The Clark Center for the study of Natural Resources Extraction and Society presents the lineup of Speaker Series and Events for Spring 2021.

Further information on each event will be provided in due course and listed in the events section.

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Extractives@Clark presents Andrew Curley (Diné)

In 2021 the Navajo Generating Station, a long standing symbol of coal energy in the southwest, was demolished. The power plant ended operations the previous year, which signaled the end of coal mining in Black Mesa. In this presentation, Curley will discuss the deeper meaning and contestations of coal within the Navajo Nation and what the future holds for Diné people.

Andrew Curley (Diné) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment (SGDE) at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on the everyday incorporation of Indigenous nations into colonial economies

The post T’áá hwó ají t’éego and the end of the Navajo coal industry appeared first on Extractives@Clark.

The Clark Center for the study of Natural Resources Extraction and Society presents the lineup of Speaker Series and Events for Spring 2021.

Further information on each event will be provided in due course within the Events Listings area.

The post Spring 2021 Extractives@Clark Event Series Lineup appeared first on Extractives@Clark.

@OxfamAmerica researchers, in collaboration with Clark Faculty and students*, present a report that highlights the risks of the East African Crude Oil pipeline (EACOP) for communities located along the proposed pipeline corridor in Uganda and Tanzania.

“A respondent in Tanganyika village reported that over 200 of the mango and oranges trees on his farm would be cut down and that he had been promised by an EACOP project representative, working for a subcontractor, that there will be more benefits to cover his lost crops: ‘They told me I would be provided with health care, accommodation and food as well as paying rent and education for my children for the entire period of infrastructure construction.’ The respondent was not given a written document of these promises but relied on the meeting minutes he assumed would be at the village office”.

Access to full report

Key highlights

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Earlier this month, a perspective piece in Nature Geoscience from Azadi et al. highlighted the need for transparent accounting of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with metal mining. For the example of copper, the authors lay out the various sources and sinks of CO2e in the supply chain, and provide estimates of the total GHG associated with the production of each of forty minerals in 2018. These estimates are based on prior work by Nuss and Eckelman and primary production totals from the US Geological Survey and the British Geological Survey. While commodities like gold have markedly high GHG emissions per kg of elemental content, the largest total emissions come from production of aluminum and iron by virtue of their high volume of production.

Such an exercise is valuable given that emissions related to resource extraction are often overlooked. A UN Environment report from spring 2019 found that over half of the world’s carbon emissions result from these activities, and extraction and processing of metals and other minerals accounted for 26% of global carbon emissions (View Report). Emissions was not the only domain of impact measured by the study: extraction was linked to 80% of observed biodiversity loss, 85% of ecosystem water stress, and 20% of human health impacts from air pollution.

A broad-based, global energy transition away from carbon-intensive sources in favor of renewables will necessarily involve an expansion of mining activities to allow for scaled up production of the material components of power infrastructure (View World Bank Report). This expansion will include extraction of minerals without extensive histories of production such as Indium, Neodymium, or Rare Earth Elements, but it will also entail continued production of commodities such as copper with huge existing extractive footprints.

This need for new commodities will mean the onset of extraction in new frontiers, where new environmental impacts stand to disrupt social dynamics. But even in regions where it is established, mining will face challenges from changing environmental conditions due to climate change, especially the hydrological and hydro-social. Odell, Bebbington, and Frey (View Paper) synthesize research on these themes and present a conceptual model for describing the directional and coupled links between climate change and mining, and how they work to influence public policy and industry practice.

Please send us any links to stories or papers that would be of interest to the communities of research and practice around issues of extraction!

The post What’s new in extraction and society – 2/28/2020 appeared first on Extractives@Clark.

