This summer, like any other summer since I was a kid, I often spent my days at the beach. Living close to the sea, I have the luck to get to beautiful beaches in a reasonable time. As the place is becoming more and more known, nationally and internationally, increasingly more beach clubs, hotels and resorts are popping up where once there were wild small bays or endless strips of sand. On the sandy beaches, colourful parasols, rows of chairs, restaurants, and kiosks with music are appearing. Meanwhile, the sections of free beach that can be accessed without paying are shrinking year by year, pushing those who cannot, or don’t want to, pay to a concentrated tiny section of the beach. In some bays instead (those harder to reach), access is made completely impossible. I found the website of one of the resorts located at the top of one of the bays; its gallery is full of tourists and influencers relaxing by the swimming pool or enjoying their dinner with a view. On the website they reassure their honourable guests that the beach is exclusively for their use, where they can have an intimate experience in nature. Indeed, fences restrict access to the bay all year round and during the summer months entry is conditional on the payment of the parking and the expensive rental of a parasol (up to fifty euros per day).
Bays and sandy beaches along the coast of Gargano.
This is just one of many examples of beach privatisation, a phenomenon spread all over the world and making the beaches inaccessible to most. The term privatisation means the assignation of legal ownership and control of certain goods (beaches in this case) in the hands of one individual or company. For instance, in the Italian case, the public administration allows private citizens or companies to temporarily occupy the beaches for pursuing their economic activities through the issue of concessions.
In Europe, this phenomenon can be traced back to the economic boom when higher life standards allowed the flourishing of mass tourism. But all over the world the number of people crowding the beaches every summer has increased exponentially, and with them flourished several activities to offer services, recreation and leisure. As of 2021, 43% ofItalian beaches were covered by beach clubs according to the 2022 report of Legambiente.
Starting from my own experience, I will apply theories from political ecology that can contribute to shedding light on the issue by highlighting the processes, narratives and inequalities concerning it.
The privatisation of beaches is a clear example of commodification of what Smith calls the “external nature”, i.e. what is considered the opposite of man-made, the environment. Indeed, we can state that the beach has become a true commodity as it can be “completely privatizable, alienable, separable etc.”.
The privatisation of the beaches has several social and ecological consequences. Several are the studies documenting the effects of increasing pressure coming from tourism on coastal and marine ecosystems, for instance, increased erosion or pressure on water resources. The abundance of studies on environmental degradation due to beach-based tourism seem to validate Harvey’s thesis stating that capitalist commodification is “inherently anti-ecological” and the degradation of the environment is a direct cause of the commodification of nature. Yet, the opposite is also true. As neoliberal environmentality teaches us, conservation is the new frontier of capitalism. Far from the most crowded beaches, exclusive locations propose themselves as natural guardians; the protection of coastal ecosystems is thus instrumental to profit as travelling to pristine nature seems to be the new trend among upper-income classes.
A second problem caused by the commodification of nature is related to the social sustainability of privatisation. Despite the neoliberal claims of politicians and business owners about profits from tourism trickling down to all of society, the accumulation of natural capital comes at the expense of public land. What’s more, the increasing number of hotels, beach clubs etc. drives up speculation and more often than not those cities or villages on the coast become too expensive for their inhabitants to live in. In addition, privatisation of the beaches makes large parts of the coast inaccessible or differentially accessible. As nature is treated as a mere economic resource, access to it is prevented to all those whose enjoyment of nature doesn’t produce (measurable) monetary value.
Indeed, one of the most visible effects of privatisation is the fact that it impairs equitable access to the beaches. Physically stopping people from reaching the sea through walls or fences or imposing a price for doing so is in fact excluding people from enjoying nature and its benefits. Those left out are, of course, people from marginalised communities or lower classes, as the study from Langhans and colleagues suggests. In this sense, preventing people from spending time at the beach is a real act of injustice. This is even more true considering the several material, physiological, cultural and mental (and the list could go on) benefits of nature on humans, or the negative consequences of not experiencing it.
In conclusion, the privatisation of beaches represents a concerning trend with far-reaching social and ecological implications. The consequences extend to the erosion of coastal ecosystems and the rising cost of living in coastal communities, pricing out local residents. This practice of beach privatisation perpetuates inequalities, disproportionately affecting marginalised communities and hindering their access to the restorative benefits of nature. As we delve into this issue through the lens of political ecology, it becomes evident that addressing these processes, narratives, and inequalities is essential for a more equitable and sustainable future.
About this blog post: This blog was created as part of an academic assignment for the course “Political Ecology and Sustainability” within the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES) at the Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS).
Author Bio: Mariarcangela Augello is master student at the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES)
Codes of conduct and contracts for scientific research should protect vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous peoples, from exploitation and promote their role in research. But with the San in Southern Africa, I have found that they can also backfire and even oppress them.
By Stasja Koot
Ethical rules for scientific research are important to prevent research from being conducted in a way that would never be accepted domestically (‘ethics dumping’), or when scientists from high-income countries conduct their research without involving local scientists or communities (‘helicopter research’). So for good reasons, various codes of conduct and contracts have been drawn up over the years for and by scientists, often in collaboration with NGOs. This is also the case among the San, an Indigenous group of (former) hunter gatherers in southern Africa. Based on San peoples’, colleagues’, and my own experiences with ethnographic research, together we published two papers analysing some core issues regarding research codes and contracts. Here I describe three of these important limitations of research codes and contracts that are often overlooked.
First, authorities (often NGOs) in the country where research is conducted sometimes want to push their agenda by keeping unwelcome ideas among the ‘vulnerable’ group out of the research. In South Africa, a colleague of mine was once told by local ‘representatives’ (or ‘gatekeepers’, who in this case live 200 kilometres away from the San) that her research with San people could only take place if these gatekeepers themselves gave permission. However, she would only get that permission if she would interview community members designated by these same representatives. A tool intended to promote ethical research was now being misused to keep certain people from the community, or their ideas, out the door. This effectively amounts to preventing vulnerable, Indigenous groups from deciding for themselves whether to tell their opinions to researchers, something that only further silences these groups. Of course, fortunately not all representatives act as in this example and we have also experienced very helpful collaborations. But more generally, however, aside from the independence of research thus compromised, essentially Indigenous San are treated as if they cannot make their own decisions about who they want to talk to or not. This is highly problematic at a more structural level, and can be considered a neo-colonial form of oppression that greatly limits their freedom of expression.
