards the cultural other, issuing in acts of objective cruelty and cultural destruction.” Escobar (2008) argues that these conflicts arise from the relative power or powerlessness accorded to various knowledges and cultural practices. The heart of cultural conflicts are reflections of ontological difference; that is, different ways of seeing, experiencing, and understanding the world. In the Gulf country, nature
human relationships are at the centre of Indigenous custom, and their

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protection and maintenance are vital to Indigenous well-being and survival as distinct groups. Such relationships are not seen or valued by the other actors involved in large-scale development projects, whether industry or government. Indigenous cultural meanings and practices are rendered meaningless by settler colonizers
they become externalities placed outside the market where they are made invisible. Although settler colonialism has been racialized through this power dynamic, much colonial expansion has of course been fuelled by capitalism, with the primary motive being access to territory for capital accumulation (Wolfe, 2006). The early colonial period in Australia can be understood as an “unrestricted private conquest” (Hinkson, 2012, p. 3) along these lines. The imposed “culture of individual entrepreneurs and investors” (Hinkson, 2012, p. 3), along with the colonial imperative of global market expansion, created a “tsunami” of cultural destruction borne by Indigenous peoples whom the colonizers largely regarded as less human than themselves. Indeed, European occupation was justified until 1992 by the myth that Australia was terra nullius at the time of its “possession” by the British, literally a land belonging to no-one (Ogleby, 1993). But the legacy of this stage of colonization is not simply the aftermath of the initial wave of frontier violence. It is also the ongoing structuring of power through the economic, political, and legal systems the colonizers introduced. In Wolfe’s (2006, p. 388) words, settler colonialism has both positive and negative dimensions: “Negatively, it strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base […] Settler colonialism destroys to replace.” That is, its “logic of elimination” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 390) is not only evidenced by violent events, but also by an ongoing and complex set of social relations, discourses, and institutional formations that feed the insatiable appetite for more resources at the expense of Indigenous peoples’ land and livelihoods. Accumulation by Dispossession The concept of “settler colonialism” highlights that colonization is an ongoing process. Similarly, Harvey’s (2003) notion of “accumulation by dispossession” extends on Marx’s notion of “original accumulation” to underscore that this process is not relegated to the past. It adds to “settler colonialism” an explanation of the structural imperative that compels capital to continue expanding into new territories. That is, it suggests that the tendency of capitalism to produce repeated crises of overaccumulation requires repeated “spatiotemporal fixes”
involving some combination of geographical expansion, spatial reorganization, and temporal deferment through investment in long-lived infrastructure
to put surplus labor and capital to profitable use (Harvey, 2004, p. 63). This often involves the penetration of capitalism and its attendant social and institutional relations into hitherto non-capitalist locations, through processes of violent dispossession and internal and external colonization. As Gordon and Webber (2008, pp. 67
68) note, in the natural resources sector such spatiotemporal fixes usually “cannot proceed without a community
often indigenous
being dispossessed of their land, natural resources, and livelihoods.” Harvey’s

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concept suggests that these processes are not only ongoing as crises of overaccumulation are inevitably repeated, but that they have actually ramped up since the 1970s through state-backed neoliberalism and globalization. From this perspective, far from being a thing of the past, colonialism can be seen to have intensified over time (see Gordon & Webber, 2008). In the Australian case, this has been facilitated by the state in tandem with transnational corporations, including through the liberalization of investment rules and, as is clearly apparent with MRM, state manoeuvring to facilitate access to mineral deposits. This has involved the deliberate action of some state parties to frustrate the intent of land rights and environmental legislation introduced by different state actors with a conflicting remit. There is a useful reminder here that states are not monolithic, and there may be competing priorities across different government agencies, different arms of government (legislative/executive and judiciary), and different jurisdictions and over time (for some discussion of this in the Australian case see O’Faircheallaigh, 2006). At the same time, the overarching Australian and NT government commitment to industrial development
and the fierce resistance of mining companies to native title laws (Lavelle, 2001) and increased taxation (Bell & Hindmoor, 2014a, 2014b; Marsh & Lewis, 2014)
have helped to facilitate the rapid accumulation of surplus capital that propels continued processes of accumulation by dispossession elsewhere. Like the notion of settler colonialism, Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession highlights that this ongoing process is profoundly transformative of social, economic, and institutional relations. As Gordon and Webber (2008, p. 65) describe, the creation of “new spaces of accumulation […] inevitably involves the forceful and violent reorganization of peoples’ lives as they are subordinated to the whims of capital.” In early periods of imperial expansion, capital accumulation included “force, fraud, oppression, [and] looting” which were “openly displayed without any attempt at concealment” (Luxemburg, 1968). Today, accumulation by dispossession is underpinned by the unequal accumulation of political power even in apparently “liberal democracies” and “negotiated agreements.” This perpetuates a form of colonial violence that is less visible
and more difficult to expose
than the physical violence of the colonial frontier. It is often buried under notions of “corporate social responsibility” and “social licence to operate” that imply a softening of relations between mining companies and Indigenous communities. MRM and the Myth of Corporate Social Responsibility In his analysis of the political economy of mining agreements in Australia, O’Faircheallaigh (2006, p. 6) argues that when negotiating with Indigenous peoples, mining companies are “driven by two fundamental and interrelated imperatives;” these are to “achieve or exceed the required rate of return on their capital” and, in recent decades, to “fulfil or at least be seen to fulfil” so-called “corporate social responsibilities.” He notes that the two are interrelated, because the latter helps companies “to manage political and social risks that