A just-released paper from researchers at the University of Melbourne and co-authored from Anthony Bebbington (Toumbourou et al.) traces legal changes related to post-mine reclamation in Kalimantan, Indonesia and analyzes them using theoretical concepts from legal geography and the political settlements literature. In this framework, laws are fundamental to the mediation of social-environmental activities such as mining that have profound consequences for human development and ecological conditions, and such laws are a manifestation of the explicit and implicit agreements among elites about how resources and opportunity ought to be distributed in society.

For decades, coal mining in Kalimantan was centrally-regulated by the Suharto administration. There was effectively no opportunity for local consultation or input, and distribution of mining revenues via patronage networks was a key tool for maintaining political support. Mining governance was decentralized following the fall of the regime in 1998, but it became perhaps more instrumental in underlying patronage practices that structure sub-national politics in the areas where it occurs. While the licensing of new mining leases ramped up after devolution, there was no concomitant increase in the degree to which local concerns could be incorporated to improve social and environmental protections.

Through the process of open-cut mining, coal extraction in Kalimantan is an incredible disturbance to the landscape, and one that poses a particular set of hazards post-closure. This mining practice unearths sulfide-rich rocks that leach heavy metals that accumulate in rain-filled voids of abandoned mines and contaminate the groundwater. Complete de-vegetation of the overlying land increases the severity of floods and thus the spread of these toxicants further. Impacts on nearby communities have been severe, through drastically reduced crop yields and the tragic drowning deaths of children in abandoned mine voids.

On the basis of dozens of interviews with government, civil society, and business actors, the paper’s authors detail the ways that JATAM (The Mining Advocacy Network) and other civil society actors responded to these threats in Kalimantan since the passage of a national mining law in 2009. Early, broad-based lobbying and focused protests at offices allowed for engagement with lawmakers but was not successful in leading to change. After regrouping, the coalition filed a negligence suit in 2013 targeting government actors for their failure to enforce protections that led to the damages of farmers’ crops.

Prior even to the conclusion of the case, public pressure around drowning deaths was brought to bear specifically on the issue of mine reclamation, and the East Kalimantan governor issued a mandate that brought more stakeholders into the monitoring process. With the help of lawyers who crafted the regulation to be sufficiently narrow as to avoid sufficient counter-mobilization, legal institutions that raised company responsibilities related to reclamation took effect.

But this has been seen to be insufficient in improving conditions and avoiding deaths. One reason has to do with legal interpretation. A contested meaning of “reclamation” has companies focusing on re-vegetating sites rather than infilling mine voids. State oversight is underfunded and split between agencies: inspectors typically require rides on company vehicles to reach sites. Law enforcement have not standardized a process of enforcement, and would face financial and social conflicts of interest in any intervention, while systems of production are rife with paramilitary and organized crime violence.

The lack of substantial success in effecting outcomes points to the multi-part and disjointed nature of law: legislation, interpretation, and enforcement. Public pressure was mobilized to enact law related to preventing drowning deaths, yet similar forces could not be brought to bear on, for example, the process of budgeting sufficient funds to allow for site inspection, or of undoing political-economic structures underlain by violence. It is also a reminder that so many facets of the political settlements governing mining operate extra-legally.

The post Social movements can achieve success in legislative outcomes, why does real change lag? appeared first on Extractives@Clark.

Earlier this month, a perspective piece in Nature Geoscience from Azadi et al. highlighted the need for transparent accounting of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with metal mining. For the example of copper, the authors lay out the various sources and sinks of CO2e in the supply chain, and provide estimates of the total GHG associated with the production of each of forty minerals in 2018. These estimates are based on prior work by Nuss and Eckelman and primary production totals from the US Geological Survey and the British Geological Survey. While commodities like gold have markedly high GHG emissions per kg of elemental content, the largest total emissions come from production of aluminum and iron by virtue of their high volume of production.

Such an exercise is valuable given that emissions related to resource extraction are often overlooked. A UN Environment report from spring 2019 found that over half of the world’s carbon emissions result from these activities, and extraction and processing of metals and other minerals accounted for 26% of global carbon emissions. Emissions was not the only domain of impact measured by the study: extraction was linked to 80% of observed biodiversity loss, 85% of ecosystem water stress, and 20% of human health impacts from air pollution.