Impact?
Second, most codes of conduct and contracts include a clause that the research must have direct local ‘impact’. However, this is simplistic, unrealistic and sometimes undesirable for three reasons: 1) It is an incentive to promise more than one can realistically do (to get the permission) and it might thus lead to expectations that cannot be met later. 2) It ignores the essence of what scientific research is: almost every scientist likes to see her research have impact. But the vast majority of scientific research is fundamental (knowledge derived from curiosity) and not applied (immediately practical to implement). Fundamental knowledge is precisely what is needed to make applied research possible in the first place: I myself have worked on research about a land claim by the San in northern Namibia. That claim is much more likely to succeed thanks to ‘old’ fundamental research (mainly historical and anthropological research) that thus only proves its value much later. And also in other areas of southern Africa, San groups have regained or managed to retain land thanks to such research. This also plays out in other branches of science: Pfizer could only bring the corona vaccine to the market because of fundamental (medical) knowledge accumulated over many years before. 3) Impact often translates into ‘benefits’, but this ignores heterogeneity and different interests within communities. A benefit for some may be detrimental to others. For example, I have witnessed how research that helps to promote wildlife management and tourism created valuable jobs for some, while it also constrained other livelihoods in that same community (e.g. by limitations on hunting, small-scale farming, or keeping livestock). Of course, a researcher will be tempted to highlight potential benefits and to disregard the constraints when negotiating a research contract.
Fieldwork in Southern Africa. Photo credit: Stasja Koot
Practical limitations
The third limitation is practical: in southern Africa, it is often unclear in advance who you need to contact to discuss and sign something. E-mails often remain unanswered, and local San often do not even know of the existence of the codes of conduct and contracts, or they are simply not interested. From their perspective this makes sense: many have other things on their mind to worry about. Where this is indeed the case, research codes and contracts essentially only legitimise the researchers’ and gatekeepers’ role in research, but not the role of the Indigenous group.
Trust
The above three issues are not the only ones. More investigation is needed about the often unambiguous legal basis of such agreements, and them functioning as an imposition of a Red Tape culture in which paper agreements are used to communicate with cultures that are originally unfamiliar with this. Moreover, some members of these groups are illiterate and can thus not partake in this communication equally. And even if researchers sign a contract, they can still show undesirable behaviour without clarity about what potential repercussions would be. To be clear, I am not against instruments that can support the empowerment of vulnerable and Indigenous groups in research. However, they are not a panacea and therefore we need to scrutinise their inherent and complex challenges. Some San have instigated positive initiatives to increase their participation in research, including community training to increase awareness. In such cases they like to collaborate with researchers they trust, normally because they have been in contact with them for many years already. Such trust is at the heart of the collaboration, and is much more important than paper agreements.
Author Bio: Stasja Koot has been working with Indigenous groups in southern Africa since the late 1990s, as a researcher and practitioner. As an environmental anthropologist, his core focus is on political ecology with an emphasis on power dynamics in tourism and nature conservation. He works at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and since 2019 he is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg. Personal site: https://stasjakoot.com/
A bustling, bright, and modern conference room. Panorama windows overlooking green plains. People seem nervous, rehearsing their lines — even Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. The light in the conference room dims. Members of the team look up. Tim turns to the window. Outside, the trees sway in the wind. Mother Nature, played by Octavia Spencer, suddenly sits at the table
By Wilhelm Wanecek
Every year the same: as the leaves turn yellow, tech bros crowd for the Apple Event, where the company presents its new line-up of products. While less of a media spectacle than in the age of Steve Jobs and the first iPhones, the September event remains an institution for investors and consumers alike — a presentation of the technical features of new products interwoven with Apple’s vision of the future.
This year, emphasis was put on the company’s sustainability initiatives, neatly packaged in a short film portraying a corporate responsibility meeting including the CEO Tim Cook and the VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson and — of course — Mother Nature. In the 5-minute marketing video, Mother Nature progresses from impatient and sceptical to reluctantly impressed as the team presents Apple’s work on “doubling down” on their sustainability initiatives.
On the surface, it’s impressive. All Apple offices are carbon neutral — using “a mix of clean energy and eliminating greenhouse emissions”. “More products” are shipped by “ocean rather than air, which reduces transportation emissions by 95 percent”. Water usage has been reduced by sixty-three million gallons — no, billion gallons — a statement prompting “serene classical music” to play.
The finale of the ad shows the line-up of the new, “carbon neutral” Apple Watches
And it’s not just a reduction of negative impacts. Jackson explains they “aim to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere” by planting forests in Brazil and Paraguay, restoring mangroves in Colombia, and grasslands in Kenya. The finale of the ad is the introduction of the 9th generation Apple Watch, where a logo with five green petals and the words “Carbon Neutral” appear below the devices. Mother Nature’s lips subtly turn up. “By 2030, all Apple devices will have a net zero climate impact”, Tim states.
The highlight of the Apple Event was the launch of the iPhone 15. (Source: https://apple.com)
Impressive, but only on the surface. The event’s true highlight was the launch of iPhone 15 — another product to be produced in the millions. Most contemporary microelectronics, including the various “iDevices”, have footprints vastly outweighing the products themselves. A 120-gram mobile phone typically requires over 70 kilograms of raw materials, including several rare earth elements (REE). In scrutinising the Political Ecology of the Apple AirPods, Sy Taffel from Massey University outlines the environmental and social impacts of such extraction:
[T]he extraction and purification of REE is a complex process which produces vast amounts of toxic waste; ‘9,600 to 12,000 cubic metres […] of waste gas – containing dust concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid – are released with every ton of rare metals that are mined. Approximately 75 cubic metres […] of acidic wastewater, plus about a ton of radioactive waste residue are also produced’ (NASA, 2012).
The social and environmental footprints are far from constrained to the extraction of raw materials. Apple has on several occasions been critiqued for subjecting workers to unsafe and deeply unjust working conditions, even ignoring child-andforced labour, with the manufacturing processes undertaken in China and Vietnam dubbed iSlavery. Global products, yes, but unevenly distributed impacts.