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might threaten their ‘licence to operate’ and so their capacity to generate profits over the longer term’”(O’Faircheallaigh, 2006, p. 6). O’Faircheallaigh identifies that within these broad parameters, there is enormous diversity in the policy and behaviour of different mining companies, and even among different subsidiaries of parent corporations. Alongside the legal context and corporate policy, he argues that a key factor in explaining these differences is what the company thinks “it needs to pay” to get the agreement of the Indigenous group concerned. This reflects in large part the “relative strength and unity of traditional owner groups” in the bargaining context available to them (O’Faircheallaigh, 2006, p. 7). As noted earlier, the bargaining position of Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples was dramatically undermined by the joint efforts of MIM and the NT and Australian governments to limit Indigenous rights to the land. Some Indigenous customary owners say another part of the story is about MRM’s strategic long-term poisoning of community relations, using the dramatic asymmetries of power and resources between itself and local Indigenous peoples to undermine traditional Indigenous decision-making processes and deliberately sow division. It has isolated individual Indigenous people from their cultural groups (NLC, 1993) and created divisions by offering gifts (such as vehicles) in exchange for acquiescence (Green in Kerins, 2017). Although purporting to gain a “social licence to operate,” many local Indigenous peoples say that behind this façade is years of strategic cultural destruction. A 1993 Borroloola Community Development Planning Study prepared by the NLC examined the impact of the mine on the Indigenous people of the region. It described MIM’s strategies and consultation with Indigenous people as “having the effect of isolating them from their own organizations and other sources of support, assistance and legal advice” (in Kerins, 2015). It identified that MIM’s “stated policy” was to keep all “‘outsiders’ out of their relations with local Aboriginal people”, including “people working in Aboriginal organizations.” One of the effects of this strategy was to “engender a certain level of distrust of their ‘own’ local organizations, apparently on the grounds that they have non-Aboriginal people working in them who ought not be involved with local matters,” in particular with any discussions concerning mining development (in Kerins, 2015). This was particularly problematic because many Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples had limited English with which to properly engage in discussions with MIM about the development project and needed to rely on non-Indigenous advisors. Community relations got worse when Xstrata took over the mine. In 2005, to try to negotiate with Xstrata, traditional owners established the Borroloola Traditional Owners Group whose members were appointed though customary Law processes by each of the four lndigenous groups in the region (Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and Yanyuwa). However, Xstrata refused to work with the Borroloola Traditional Owners Group and chose instead to hand-pick its own Indigenous representatives to form its own “Community Reference Group.” This was chaired by an Indigenous consultant unrelated to the Gudanji, Garawa,

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Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples, who was paid by Xstrata and flown in from Sydney. As well as undermining Aboriginal customary decision-making institutions, the MRM Community Reference Group lacked transparency of process. Few of the minutes of the group’s meetings were ever made publicly available. There were many complaints about Xstrata sidelining Indigenous representation and instead “going around holding private meetings with individual Aboriginal people” (Kerins, 2015). Some traditional owners from the Gulf region see such action by Xstrata, and now Glencore, as being in breach of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in which Article 18 states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own Indigenous decision-making institutions.” A condition of approval of the open cut mine imposed by the NT government was the establishment of a community benefits trust (CBT). In an agreement between the NT government and MRM, and without representation of the region’s Indigenous peoples, it was decided that over 21 years of mining operation, a total of AUS$32 million was to be paid into the trust. The CBT was established in 2007, and while it had good aims, MRM took immediate control of the CBT with the tacit consent of the NT government. Power was easily gained through the selection and appointment of CBT board directors by MRM. The nine directors include one person elected by local community groups; one NT government representative; one Glencore representative; two independent directors (chosen by MRM and the NT government); and four Aboriginal people chosen by MRM, one from each of the local Indigenous groups. One Aboriginal person who was chosen to sit on the CBT board said he “didn’t like being on it. Government and mining mob do all the talking. Really didn’t know what was going on” (in Kerins, 2015). Many traditional owners complain about how MRM is able to divide their communities, “pick Aboriginal people off”, and never negotiate with the Indigenous representatives who are chosen by the Indigenous peoples in accordance with their own procedures, and through their own Indigenous decisionmaking institutions (Kerins, 2015). They see the CBT as a tool for MRM to assert control over Aboriginal development aspirations and silence their opposition to the environmental damage caused by MRM. In its “community relations” activities, MRM also acts to benefit the state. Fundamental services provided to Indigenous people in Borroloola
that would elsewhere be publicly funded
are often funded by the mine. For example, education programs, health services, and basic infrastructure have been established under the CBT. This is sometimes experienced as an exercise in power over the community, as they fear that speaking out against the mine might jeopardize basic services. In 2015, a sign posted on a Borroloola community noticeboard on the day of the mine’s independent monitor’s meeting made this connection, saying that if people “say no to Glencore and MRM” they would be saying no to the community pool, store upgrades, a cultural centre,