A broad-based, global energy transition away from carbon-intensive sources in favor of renewables will necessarily involve an expansion of mining activities to allow for scaled up production of the material components of power infrastructure (World Bank Report). This expansion will include extraction of minerals without extensive histories of production such as Indium, Neodymium, or Rare Earth Elements, but it will also entail continued production of commodities such as copper with huge existing extractive footprints.

This need for new commodities will mean the onset of extraction in new frontiers, where new environmental impacts stand to disrupt social dynamics. But even in regions where it is established, mining will face challenges from changing environmental conditions due to climate change, especially the hydrological and hydro-social. Odell, Bebbington, and Frey (View Paper) synthesize research on these themes and present a conceptual model for describing the directional and coupled links between climate change and mining, and how they work to influence public policy and industry practice.

Please send us any links to stories or papers that would be of interest to the communities of research and practice around issues of extraction!

The post What’s new in extraction and society – 2/28/2020 appeared first on Extractives@Clark.

“Global-scale remote sensing of mine areas and analysis of factors explaining their extent.” (2020). This internet-released article in Global Environmental Change written by Tim Werner and an international team of researchers in Australia and the Netherlands delineates the area of various mine-related land uses using high-resolution satellite for 295 mines around the world. The size of features such as pits, tailings storage, water ponds and heap leach pads are calculated and compared across sites, and regression analysis is used to predict these values with independent variables such as production volume, duration of mine, and production value.

“Argentina: thousands protest in Mendoza wine region over axed water protections.” The Werner et al. article points toward the need to understand the footprint and distributed impact of second-order facets of mining including related infrastructure development and water use. The last few weeks have seen large protests in the Mendoza province of Argentina, where legislators recently passed changes to Ley 7722 to allow for much more extensive mining that would be able to make use of cyanide in mining production processes. The linked Guardian article describes the reasons driving the protests, including the risks to the water supply of the region’s wine industry. Related to this, a recent paper from Cuba et al. maps out the spatial footprints of water-based risks from extraction in Honduras.

The Mendoza protests that have led to the governor putting the brakes on changes to Ley 7722 have been varied in form and include a threat from regional beauty pageant queens to withhold their labor.

Methods of informal protests characterize much of affected peoples’ participation in processes of negotiating the presence or form of extractive development. This is often simply due to the lack of formal mechanisms for participation, as is the case in Ghana described by Asaah Sumaila Mohammed in a recent article: “Local Actor’s Interest and Negotiation Strategies for Benefits in Ghana’s Oil and Gas Sector“.

“Re-thinking complex orebodies: Consequences for the future world supply of copper.” (2019). Mendoza is one clear example of the types of responses to anticipated social and environmental impacts of mining when extraction expands into new landscapes. In this paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Valenta et al. argue that simple expectations that link the amount of copper production to price ignore the multiple, pervasive sources of concurrent environmental and social risk inherent in the expansion of mining into new landscapes, compared with intensifying production in place.

“History’s Largest Mining Operation Is about to Begin.” In the Atlantic, Wil S. Hylton lays out the existing scientific efforts, industry development, and regulatory frameworks exploring the topography, ecosystems, and mining potential of the deep seabed. This mode of extractive development, framed as imminent, is one for which the distribution of costs and benefits is far from clear. Deep-sea mining is certainly a departure from past models of extraction with respect to human communities, its likely impacts on other-than-human life extend to the Hadal zone of the ocean. The methods to extract minerals from the seabed and redistribute tailings over large areas introduce threats to species and ecosystems that complement those posed by commodity trade and consumption to familiar terrestrial species (see e.g. this PeerJ article from Estrada et al.). They also offer an example of human activities as geologic, in the potential mineral changes wrought.

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