The Apple AirPods, with a life-span of 18-36 months are one of the Apple devices with poor or no repairability. In reviews by iFixit, an internet community helping people repair technology, they both received a repairability score of 0 out of 10. This doesn’t mean they’re difficult or expensive to repair — it means they are impossible to repair, as replacing a component requires cutting open the casing and thus rendering them unusable. Sources: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/AirPods, https://www.ifixit.com/Device/AirPods_Pro
When situating Apple, its production processes, and its products within the capitalist logic it operates in, this should come as no surprise. Even where Apple manages to decrease the footprints per device, it still requires perpetual economic growth to attract investors and to generate return on investments for its shareholders.
As such, Apple needs to boost margins of each device, sell more units, or create new market segments. Pursuing higher margins risks squeezing workers, and more units produced means a larger footprint. And usuallyplannedobsolescence — a customer that only buys a phone every 10 years is not a good customer. Apple will also need to continue increasing the demand in new product segments. Taffel again: “prior to the introduction of AirPods, wireless earbud sales were less than one million units per year (Hunn, 2016), indicating that in the five years following their introduction, the market for wireless earbuds has grown over 160-fold”.
Essential then to the narrative of Apple as a socially and environmentally responsible company is the ability to “offset” its impacts, sometimes explicitly (as in the ad, mentioning “permanently eliminating carbon from the atmosphere”) and sometimes implicitly (e.g. baked into the term “carbon neutral”).
Apple’s VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson in their latest marketing video on Apple’s Sustainability initiatives
This is a manifestation of what Political Ecology calls “the economy of repair”. James Fairhead, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones describe it as the belief “that unsustainable use ‘here’ can be repaired by sustainable practices ‘there’”, allowing “double pricing” of nature: once for its use, and once for its “repair”.
While some may have hoped that carbon offset schemes would hinder the extractivism of companies in the Global North, Fairhead & colleagues explain that, instead, both economies — use and repair — are being maximised to get the “very most out of nature and with maximum efficiency”. To quote Lloyd Alter in ‘Are the new Apple Watches truly “carbon neutral”?’
“The message Apple is sending here to its customers is that this type of overconsumption is still acceptable, even in the era of the climate crisis. Apple wants us to believe that the company and its customers can have the cake and eat it, too. Unfortunately, this is nothing but wishful thinking.”
Apple is not alone in this. In fact, they may even be doing a lot better than their competitors. Yet, without reducing the consumption-driving market expansion strategies that they are currently employing, it is little more than greenwashing.
Does the case of Apple hint at the limits of what measures are available to tech-giants within a capitalist, profit-driven system? I’ll first be impressed by Apple the day they join companies such as Patagonia in abandoning their profit motives, thereby taking a first step to break free of extractivist imperatives, and unlock meaningful sustainability measures that put people and planet over profit. Until then, “Carbon neutral” remains nothing but greenwashing.
About this blog post: This blog was created as part of an academic assignment for the course “Political Ecology and Sustainability” within the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES) at the Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS).
Author Bio: Wilhelm Wanecek is master student at the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES)
Urbanization processes in Malmö create uneven soundscapes and associated health risks for the urban poor. A tale of the distributive injustice of urban road traffic noise.
By Kim Wölper, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS)
I’m strolling home from work through Malmö on a weekday afternoon. On the last stretch, I must switch to one of the city’s arterial roads that is funnelling numerous cars from the city centre out into the suburbs and back every day. I speed up my pace, stressed by the revving of engines and hurry around the corner to my home one block over from the road. Finally, silence.
Malmö’s large roads far exceed this guideline (Figure 1). Over 95,000 Malmö residents (about 23% of the municipal population) are exposed to noise well above 55 dB. Even worse, over 24,000 (7%) experience road noise of 65-70 dB, so about as loud as a normal vacuum cleaner operating, and 3,671 (1%) must endure 65-70 db. Considering that, in Sweden, road noise above 55 dB incurs healthcare costs, these shocking statistics indicate highly uneven noise distribution.
Figure 1 Noise from road traffic in Malmö. Source: Malmö stad, 2017.
The dominant narrative follows the overall health impacts from urban traffic noise but overlooks the fact that noise does not affect everyone in Malmö equally. Some people are more exposed than others and therefore at a higher risk. We can understand this if we consider the way that urbanisation processes create uneven soundscapes.
Malmö was an industrial city until the 1990s when it evolved into an innovation and business hub with rapid population growth. Economic growth spurred expansion into the urban periphery. Wealthy developers and politicians directed the growth of the city outwards, to decentralize the population and thereby raise rents and unlock property markets. The economic capture of political processes accelerated the implementation of Malmö City’s 1950s car-centric design plans, cementing personal vehicles as the primary transport mode. Soon, tree-lined roads with cycle and footpaths had to yield to new lanes, inner-city parking and increasing motor traffic.
The expansion enabled some people to escape to suburbs and travel into town provided they could afford cars and real estate prices. On the flipside, it locked in petrocultures making car ownership a necessity for convenient commutes into the city. Consequently, urban road noise levels increased substantially.
An environmental justice perspective highlights the imbalance between noise production and noise exposure thereby illuminating the distribution of the environmental ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ of soundscapes.
In Sweden, car ownership increases with distance from city centres. Malmö is no exception to this, with car ownership being the highest in rural areas and smaller municipalities. Those who generate the most noise are, therefore, the ones who drive into the city from less dense, greener neighbourhoods. These individuals enjoy the tranquility of their suburban or rural homes, from which they can still easily access the benefits of the city itself without being exposed to the motor noise produced by other individuals like themselves.
Figure 2 Socioeconomic deprivation in Malmö with particularly deprived neighbourhoods being located close to arterial roads. Source: Boverket, 2021.
Malmö’s processes of urbanisation externalise the ‘bads’, with poorer urban communities bearing the costs but few of the benefits. Instead for them road noise adds health problems to the existing socioeconomic disadvantages, further decreasing their opportunities and the chance to permanently escape the noise. On top of this, those who can least afford it face the highest cost of protecting themselves from the hazard and must spend proportionately more on it which those generating it do not. This means that noise pollution hits low-income people even harder than the same exposure would wealthier people.
How come low-income communities are living in noisier environments and how is it being perpetuated? As environmental hazards increase, rents tend to fall and attract poorer communities. Moving towards hazardous areas often remains the only option as affordable accommodation is scarce in cities, with Malmö being no exception. This way the environmental externalities of urban expansion and car-centric development are offloaded onto the disenfranchised.