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early childhood teaching, and even books in peoples’ homes. One woman’s response was telling: “No more dialysis machine at the clinic and that kind of stuff. We might lose that. We got to be careful” (Kerins, 2015, pp. 16
17). Although some of the region’s Indigenous peoples have hoped for potential employment benefits from the mine, the evidence of returns to local people is very limited. The initial mine approval in 1993 included a commitment to employ local Indigenous people, but by 2006, only 4% of the MRM workforce identified as Indigenous, which equated to six people (Pafumi, 2012). There are no data on whether these employees were local Aboriginal people, or part of the fly-in fly-out workforce from elsewhere. Further commitments to Indigenous employment have been made since the expansion to open cut mining, with the CBT including support for Indigenous employment programs and local businesses, and a commitment to increase Indigenous employment at the mine to 20% (Glencore, 2016; Pafumi, 2012). By 2017, the proportion of the MRM workforce identifying as Indigenous was 16% (Glencore, 2017d). Again, though, data on whether these workers are local Aboriginal people or recruited from elsewhere are not available. The closest proxy are data from the national census which, in 2011, showed that while 18% of Indigenous workers at MRM and the nearby “legacy” Redbank copper mine site were Indigenous, only 8% (or around 18 individuals) were long-term residents who lived within 100 km of the mines (Markham & White, 2013, p. 43). Since Redbank was closed in the 1990s, this can serve as a rough estimate of the number of local Indigenous people then employed at MRM. There is some more concrete evidence of local employment, with MRM having supported two local school-based apprenticeships at the mine and employed a local rehabilitation crew focused on tree-planting (Glencore, 2017d). Some local Indigenous people may feel that these outcomes are an adequate trade-off for the broader impact of the mine, and there is certainly no expectation on the part of the authors that traditional owners should oppose capitalist development projects. However, while extractive industries can generate local benefits for remote-living Indigenous people that are perceived as greater than the local costs (e.g., Langton, 2012), the critical point is that the underlying logic requires eliminating important aspects of Indigenous life ways in order to facilitate access to land and resources for private capital accumulation. This cannot be undone by attempts at “corporate responsibility” (Gordon & Webber, 2008, p. 64) or accumulating Indigenous labor power (Hall, 2013). In the case of MRM, both the state and the mining company have actively undermined Indigenous rights to land and traditional Indigenous governance structures to transform collectively owned lands into the private wealth of a powerful transnational corporation. Hand-picking the individuals most likely to acquiesce to the mine development, offering them inducements, and operating under implicit threat of removing basic services, allows MRM to argue they have a “social licence to operate” while actively undermining the ability of Indigenous peoples to live sustainably on their traditional lands in accordance with their diverse aspirations, and relate to those lands in ways that have deep cultural and spiritual significance to them. Many Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and

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Yanyuwa peoples see combatting this ongoing structural violence as no less urgent than the resistance to frontier violence that killed so many of their people 100 years ago. Making a case that these actions are equivalent to frontier violence may be hard to prosecute, but Wolfe (2006, p. 388) reminds us that “elimination” does not only refer to the “summary liquidation of Indigenous people” or “frontier homicide.” It also includes various kinds of assimilation in which elimination turns inward, destroying group identity by co-opting individuals into white society and turning collectively owned land and resources into market commodities and individualized wealth. This describes both settler colonialism and the “ongoing project” of accumulation by dispossession: “the control of land, labor, and resources by one process of production at the expense of another” (Hall, 2013, p. 390). Such processes may be “softer” than the recourse to simple violence, but are not necessarily less eliminatory. In fact, Wolfe (2006, p. 402) suggests that in contemporary western societies such assimilation “can be a more effective mode of elimination than conventional forms of killing, since it does not involve such a disruptive affront to the rule of law that is ideologically central to the cohesion of settler society.”

FIGHTING BACK AND REACHING OUT THROUGH ART If accumulation by dispossession relies on the forceful reorganization of peoples’ lives to meet the needs of transnational capital, it is not surprising that this commonly generates resistance from those communities most affected (Gordon & Webber, 2008). Since the 1970s many Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples have been working to try to protect their traditional Country from environmental damage from resource developments. As well as pursuing this through the courts and traditional activism
including public protests in Borroloola and Darwin and blockades at the mine
one powerful tool in their arsenal has been music and art. Art and Social Change There is a long history of the use of creative arts in seeking social and political change. For example, visual arts, poetry, song, theatre, and ritual performance have long been used in many cultures to engender support for, or to challenge, particular political principles or to protest against injustices (Cox, 2014; Mendelssohn, 2018; Nussbaum, 2013). Creative arts have also played a role in many resistance movements, including in struggles against colonization, racial oppression, and associated economic exploitation (see Mirzoeff, 2011; Schumann, 2008; Turpin, 1993). Turpin (1993) argues that to create social change, we must reorient our culture as well as our institutions. Because culture is relatively fluid compared to social structures and bureaucracies, it can undermine the legitimacy of those more inflexible institutions. Arts can change culture by bringing attention to injustices, helping to imagine an alternative future, and inspiring processes of

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collective meaning-making (Cox, 2014). In these ways, arts may be “more effective in breaking down barriers than official political acts” (Turpin, 1993, p. 139). Some theorists also point to a role for the arts because of human psychology. Duncombe (2007) argues that because people make sense of the world through unconscious narratives, they tend to reject facts that do not fit with their preexisting frames. According to this view, the long-held assumptions that people are rational actors, and that exposure to facts will encourage them to hold more enlightened opinions and take more appropriate decisions, are misinformed. Instead, it suggests that people first evaluate information emotionally “according to a deeply ingrained moral framework, and then our brains often work backward, filling in
or inventing
‘facts’ that conform to that framework” (Holland, 2012). If that is true, then “truth and power belong to those who tell the better story,” and by speaking to the emotional, art can create the stories that will get people on board (Duncombe, 2007, p. 8). A further idea, explored by Nussbaum (2013, p. 11), is that in its capacity to stir strong emotions art can position people who are unknown to us within our “circle of concern.” She argues that since all the “major emotions” that drive us are “eudaimonistic” (i.e., they appraise the world from our own viewpoint) we grieve for those people we care about, and not for strangers (Nussbaum, 2013, p. 11). Art and poetry can therefore have a role in making other people, even those we do not know, loveable to us, and in this way cultivating emotions like compassion and “creating a sense of ‘our’ life in which these people and events matter as parts of […] our own flourishing.” When that happens, people are more likely to take action against injustices that they previously perceived as others’ concern. For artists who are also members of oppressed minorities, the arts may also be an act of political resistance through self-expression. Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011) has theorized this in terms of the politics of “countervisualization” as a deliberate challenge to colonial or imperial authority. Art as a means of selfexpression may also be political in challenging dominant conceptions of what constitutes “the good life.” Here, it is an expression of what brings value and meaning to peoples’ lives despite the dominant logic of market and neoliberal political imperatives. Many of these themes are apparent in the art of Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples. Some of the principal artists working in and around Borroloola are Garawa elder Jacky Green, Yanyuwa/Garawa elder Nancy McDinny, Garawa elder Stewart Hoosan, and young Garawa leader Gadrian Hoosan. Through their painting and music, these artists “demand that their lands and seas be valued as a sentient place, a cultural landscape imbued with the powers of ancestral beings that rest within it” and challenge non-Indigenous people “to see their ancestral country as something far greater than a collection of natural resources to be dug up and sold” (The Cross Art Projects, 2016). While Green has participated in many court cases, he does not read or write English, so uses painting to tell stories in a shared language that he hopes an English-speaking audience will understand:

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SEÁN KERINS AND KIRRILY JORDAN When I was young there was no whitefella schooling for us Aboriginal kids […] This is the reason I don’t read and write. I’m not ashamed of this. I started painting so I can get my voice out. I want to show people what is happening to our country and to Aboriginal people. No one is listening to us. What we want. How we want to live. What we want in the future for our children. It’s for these reasons that I started to paint. I want government to listen to Aboriginal people. I want people in the cities to know what’s happening to us and our Country (Green, 2013, p. 32).

Art and Resistance in the Gulf Country Green’s “story paintings” often depict the destruction wrought by MRM in the name of money, whether to the environment, culture, sacred sites or traditional governance. In Desecrating the Rainbow Serpent (Fig. 2.2), the viewer looks down onto the MRM as if viewing a map. On the raised horizon line that cuts across the top of the painting, there is a pair of eyes (one to the left of the painting and one to the right). These are the watchful eyes of the rainbow serpent, each guarded by two figures
the Junggayi (a traditional role equivalent to manager of country) and Minggirringi (owner or “boss” of country)
who are worried that the snake is being desecrated5 (Green, 2015b). The straight vertical white line through the painting represents a line in time. To the left is a time when Garawa lived and hunted on Country, and were able to protect the sacred places within it. To the right is the present time where the McArthur River has been diverted to make way for the mine (Green, 2015b). In another rendering of the MRM site (Fig. 2.3), Green shows the sacred tree (centre right, upturned) which is where the rainbow serpent came up out of the ground on its ancestral journey. The river has destroyed the back of the serpent. The Indigenous people standing under the boomerang in the top right represent the Minggirringi for the rainbow serpent dreaming, who have responsibility to

Fig. 2.2.

Jacky Green, Desecrating the Rainbow Serpent, 2014, Acrylic on Canvas. Source: The Cross Art Projects (2016).

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Fig. 2.3.

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Jacky Green, McArthur River Mine Site, 2013, Acrylic on Canvas. Source: Green (2013).

manage and maintain the lands travelled by the ancestral beings. Green (2013) has depicted them “just standing there watching because that’s all they can do:” They feel powerless. They worry. The spear [top left] represents the force of the river coming down in the wet season. The mine, they reckon they got everything under control but they don’t have the spiritual stuff under control. We should have full control of our sacred sites. These are places where we get food. There’s lots of people dying and getting sick. We aren’t saying that the mine is the cause of all this but it worries us that the sacred sites aren’t being protected. We can’t do what we are supposed to do and we feel there are consequences for this. It plays with our people’s minds. It’s not good for them. This is serious business. Why won’t anyone listen to us?

Nancy McDinny’s paintings take up similar themes, depicting the damage mining is having on the environment and its impacts on the region’s Indigenous peoples. In Destruction of our Bush Tucker (Fig. 2.4), McDinny shows the effects of leaks and run-off that pollute the river and might go into the sea, poisoning the “bush tucker,” or bush food, they have relied on for centuries (in The Cross Art Projects, 2016): The Mining Company is ruining our land and our bush tuckers and causes argument amongst families. The animals like the kangaroos, emus, goanna and blue tongue lizard aren’t here anymore. And our food from the ocean is not plentiful this time. Even our bush medicine is not growing close to our community anymore.

A key concern of McDinny, Green, and others is the way the mining company representatives interact with Gudanji, Garawa, Marra, and Yanyuwa

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Fig. 2.4. Nancy McDinny, Destruction of Our Bush Tucker, 2013, Acrylic on Linen. Source: The Cross Art Projects (2016).

peoples. Many of Green’s paintings are about what he sees as deeply flawed agreement processes where miners throw “lollies” (inducements like cash, pallets of food, or Toyota cars) to traditional owners of country in return for signing off on their decisions: “They grab one or two persons, and they take them aside and they say ‘well, look, you can understand all this, you going to get benefit out of it’. But what about the rest of the people, you know?” (Green, in Green & Kerins, 2015). His painting “Fly In Fuck Off” (Fig. 2.5) is a play on the “fly in fly out” mining contractors who continually fly in and out in a seemingly never-ending cycle of fast-moving aeroplanes and fast-talking people. Here, as elsewhere, Green uses painting as a form of narrative storytelling and political protest, showing “how the government mob and mining mob fly into our country to talk at us. They fly in, use complicated words and then fly right back out, real quick” (Green, in Green & Kerins, 2016). Some of the Garawa seated in the painting are scratching their heads because they cannot read and write so cannot interpret the words on the whiteboard. As Green (2013, p. 32) explains: The mining companies are coming into our country and they aren’t talking with us properly. They seem to just want us to agree to things their way. They might talk to one or two people but not to the Minggirringi (owners) and Junggayi (managers) for the places they want to explore or mine. Things are always rushed. It’s always about someone else’s plan for our country and not our own plans.