About this blog post: This blog was created as part of an academic assignment for the course “Political Ecology and Sustainability” within the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES) at the Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS).
Author Bio: Kim Wölper is master student at the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (LUMES)
Geopolitical Ecology of Extractivist Empire-Making
For many in the global military-security apparatus, the Anthropocene is an era of approaching apocalypses and cascading ‘threat multipliers’ – from climate to migration chaos and war. Unsurprisingly then, as global temperatures skyrocket, military spending is also reaching record levels. This all comes in the backdrop of fresh conflict in Israel-Gaza, and protracted wars in Ukraine and Myanmar. While links between war, ecology and green ‘extractive empire-making’ – capital-intensive practices laid against both people and the planet, sometimes in the name of the ‘green transition’ – are more palpable than ever, the precise nature of those links, and how they intersect, need careful scrutiny.
For the following panel, we open the conversation about how the links between war, ecology and empire-making intersect, and how best to speak to them critically? What is at stake as they intensify, and what forms of resistance are they met with? What rigorous theoretical and empirical methods do we use to distinguish, deconstruct, and reconstruct narratives and evidence coalescing war, ecology and empire-making?
We invite contributions that build on work across political ecology, political geography, international studies and cognate disciplines to explore the evolving modes of warfare and technologies of violence tasked with the enforcement of extractivist empire-making. What ecological aftermaths do these modes and technologies generate? What militarised environments spring up in their wake, shaping new forms of geopolitics?
We especially want to build on theoretical and empirical papers by those with experience on the front line of green sacrifice zones and those defending environmental and social justice. This can range from studies in extractive zones, such as in Mexico, Germany and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all the way to the boardrooms and bases of Glencore, Northrop Grumman and the British Armed Forces.
We invite abstracts (200 words) on themes such as:
Geopolitical ecology or militaries as ecological/climate actors
Ecologies and/of technologies of violence
Green sacrifice zones
The social warfare conducted to enforce ecocide
Green war and green violence deployed in the name of conservation
Militarised environments and military geographies
Military environmentalisms and military greening
Political ecologies of security
Empires of nature/nature of empires
Toxic remnants of war
Social warfare, “sustainable” violence and extractivism
Knowledge production and decoloniality
Resistance and pluralised future-making
Eco-social justice and just transitions
Please email Nico Edwards (ne204@sussex.ac.uk) and Ben Neimark (b.neimark@qmul.ac.uk) by 08 Dec with a title, abstract or up to 300 words and up to 4 keywords for consideration. This is a hybrid panel and so we encourage contributions from researchers from, or working in, diverse and marginalised backgrounds and contexts, with the option of joining the panel online or from either Lima, Dodoma or Lund. Do get in touch if you have any questions.
Market-based conservation instruments’ continual “failing forward” exposes the naked emperor of an unsustainable capitalism. Post-capitalist degrowth is our only salvation.
By Robert Fletcher, Wageningen University
A recent Guardian article claims that the vast majority of forest caron offset projects managed by one prominent firm, Verra, have, despite more than one billion euros of investment over more than a decade, produced no “genuine carbon reductions”. This is merely the latest in a long line of similar concerns raised about such so-called “market-based instruments” (MBIs) for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. In 2017, for instance, Rainforest Foundation UK asserted that despite a similar amount of investment and timeframe, World Bank support of the popular REDD+ (Reduced Emissions through avoided Deforestation and forest Degradation) mechanism had “not yet prevented a single gram of forest carbon from entering the atmosphere.” Similar examples could be multiplied endlessly.
Notwithstanding such concerns, however, almost every prominent organization in the world concerned with conservation has enthusiastically endorsed MBIs, from international financial institutions like the World Bank and Global Environment Facility to intergovernmental bodies like UNEP and UNDP to NGOs including Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund, and many others. Moreover, the recently finalized Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework intended to guide conservation efforts worldwide over the next decade continues to promote MBIs as one of its central tools.
Unveiling the Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation at the 2016 World Conservation Congress, Honolulu, Hawaii. Photo credit: IISD/ENB Diego Noguera.
As the title suggests, I describe this as a process of “failing forward,” whereby one new MBI is rolled out after the next, each with the promise to compensate for the deficiencies of the previous and thereby achieve even bigger and better results for “people, planet and profit” simultaneously.
And when each new MBI proves to be similarly problematic as the previous, this deficiency is typically explained away with a series of predictable arguments, from the lack of “political will” to implement it properly to the fact that (notwithstanding three decades of activity) it is still only “early days” in MBIs’ development. In this way, the expectation of future success can be sustained whatever the reality of present failure.
As if to directly illustrate this analysis, after initially disputing the Guardian’s findings, Verra has since pivoted to announce that it will terminate its current offset projects to develop a new methodology to govern future projects more effectively.
Saving nature by selling It?
MBIs’ fundamental logic, consistent with the neoliberal reasoning in which they are grounded, holds that if conservation can be shown to generate more profit than the resource extraction it seeks to combat, basic economic rationality will direct investment into the former rather than the latter, and global markets will follow suit by allocating capital to conservation in an escalating virtuous cycle. Yet in practice, it has proven extremely for difficult MBIs to outcompete extractive industry in pure market terms.
While this difficulty is also consistently explained away as merely a problem of implementation (“getting the market right”), my analysis suggests that it is actually due to MBIs’ basic nature. Extractive industry, after all, generates profit by externalizing environmental and social costs, the very things MBIs try to internalize to reconcile sustainability with economic gain. As a result, the sustainability they pursue limits the revenue MBIs are able to generate. Even more damning, MBIs are usually funded precisely by offsetting extractive industry itself. Paradoxically and perversely, therefore, expansion of MBIs also requires resource extraction to expand. And if this is the case, then MBIs must inevitably fail in their aims.
Catastrophic but not serious
Why, then, do so many powerful organizations and actors continue to stake the future of our planet on neoliberal conservation instruments that are surely doomed to fail? While cynics may assert that few proponents really believes that MBIs will work – that this is really just a form of greenwashing allowing corporations to get on with business-as-usual – in my research I have encountered many really smart and successful people who appear to genuinely believe in MBIs’ potential. Many of them have, indeed, given up much more lucrative careers in other sectors to pursue something they feel is in the greater good.