Similarly, in Birds of Prey (Fig. 2.6), Green depicts how mining companies “pick off” individuals to try to demonstrate a social licence to operate: They work out who they think the main traditional owners are for an area and then they swoop down like birds of prey, and grab them, and take them away to their nest. There they give them money to keep quiet and give the OK to sacred sites to be damaged. The

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Fig. 2.5.

Jacky Green, Fly In Fuck Off, 2012, Acrylic on Canvas. Source: Artist supplied.

Fig. 2.6.

Jacky Green, Birds of Prey, 2016, Acrylic on Canvas. Source: Artist supplied.

boomerang represents Law in the country that’s being disrespected. The bird with his tongue out is like the boss of the mine, he’s laughing saying “I got them, I got them and I’m bringing them now”. The other one says, “Great I got the money ready”. The people standing on the hills and the plains represent our families who are worried ’cause their fathers and brothers have been taken away. The miners are trying to smash our Law and how we want to organize and represent ourselves. They take our people away from our culture to make it easier for them to take our resources inside Country (Green, in Kerins & Green, forthcoming).

In illustrating the absurdity of this style of “consultation,” Green is also demanding a new relationship between Garawa, miners, and governments in

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which “top down” decision-making is rejected in favor of genuine collaboration that acknowledges Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples as equal partners (Green & Kerins, 2016). The deep concern of many Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra people is also demonstrated in other artistic forms. In the reggae group, the Sandridge Band Gadrian Hoosan sings about the importance of protecting country, pairing traditional songs, and language with modern music as a “powerful way to send that message out to the whole country, whole world” (Hoosan in Stories from Sandridge, 2014). Non-Indigenous photographer Therese Ritchie has also paired with Garawa, Gudanji, and Yanyuwa peoples to show how mining is felt by many Indigenous people in the region (Figs. 2.7
2.10). Posing for portraits with words they have chosen written across their arms or chests, their bodies become an instrument of protest. English words like “sulphur dioxide,” “intergenerational despair” and “I worry about what they have done to my mother’s country” mix with Garawa words such as Nancy McDinny’s Mikur Narri Kurayrritjerr Yarji Nurrungi (Stop mining. We do not want no more). In their ongoing fight against the damage wrought by Glencore, the Gudanji, Garawa, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples are using their art to raise money to support their work. For example, sales of paintings by Green, Hoosan, and McDinny have been used to fund independent investigation into the likely cost of remediation works for the MRM (Mudd, 2016). A more fundamental purpose, though, is to raise awareness of their struggle against the mine’s damaging environmental and social effects and build networks of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to join their movement for change. This includes reaching out to connect with others who may not yet realize they have an interest in the future of the MRM: local pastoralists whose livelihoods will also be affected if the serious environmental problems continue; tourists and fishers who visit the Gulf region; all Australians who value Indigenous

Fig. 2.7. Therese Ritchie, Nancy McDinny, 2017, Digital Print on Ilford Monofibre Silk, 84 × 56 cm. Mikur Narri Kurayrritjerr Yarji Nurrungi. Source: Artist supplied.

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Fig. 2.8. Therese Ritchie, Ian Davey, 2017, digital print on Ilford Monofibre Silk, 84 × 56 cm. I worry about what they have done to my mother’s country. Source: Artist supplied.

Fig. 2.9.

Therese Ritchie, Cain O’Keefe, 2017, digital print on Ilford Monofibre Silk, 84 × 56 cm. Sovereignty. Source: Artist supplied.

stewardship of healthy environments and protection of vulnerable species; and Indigenous peoples in Australia and globally who are fighting their own battles against resource developments elsewhere. For artists like Green, building alliances with these diverse groups is essential: The government should be listening properly because in future their kids might be coming round here […] I want to say this to all of the Aboriginal people out there, all of the

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Fig. 2.10.

Therese Ritchie, Jacky Green, 2017, digital print on Ilford Monofibre Silk, 84 × 56 cm. Open Cut. Source: Artist supplied.

pastoralists, and the local people out there that live in the NT, we need to fight this one together. Because it’s going to affect all of us […] unless we stand up together and fight (Green, 2015a).

Likewise, the individuals in Ritchie’s photographs hope that the images will be a “rallying cry to other Indigenous communities across Australia who feel they have lost power over mining and other developments on their land” (Bardon, 2017). Can Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra Art Inspire Change? Although it may be difficult for some non-Indigenous audiences to interpret the meaning of these works, they are always very deliberately presented in the context of their broader story. This might be through floor talks by the artists at exhibitions in urban and regional galleries (with Green, McDinny and others regularly travelling to cities like Sydney, Darwin and Canberra to speak about their works), as well as through exhibition catalogues and an online presence for their exhibitions. Clear examples are the Twitter and Facebook feeds for Green and Ritchie’s 2017 exhibition “Open Cut” (we note that Kerins, one author of this paper, contributed historical research to that exhibition as a wall-mounted “timeline” of pastoral and mining development in the Gulf region). A survey of 25 visitors to the “Open Cut” exhibition in Darwin in 2017 began to explore the potential impact of the artworks (Jordan, 2018). It asked openended questions about what people had learnt, how they were affected by the exhibition, and whether they were “likely to take any further action” on the issue as a result of seeing it. The majority of people said they were better informed as a result of the exhibition, and a fifth said it inspired curiosity to find out more. Most were particularly moved by Ritchie’s photographic portraits,

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which showed the “raw emotion” of people directly impacted by the mine and may go some way to creating Nussbaum’s “circle of concern” (Jordan, 2018). While the exhibition may therefore have had an indirect influence on the future of Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples by raising awareness of their struggle, there is also potential it had a more direct impact. For example, two people who were surveyed worked in government and said that, after seeing the exhibition, they would now take action. While they had no direct decision-making role, one said they would pay more attention to related legislation, and the other said they would ask colleagues in government, and the relevant government ministers, to see the exhibition (Jordan, 2018). This survey was small and suggestive, but given than many thousands of people have now seen Open Cut, it does indicate the potential for these artworks to generate support for Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples in their fight with MRM in ways that are as yet unforeseen.

CONCLUSION In the first wave of colonization in the Gulf region from the 1870s, the expanding pastoral industry unleashed the “wild time.” Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples were massacred, forced into labor on cattle stations, or forced off their land. Most Australians believe that wild time is behind us. But settler colonialism comes to stay. Propelled by expanded reproduction, transnational corporations and the state have continued to systematically privilege the interests of private capital accumulation over those of Indigenous landowners. This unrelenting institutional logic perpetuates the myth that neoliberal capitalist development is the only option for local Indigenous peoples’ futures and material well-being (see Hall, 2013). Many Indigenous peoples do want material improvement as well as the ability to live and practice their cultures on country. But, while there is a veneer of state and corporate “responsibility,” and recourse to land rights and environmental protection legislation that may be absent in parts of the Global South, this privileging of capital accumulation has been largely indifferent to the destruction of vastly different lifeways that pre-existed capitalist production in the Gulf region for millennia. Absent major change, the best that Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples can hope for appears to be greater incorporation into the MRM project and its attendant possibilities for employment and individual financial return. These small gains in employment at MRM seem little consolation for the profound and irreversible disruption to peoples’ lives, and the environmental and cultural destruction that capital will leave behind when it eventually moves on. Court processes have brought little success for those Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples seeking to protect their country from the impacts of the MRM. Governments have repeatedly acted in favour of the mine owners, including by deliberately circumventing court decisions that were made in the Indigenous claimants’ favor. Whether this has been a result of active collusion between governments and the mine’s operators, or some form of state weakness

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in the face of powerful transnational capital threatening job cuts and mine closure, is difficult to discern. What is clear is that the “rule of law” is inadequate protection for those who are “structurally irrelevant” to the networks of privilege and power inherent in the globalized economy (Evans, 2000, p. 231), particularly as it is continually structured in the interests of capital. It is likewise inadequate for those whose very poverty makes them vulnerable to co-option into globalized capitalist production even against their own long-term interests. With their art, however, some Garawa, Gudanji, and Yanyuwa peoples are attempting to circumvent these formal institutions that are so heavily weighted against them. They are waging the fight against both transnational capitalism and the established power of settler colonialism through a kind of counterhegemonic globalization from below. This has two central features: encouraging the growth of regional, national, and transnational advocacy networks; and challenging capitalist and settler colonial ideology by showing an alternative way to value human relationships to the land. As environmental crises escalate the world over, actions like theirs may help point the way to a new political project that embraces the environmental sustainability and nature-human relationships we need to survive. Jacky Green (2013, p. 32) is determined to try: “I want the government and mining companies to know that we are still here. We aren’t going anywhere. We aren’t dead yet. We are still here, feeling the country.” Green, McDinny, and others continue to tell their stories through art in an effort to have the MRM closed. The longer it stays open, the greater the risk they see to their country and culture. With current legal avenues exhausted, their present focus is painting works for sale to raise money for the NT Environmental Defenders Office (EDO), a supporter of their campaign which had its funding cut in 2015 by both the NT government and Australian Attorney-General. Now in its fourth year, the EDO’s annual art auction has become a high profile event. In an intriguing twist, it attracts bidders from among NT politicians and “heavy hitters in business and the law” (Gosford, 2017). Whether lured by the possibility of a bargain price on works by renowned Indigenous artists, or encouraged by a genuine concern for the causes the EDO represents, these ‘heavy hitters’ will also be exposed to the messages in Green and McDinny’s art. We cannot know yet the full impact of this creative activism. But just as Garawa, Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Marra peoples show us there are alternatives to a singular, capitalist notion of social and economic “progress,” they also show us through their art that there is more than one way to fight back. Through exhibiting their art in public forums and communicating its meaning in catalogues and online, it brings attention to injustice and widens the circle of concern for those directly affected by MRM. More broadly, it has the potential to challenge colonial institutions from below, inspiring a collective meaning-making through storytelling that is led by Indigenous peoples on behalf of the living world.