To try to make sense of all of this, I turned to Lacanian psychoanalysis, which has made strong inroads into social science recently largely due to the tireless work of Slavoj Žižek. From a Lacanian perspective, proponents of neoliberal conservation mechanisms can be understood as akin to a smoker who is able to continue their addiction in the present despite its well-known harmful impacts by convincing themselves that they will indeed quit and redress the damage caused at some point in the future. In this way, as Žižek phrases it, we can continue to act as if our current situation is “catastrophic, but not serious.”
The fantasy of sustainable capitalism
At its heart, I believe, what neoliberal conservation is ultimately about is supporting the possibility of decoupling: that environmental impacts can be divorced from economic growth and hence that the latter can be sustained indefinitely. It is precisely the economic gain through so-called “non-consumptive” resource use that neoliberal MBIs promise that allows faith in decoupling to be sustained. In this way, the venerable critique asserting fundamental biophysical limits to growth can be countered and the fantasy of a sustainable global capitalism maintained.
Degrowth. Warsaw, Poland. Photo credit: Paul Sableman.
Transcending capitalism will certainly not solve all of the daunting problems confronting us. But it is a good place to begin.
Author Bio: Robert Fletcher is Associate Professor of Sociology of Development and Change at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is the author of Romancing the Wild: Cultural Dimensions of Ecotourism (Duke University Press, 2014) and Failing Forward: The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Conservation (UC Press, 2023), and co-author of The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature beyond the Anthropocene (Verso, 2020).
The eviction of Lützerath, the last village to be destroyed by coal mine operator RWE to get to the thick layer of lignite coal underneath, is officially over – all protesters evicted, trees houses torn down. Pinky and Brain, the two tunnellers who blockaded a tunnel underneath the village, left voluntarily, after spending several days underground.
But while the village might have been lost, the fight continues. The last week has seen protesters block coal train tracks, occupy excavators and electricity infrastructures, burn down police vehicles, shut down offices and roads, and sabotage machinery. Solidarity action with Lützerath prisoners included the burning of Amazon cars in Berlin, the blockade of the German embassy in Poland, and ‘subvertising’ (fake advertising) actions across Germany. On Saturday, protesters locked themselves onto RWE’s entrance gate in Essen, and hundreds walked through neighbouring villages. As police continue to protect fossil capital, facilitating RWE’s operations and enforcing ecological destruction, people continue to fight back.
The eviction started on 10 January, ‘Day X’. Brought in from 14 German states, almost 4000 police officers evicted people from occupied tree houses and ropeways, monopods and tripods, farm houses and other structures. Several hundred people were resisting the eviction by climbing up trees and barricading themselves in occupied buildings, locking on and gluing on. They hung on ropeways in wind and rain, as safety ropes were cut and trees were felled, falling over just meters away. At least one protester dropped several meters, I am told, left hanging upside down following actions by the police height intervention team and had to be transported away by paramedics. Elsewhere, people fought back, through sabotage and arson attacks on RWE coal trains.
On Saturday the 14th of January, 35,000 people joined a demonstration near the village, many making their way through the mud fields to get to Lützerath and the edge of the mine. Countless protesters broke through police lines and forced police to retreat, some entered the opencast mine.
The eviction was shaped by police brutality and violence. When they realised that they were unable to stop thousands of protesters during the mass demonstration, police beat up people with batons and pepper spray, kicking and pushing them to the ground. In small gangs, they charged into groups of protesters. Police dogs attacked activists, just meters away from the steep edge of the Garweiler II opencast coal mine, and used water cannons and horses. They dragged people by their hair, and used pressure points to cause pain and intimidation.
Photograph by Barbara Schnell
Between 100 and 200 protesters were injured – exact numbers are difficult to get, because reporting injuries would require identification and thus risk further police repression. Dozens of people had head injuries, many had broken bones and one person had to be transported away by helicopter. “I’ve seen every bone in the human body broken today”, an action medic tweets afterwards.
So even if the political will to hold officers accountable existed, it would be unlikely it would yield results.
Reul is known for his support of RWE and repressive policing, having previously caught lying about meeting with RWE bosses, and being responsible for the illegal eviction of the neighbouring Hambacher forest occupation (see below).
Despite numerous videos of police violence, Reul maintains that police conduct was ‘professional’, framing protesters as radicals, extremists, and violent criminals. Major media reproduce this narrative to delegitimize resistance.
Resisting divide-and-conquer attempts
For years, RWE, police, and politicians have tried to divide-and-conquer the Rhinish anti-coal movement, asking groups to distance themselves from more ‘radical’ elements of the resistance, but this time, it was unsuccessful. Despite its diversity – eco-anarchists and liberal environmentalists, Fridays-for-future kids and church groups, students and grandparents – and despite political pressure, there has been no “distancing” from actions and forms of protest over the past week, as so often occurs. No condemnation, no appeals for ‘nonviolence’ or ‘peaceful protest’. People have embraced a diversity of tactics, not letting the state and RWE divide and rule.
The resistance in and around Lützerath is the product of many years of organising. For two and a half years people had prepared for ‘Day X’ – built camps, barricades, tree houses, and tripods, and occupied houses to stop the destruction of the village. They rebuilt community in an area that had long been politically neglected, inhabitants intimidated and paid off, slowly cut off from infrastructures.
The Lützerath camp became a space to share and live together, lough and enjoy, mourn and cry. To take action against RWE, from digger occupations to sabotage. A space that tries to exist outside of capitalism and state structures, anti-colonial and anti-patriarchy, organised non-hierarchically and fostering solidarity and mutual aid.
A history of combative resistance
The Rhinish coal mines have been resisted for many decades. Local groups were fighting back against RWE as early as the seventies. For over 10 years, the Hambacher Forest occupation resisted (and eventually stopped) the destruction of the ancient forest and the expansion of the neighbouring Hambach coal mine – building tree houses, tunnels, walkways, and blockades, occupying diggers, burning police cars and electrical infrastructures, and sabotaging machinery.
Forest defenders have always had to defend themselves from violence of police and security services that regularly attack them – cutting safety ropes, pepper spaying toilet seats, beating up protesters.
Following a meeting between RWE and NRW Interior Minister Reul, the forest occupation was last evicted in 2018, in an intervention that took weeks and thousands of police officers from across Germany, and was stopped by the courts and later declared illegal. The official justification? Fire safety – the lack of fire escapes and access roads for emergency vehicles. A flimsy excuse that was made up to have a reason to evict and facilitate RWE’ cutting operations , as secret recordings of North Rhine Westphalian minister president Laschet have shown.