NOTES 1. In Australia, there are several different views about the appropriateness of the terms “Indigenous”, “Aboriginal” and “First Nations.” Although “First Nations” is increasing

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in prominence, the most common current usage is to refer to all of Australia’s first peoples (i.e., Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples) as Indigenous, in line with many international rights movements and instruments. This is the usage adopted here, unless it expressly excludes Torres Strait Islander peoples. In this case, we refer to Aboriginal peoples (collectively) or, where possible, to language groups such as Garawa, Gudanji, Marra and Yanyuwa. 2. Sustainability, as used here, is a process and includes ecological, social, and economic dimensions defined by the WCED (1987, p. 44) as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. 3. In the regions surrounding the McArthur River Mine, the Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, Yanyuwa, and Waanyi peoples own about 37,000 square kilometres of their ancestral lands as inalienable Aboriginal freehold title through the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976. They own a further 9,000 square kilometres of land held in common as exclusive possession native title, which under the Native Title Act 1993 gives them rights to possess and occupy the area to the exclusion of all others. Over an additional 26,000 square kilometres of land throughout the region they hold non-exclusive native title rights, which means they hold rights to travel over the area, hunt, fish, gather food, and teach Law and custom on Country, but have no right to control access to, and use of, the area. 4. The Australian federal system vests power in the Australian government and the governments of six states and two mainland territories
the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. These territories have a limited right of self-government. They have their own locally elected parliaments and the ability to make Territory laws, but the Australian government retains full legislative power over the Territory if it chooses to exercise that power. It is this provision that allowed the Australian government to introduce the ALRA in the Northern Territory. 5. These are not literal translations of Minggirringiand Junggayi, but rather an Englishlanguage approximation. Indigenous peoples in the Gulf region have rights to Country through either their mother’s or father’s side. A person who holds rights to Country through their father is referred to as Minggirringi and is the ‘owner’ of that Country. However, the Minggirringi still has restrictions placed on them in relation to that Country, for example, on visiting certain places or eating certain species. This means that when making decisions about Country the Minggirringi must seek permission from the Junggayi for that Country. The Junggayi holds rights to the same Country but through their mother’s side, and is understood as a ‘manager’ or ‘policeman’ for that Country because they can penalise a Minggirringi who does something wrong (Green, Morrison, & Kerins, 2012).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank all of the artists involved in producing the works discussed in this paper, including Jacky Green, Therese Ritchie, Nancy McDinny, and Stewart Hoosan, for their generosity in giving insights into their works. Kirrily Jordan would like to offer them particular thanks for allowing her to survey visitors to Open Cut. Both authors also thank the reviewers of this article for their very helpful comments and advice on an earlier draft.

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Northern Territory Environmental Protection Authority. (2006). Assessment Report 54: McArthur River Mine Open Cut Project, Environmental Impact Assessment Report. Retrieved from https://ntepa. nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/288065/assess-report-54-McArthur-River-Mine.pdf Nussbaum, M. C. (2013). Political emotions: Why love matters for justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. O’Brien, K. (2007). Martin under fire from Indigenous parliamentarians, 7.30 Report, ABC TV [transcript], 7 May. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/martin-under-fire-from-indigenousparliamentarians/2679100 O’Faircheallaigh, C. (2006). Aborigines, mining companies and the state in contemporary Australia: A new political economy or ‘business as usual’? Australian Journal of Political Science, 41(1), 1
22. Ogleby, C. (1993). Terra nullius, the high court and surveyors. Australian Surveyor, 38(3), 171
189. Pafumi, J. (2012). Speech to the Yutjuwala Garma Key Forum: Australia’s resources boom, a stepping stone to an Indigenous future, 2 September [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v¼ltP4eydKjWk Pickering, M. (1994). The physical landscape as a social landscape: a Garawa example. Archaeology in Oceania, 29, 149
161. Roberts, T. (2005). Frontier justice: a history of the Gulf Country to 1900. Queensland: University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. Roberts, T. (2009). The Brutal Truth: What Happened in the Gulf Country. The Monthly, November, 42
51. Rose, D. B. (1996). Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission. Scambary, B. (2013). My Country, Mine Country Indigenous people, mining and development contestation in remote Australia. Research Monograph No. 33. Canberra: ANU E Press. Schubert, S. (2015). Petition calling for McArthur River Mine to be shut down and owners prosecuted, presented to NT Environment Minister, ABC News Online, 3rd September. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-03/mcarthur-river-mine-petition-presented-to-ntgovernment/6747170 Schumann, A. (2008). The beat that beat apartheid: The role of music in the resistance against apartheid in South Africa. Stichproben
Vienna Journal of African Studies, 8(14), 17
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CHAPTER 3 ECOLOGICAL-ECONOMIC NARRATIVES FOR RESISTING EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES IN AFRICA Patrick Bond

ABSTRACT The World Bank report Changing Wealth of Nations 2018 is only the most recent reminder of how much poorer Africa is becoming, losing more than US$100 billion annually from minerals, oil, and gas extraction, according to (quite conservatively framed) environmentally sensitive adjustments of wealth. With popular opposition to socioeconomic, political, and ecological abuses rising rapidly in Africa, a robust debate may be useful: between those practicing anti-extractivist resistance, and those technocrats in states and international agencies who promote “ecological modernization” strategies. The latter typically aim to generate full-cost environmental accounting, and to do so they typically utilize market-related techniques to value, measure, and price nature. Between the grassroots and technocratic standpoints, a layer of NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs) do not yet appear capable of grappling with anti-extractivist politics with either sufficient intellectual tools or political courage. They instead revert to easier terrains within ecological modernization: revenue transparency, project damage mitigation, Free Prior and Informed Consent (community consultation and permission), and other assimilationist reforms. More attention to political-economic and political-ecological trends
including the end of the commodity super-cycle, worsening climate change, financial turbulence and the potential end of a 40-year long globalization process
might assist anti-extractivist activists and NGO reformers alike.

Environmental Impacts of Transnational Corporations in the Global South Research in Political Economy, Volume 33, 73
110 Copyright r 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-723020180000033004

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Both could then gravitate to broader, more effective ways of conceptualizing extraction and unequal ecological exchange, especially in Africa’s hardest hit and most extreme sites of devastation. Keywords: Africa; debt; environment; extractive industries; natural capital accounting; transnational corporations

INTRODUCTION: CONFLICTING NARRATIVES AGAINST AFRICAN RESOURCE EXTRACTION How can we better know
so as to better resist
the widening extent of ecological extraction from South to North? Consider the concept of “natural capital accounting,” in which the Net Present Values of ecological resources are estimated. The purpose behind this, in most cases, is more efficient environmental management, within the strategic tradition of “Payment for Eco-System Services.” The grounding for this strategy is the “ecological modernization” philosophy that views rational management of the environment as based largely upon scientific, technical, and economic criteria. While current practices of applying natural capital accounting are often dubious, its potential for radical political ecology is enormous, especially in Africa, although traversing the minefields requires careful attention to the concept’s critics. As is true everywhere, a variety of African discourses have emerged about the “Resource Curse” faced by citizenries whose elites and transnational corporations (TNCs) extract natural wealth against broader socioecological interests. Countervailing narratives are deployed against such extraction, drawing attention to specific harms. Ecological and climatic narratives stress the degradation and pollution of local land, air and water and fossil fuel emissions (including for mineral smelting) that also affect the global scale. Advocates for labour and health emphasise workplace safety, disease and migrant labour relations. There are spiritual, traditionalist, and sociopsychological narratives that decry damage to sacred sites and common spaces, and oppose community displacement and gendered violence. Critiques of extractivism from a political standpoint (ranging from local to national scales) usually highlight elite formation, compradorism and clashes over resources within and between imperialisms and/or subimperialisms. There are also narratives against extraction based on their maldevelopmental impact, through “Dutch Disease” economic skews, and Illicit (and Licit) Financial Flows to offshore sites with little reinvestment. Finally, a rare narrative
though the one motivating The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018 report by the World Bank
is ecological-economic, based upon the depletion of natural capital wealth without sufficient returns. These critiques of resource extraction gain traction subject to the balance of forces in particular locales. Categories such as climate change, geopolitics and the latter economic curses have much greater scalar import than place-based microstruggles, or what are sometimes termed “militant particularisms.” The pages that follow focus on ecological-economic processes associated with

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non-renewable wealth depletion, in part because resistance forces in Africa have begun to identify the winners and losers from resource extraction. Their protests target specific injustices at the sites of extraction or transmission, which are in many cases, rural. But in urban and peri-urban areas, too, the evidence of African elites having appropriated or mismanaged royalties from resource extraction, has helped generate a new round of resistance, as discussed below. On the other side of the class, racial, gender, and ecological divides are the TNCs
often Western, but also often based within the Brazil, India, Russia, China, and South Africa (BRICS) bloc
which extract Africa’s resources but offer little or no reinvestment. They typically claim to provide benefits by way of jobs for local unemployed people; an infusion of Foreign Direct Investment in the form of fixed capital (usually mining head gear, smelters and drilling platforms); up- and downstream purchases of goods and services; increased infrastructural investment (roads, rail lines, and systems providing greater inflows of water and electricity) that is potentially of use to local people; and export earnings. Therefore, it is vital for critics of extraction who deploy the other (noneconomic) narratives to also consider critical analysis of nonrenewable resource depletion, even natural capital accounting. This might be considered a complementary critique, if indeed the objective of extraction opponents is to slow or even halt the process.

THE WORLD BANK’S PARTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING Ironically, a major ally in counting natural capital depletion is the World Bank (most recently, the Lange, Wodon, and Carey (2018) report referred to as The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018, which is the third in the Bank’s series, following similar studies published in 2006 and 2011). At a time the use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is under attack more generally, a team at the Bank has generated an “Adjusted Net Savings” (ANS) measure to track changes in economic, ecological and educational wealth “of nations” (to play on the Adam Smith title) (Fig. 3.1). The first step is to subtract from income the wear and tear on machines (the shrinkage of fixed capital), followed by a second step: add “human capital” investments by way of the education budget (public and private). The third step is the ever more sophisticated bean-counting of nature’s values, as discussed below, and the fourth is to subtract the economic damage done by pollution.1 The Bank calculates that nature constitutes 9% of world wealth, but in poor countries more than a third of their wealth (Table 3.1). The reason the Bank became the driving force behind ANS and natural capital accounting reflects institutional contingencies. One of the leading voices in ecological economics, Herman Daly, came to his profession’s attention when he edited the seminal Toward a Steady State Economy (1973). Twenty years later Daly (1996, 220) was advancing his arguments as a staff economist within the World Bank, attempting to instrumentalize this definition of sustainable development: “development without growth beyond environmental carrying capacity, where development means qualitative improvement and growth means quantitative

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Fig. 3.1. Procedure for Estimating Adjusted Net Savings. Source: Lange et al. (2018) “Lange, Glenn-Marie; Wodon, Quentin; Carey, Kevin. 2018. The changing wealth of nations 2018: Building a sustainable future. Washington, DC: World Bank. r World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29001 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”

Table 3.1. Global Wealth by Type of Asset, 1995 and 2014. 1995

2014

Billion US$

Percent

164,781

24

303,548

27

52,457

8

107,427

9

Forests and protected areas

14,515

2

18,290

2

Agricultural land

25,859

4

39,890

3

Energy resources (fossil fuels)

11,087

2

39,094

3

997