The 12,000 year old forest is now safe – thanks to years of resistance by forest defenders and citizen groups, numerous evictions and re-occupations, legal challenges and creative actions, arson and sabotage. However, as RWE continues to lower groundwater levels – the mine is up to 450m deep – and dig away soil at the edges of the forest, exacerbated climate change, the forest is slowly drying out.
The forest occupation, just like Lützerath, has always been not just about stopping a coal mine, but about alternative ways of living and organising together, about solidarity and mutual aid, about anarchist values and practices – a world without coal, police, prisons, and borders, a fight against colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and the state.
It inspired forest occupations all across Germany and beyond, from #Dannibleibt, the occupation to protect the Dannenröder Forest from road building, to #Fecherlebt, a forest occupation near Frankfurt that was evicted just days ago. But Hambacher Forest defenders have actively supported other struggles too – including the Pont Valley campaign in the North of England in 2018. When plans for a new opencast coal mine led to the growth of the resistance movement, Hambi defenders helped set up a camp to occupy the land, living in tents through months of snow and ice. Solidarity is part and parcel of combative resistance.
Lützerath
Lützerath is the latest of dozens of villages that have been evicted for lignite coal in the German Rhineland, tens of thousands of inhabitants have been expelled and dispossessed over the past century. Old Nazi legislation elevated the extraction of lignite coal for electricity generation to ‘strategic military status’ in 1935, to strengthen wartime capabilities and enable the eviction of entire communities for coal excavation. Today, German police continue to facilitate these evictions.
Photograph by Barbara Schnell
Financed by Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC Bank, among others, RWE are planning to extract a further 280 million tonnes of coal for electricity generation.
Some say that the struggle has become a symbolic fight, a fight about the power of the anti-coal movement, and the green credentials of the government. But according to environmental defenders and researchers, it’s more than that. To keep the German pledge to a 1.5 degree target, this coal cannot be burnt, a study by the DIW Berlinhas shown.
The coal is not actually necessary for Germany’s energy supply, according to studies, even in case of a gas shortage, as the DIW states. It is part of a deal between RWE and the Green-Conservative coalition government which brings forward the end date of lignite coal mining in Germany from 2038 to 2030, allegedly “saving” five remaining villages that were meant to be evicted under earlier coal mine expansion plans, but sacrificing Lützerath. But modelling by Aurora Energy Researchshowed that by reconnecting two generating units and increasing annual extraction, the amount of total coal burnt is hardly reduced at all.
By agreeing to this deal, the German Greens have ‘sold out’, according to many protesters. Some believe that this was always RWE’s goal – to split the climate movement from the Green party. For many, it was a wake-up call – they have realised that no governing party will stand up to RWE or take meaningful climate action. It’s people power, they argue, that will make the difference.
RWE in the Rhineland – power and politics
‘Unrivalled and barely manageable, RWE is ruling over one of the largest monopolies of the Western world’ (Spiegel, 1979)
RWE’s interests have always been closely entangled with the state’s interests in the Rhineland, indirectly subsidised and politically supported. Few corporations in Germany are as powerful as RWE.
RWE’s PR and CSR work, including the nature restoration work, and the support by regional media led to the image as good neighbour and ‘responsible corporate citizen’ among parts of the public. Police have long collaborated with RWE on the ground, retweeting RWE press messages, using their vehicles to transport protesters, and communicating closely.
Paying out communities in shares, not taxes, decades ago has meant that many communities and cities are financially dependent on RWE’s financial wellbeing. 25% of RWE’s shares are owned by communities and cities. That means local authorities are shareholders, licensers, clients, constituencies, employees, and tax collectors at the same time. Through payments for attending advisory councils and supervisory boards, politicians have lucrative side incomes.
RWE representatives can be found everywhere – in church choirs and town councils, school board and universities. The company has financed police barbeques and fire trucks, sponsored football clubs and festivals, concerts and exhibitions, viewing platforms and historic castles. They put up baking carts and public book shelfs, have paid for school buildings, organised volunteering activities and tours through the mine. They have gone into school and hand out lunch boxes to first graders, offering school trips into power stations, zoo schools, and environmental education initiatives.
Their teaching materials, role-playing games, and girls’ days in their training centres all reinforce narratives of the inalienability of coal for German energy security, painting picture of blackout and doom, and emphasising RWE’s research into alleged solutions, including carbon capture and storage, that have yet to materialise.
Decades of lobbying, misinformation campaigns, and repression of scientific studies have facilitated the continued expansion of coal mining in Germany. As late as in 2006, the company continued to deny a causal link between the burning of coal and climate change in a court case.
To understand and manage resistance, RWE has conducted large-scale acceptance studies, organised roundtables, and collaborated with researchers, conservation organisations, and environmental volunteers. In RWE’s regular conservation conferences, volunteers and researchers are given a platform to present their findings and RWE celebrate their nature restoration work. In return, they don’t mention the company’s role in causing climate catastrophe.
Photograph by UNWISEMONKEYS
All of these are classic counterinsurgency strategies to repress, pacify, and co-opt dissent – a combination of psychological operations, intimidation, and surveillance – including rape threats and sexual abuse – combined with physical violence and beatings.
Pressure on the press
The violence inherent in coal mining, climate catastrophe, and RWE’s repression of dissent is covered up by a well-oiled propaganda machine that consists of PR agencies, RWE departments, police forces, and other state structures.
Intimidation and violence against the press help to reduce negative coverage, with threats of withdrawal of advertising and cancellation of subscriptions, campaigners have reported. In time for the Lützerath eviction, RWE published guidelines that restricted media coverage by journalists, requiring additional police accreditation and limiting access to certain areas, to day-time, and only when accompanied by RWE representatives. Much of the eviction – and police violence – took place at night and in other areas, however. When no journalists were present, protesters report, police were not only physically violent but used psychological violence, verbal abuse, and intimidation.
Power in the courts
A few days ago, RWE announced that they will be suing for compensation payments from the resistance movement for additional costs during the Lützerath eviction.
But soon, the company will itself be in court – RWE is being tried by Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a Peruvian farmer supported by the German NGO Germanwatch, to pay for adaptation measures to protect his land from melting glaciers. RWE is responsible for 0.47 percent of global climate change, so he is asking for 0.47 percent of adaptation costs. The hearing will take place in front of the Higher Regional Court Hamm. If successful, this could be ground-breaking.
At the same time, RWE has announced that it will be suing for compensation payments of 1.4 million Euro from two protesters who had blockaded RWE’s Neurath power station during the COP 26 negotiations in 2021. The action had forced RWE to reduce its operations by 32% and saved 8000 tons of CO2, according to activists.
While they were on trial, another group blockaded the same power station, showing RWE: we will not be intimidated.
In mid-August LUCSUS (Lund University’s Centre for Sustainability Studies) became the new home of POLLEN’s Secretariat. We present you the eight people who will be actively involved with the duties of the Secretariat:
New POLLEN Secretariat (from left to right): Juan Samper, Kelly Dorkenoo, Torsten Krause, Fabiola Espinoza, Lina Lefstad, Mine Islar & Wim Carton
Torsten Krause: Torsten is a Senior lecturer at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Sweden. His research involves the fields of forestry and forest governance, conservation science, traditional ecological knowledge, ethno-biology, and environmental justice. He is part of the MaCoBioS project (https://macobios.eu/) on Marine Coastal Ecosystems, Biodiversity and Services in a Changing World. MaCoBios is a four-year project funded by the EU H2020. Its main objective is to ensure efficient and integrated management and conservation strategies for European marine coastal ecosystems to face climate change.He is also part of the new 3 year BiodivERsA project EPICC (funded through FORMAS in Sweden) with a focus onEnvironmental Policy Instruments across Commodity Chains Multilevel governance for Biodiversity-Climate in Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia. Within EPICC I will study gold and cattle commodity chains in Colombia.
Mine Islar: Mine Islar is an associate professor at LUCSUS. She obtained her PhD degree in sustainability science. Her expertise is on transformative governance, social and environmental justice as well as collective action towards sustainability in both urban and rural settings. Apart from this, she also acts as a scientific expert in UN Intergovermental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem services (IPBES) as a Lead Author (2017-2020) for policy tools and instruments for the Values Assessment and Global Assessment of Biodiversity where she leads a section on governance challenges of SDGs with a special focus on SDG7 goal on energy and its potential implications on biodiversity.
Wim Carton: Wim is a Human Geographer with a background in Development Studies, International Relations and History. His main academic objective is to help understand society-nature relations, and how these are changed and articulated through various sustainability challenges. His primary research focus is on the political ecology of climate change mitigation in carbon forestry and agriculture, and related discussions on negative emissions in climate policy.His current research centers on the politics, political economy and political ecology of climate change mitigation, with a particular focus on negative emissions / carbon removal. The research projects that I am part of for example study the politics of modelling negative emissions in integrated assessment models; the assumptions underpinning projections of large-scale carbon removal; the extent and form in which these are being taken up by policy makers in different countries; and the various narratives and imaginaries about negative emissions that are being produced by corporations, policy makers and in civil society.
Kelly Dorkenoo: Kelly is a Ph.D Candidate at LUCSUS. Her doctoral research focuses on the differentiated socio-economic and ecological impacts from extreme weather events associated with climate change, and how they affect people and society. In particular, she explores the occurrence of disproportionality or disproportionate losses and damages and their relationship with socio-economic development processes. Kelly holds undergraduate degrees in international business administration from Montpellier Business School and applied economics from Paris South XI; and a master’s degree in environmental management and policy from the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University.
Fabiola Espinoza: Fabiola is a doctoral student at LUCSUS. Her research takes place in the context of the MaCoBioS (Marine Coastal Ecosystem Biodiversity and Services in a Changing World) project. The aim of the project is to fill the knowledge gaps on the inter-relation between climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystem services to ensure an efficient and integrated management and conservation strategies for European Marine Coastal Ecosystems (MCE) to face climate change. MaCoBioS will study three ecoregions with different climates.She holds an undergraduate degree in biology with a specialization in fisheries management from the National University of San Marcos and a master’s degree in environmental science, policy, and management from the Central European University. Prior joining LUCUS, Fabiola was working as a fisheries and finance consultant at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Additionally, she worked on marine protected area management in Peru
Lina Lefstad: Lina is a Ph.D Candidate at LUCSUS. Her doctoral research is about the imaginaries of carbon capture and storage in Scandinavia. She has an interdisciplinary background with a degree in International Business Management from the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, and a MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Leeds. She is working towards driving change through, among other things, her role as a core member of the Post Growth Institute, the activist-researcher platform “DegrowthTalks” and as an elected coordination committee member of the Post Growth Economics Network. Lina is interested in degrowth, post-growth and equity in just socio-ecological transformations.
Juan Samper: Juan is a Ph.D Candidate at LUCSUS, where he investigates the symbolic and material elements of the defense of the territory in the Colombian Amazon. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Law from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia) and a master’s degree in environmental studies and sustainability science from Lund University. Prior to his doctoral research, Juan conducted ethnographic research in the Andean-Amazonic region of Putumayo, Colombia, and policy analysis of climate politics focused on Green New Deals.
Conservation, culture, and consciousness: awakening to a re-imagined vision of nature co-existence
Do you have a personal ritual in nature? A place where you feel particularly connected and in awe of the intricacy of it all? Perhaps there is a special tree under which you seek solace, or a walk you take at sunrise just to hear the dawn chorus of birds. This is not unusual, as humans we have revered the natural world in our cultural and spiritual traditions throughout time. Nature is recognised as essential for our physical and psychological health (White et al., 2019). However, awareness of its necessity for our spiritual health has been lacking, especially outside of traditional contexts. But this is changing, and it is likely to benefit conservation too.
Conservation programmes historically relied on the ecological and natural sciences to achieve their desired outcomes, such as the recovery of a particular ecosystem or species, sometimes at the expense of certain displaced groups of humans and non-human entities. For example, the ‘fortress conservation’ model where parks are fenced off and local people excluded. The narrative in recent decades has become more inclusive of traditional beliefs and practices, understanding them as advantageous to conservation (Hill et al., 2020). This ontological turn requires more direct engagement with and explicit acknowledgement of indigenous knowledge (Todd, 2016). Nevertheless, more can be done to re-awaken a sacred awe for nature, not only in traditional settings, but also in modern cities and developed countries, where many have become disconnected from the natural world. Doing so may enhance conservation outcomes in a more ethical and equitable manner.
This so-called awakening of consciousness, encompassing new, re-imagined or personal spiritual practices is already occurring. For example, growing numbers of people are embracing plant medicine (which includes the likes of ayahuasca and psilocybin-containing ‘magic’ mushrooms) to heal themselves and to connect to a higher spiritual dimension (Gandy et al., 2020). With the psychedelic decriminalisation movement gaining ground in the United States, this age of ‘awakening’ looks set to continue. Certain modern mindfulness techniques are also practiced for and within nature (Willard, 2020). People exploring such practices often develop a profound sense of connection with the natural world, which encourages them to protect and restore biodiversity within their own environ and beyond (Gandy, 2019).
Preparation for plant medicine ceremony, Netherlands, July 2019 (photo credit: James Calalang)
On fieldwork in the Netherlands, Kenya and South Africa, when asking different types of people who do not participate in traditional cultural practices whether they have a spiritual connection with nature, the answer was a resounding yes. Through such personal spiritual practices, people are becoming more conscious of their ecological footprint. Often these are individuals living in developed areas, whose consumption habits have a disproportional detrimental impact on biodiversity through the resources that have to be extracted from natural areas (often far from where they live), in order to produce the products they use (Wiedmann & Lenzen, 2018).
Consciousness calling
Concurrently, our understanding of consciousness – the ability to have subjective experiences – is evolving, and not just of our own. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness states that ‘humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness’, non-human animals also possess this ability (Low et al., 2012). This will have implications for what is considered ethical practice in biodiversity conservation. For example, there is increasing recognition of non-human sentience, such as enshrined in Article 13 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty (EU, 2012). There is also growing awareness of the sentience of cephalopods like octopus (Birch et al., 2021), and even plants are said to have their own form of intelligence (Calvo et al., 2019).
This recognition has paved the way for ideas such as compassionate conservation, in which the lives of animal individuals are valued in conservation, as well as species as a whole (Ramp & Bekoff, 2015), and multi-species justice, which sees non-humans as worthy subjects of justice (Treves et al., 2019). In practice, it is argued that ‘a comprehensive conservation ethic should promote an ethics-of-care together with the codification and enforcement of animal claims so as to provide explicit ethical guidance in our mixed-community’ (Santiago-Ávila & Lynn, 2020). Furthermore, some are calling for the recognition of animal agency in conservation, where interventions could even be co-designed with the animals themselves (Edelblutte et al., 2022; Hathaway, 2015). For example, choosing where to place wildlife road crossings based on the preferred routes of the animals living in the area (Greenfield, 2021). This would represent a radical departure from the conservation norm.
Lion in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, February 2022. Photo taken by the author.
Additionally, as more people begin to sense the inter-relationality of natural systems and beings, the important role of emotion in conservation is coming to the fore. It is argued that emotion is not detrimental to conservation (preserving our life-sustaining ‘Gaian mother’ is inherently emotive) and emotion can even be utilised to enhance conservation outcomes (Batavia et al., 2021). Such developments inevitably encourage the promotion of ethical and equitable principles in conservation.
Equitable beyond humans
In terms of making conservation more equitable, at least for the humans involved, strides have already been made. The Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) conceptual framework acknowledges different epistemological worldviews, including a spiritual dimension of ‘living-well in balance and harmony with mother earth’ (IPBES, n.d.).
Similarly, indigenous traditions and knowledge are recognised in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Post-2020 Framework, which is currently being finalised: ‘Recognition of intergenerational equity, including the transmission of knowledge, language and cultural values associated with biodiversity, especially by indigenous peoples and local communities’ (CBD, 2020).
In this wording, nevertheless, the spiritual dimension is omitted, and recognition of modern spiritual and cultural practices is missing. Therefore, at present, it seems that there is only tacit acknowledgement of more subjective worldviews. Lee et al. (2021) found in an analysis of leaders’ discourses at the CBD’s Conference of Parties (COP), that discourses which view nature as a spiritual entity were represented only marginally. Are we afraid to admit reverence for the scared in nature?
We needn’t be. Comprehending our relationality in this living system is prudent in order to secure ‘abundant futures’ for all (Collard et al., 2015). This could occur through a self-reflexive process of ‘worlding’; making plain and learning from the many ways we view the world, including in different spiritual dimensions (Inoue, 2018).
Poster at the Pretoria Botanical Gardens, South Africa, April 2022. Photo taken by the author.
Some are pioneering this model of nature connectedness. For instance Londolozi, a private wildlife reserve adjacent to the Kruger National Park in South Africa, is reimagining conservation through ‘consciousness awakening’ and partnership with nature (Londolozi, 2022).
Transformative conservation
Building a more holistic model of conservation which acknowledges and promotes humans’ innate connection to the earth is possible and there is scope for scholars to fill this research void, explicitly acknowledging and engaging with indigenous ontologies in the process. In striving for objective conservation science, we have often been working against our innate biophilia, or love for the natural world. Recognising the value of new and re-imagined cultural and spiritual practices, in addition to traditional beliefs, has the prospect of transforming conservation. This would have implications from an ethical perspective, for example in how we manage so-called ‘invasive alien’ species or ‘surplus’ animals.
As greater numbers of people embrace the spiritual dimension of nature, it may be possible to make conservation not only more effective in terms of protecting and restoring biodiversity, but more ethical and equitable for humans and non-humans alike. A question we may wish to ask ourselves is what sort of relationship do we want with nature?
References
Batavia, C., Nelson, M. P., Bruskotter, J. T., Jones, M. S., Yanco, E., Ramp, D., . . . Wallach, A. D. (2021). Emotion as a source of moral understanding in conservation. Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. doi:10.1111/cobi.13689
Calvo, P., Gagliano, M., Souza, G. M., & Trewavas, A. (2019). Plants are intelligent, here’s how. Annals of Botany, 125(1), 11-28. doi:10.1093/aob/mcz155 %J Annals of Botany
Collard, R.-C., Dempsey, J., & Sundberg, J. (2015). A Manifesto for Abundant Futures. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(2), 322-330. doi:10.1080/00045608.2014.973007
Edelblutte, É., Krithivasan, R., & Hayek, M. N. (2022). Animal agency in wildlife conservation and management. Conservation Biology. doi:10.1111/cobi.13853
Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, (2012).
Gandy, S. (2019). From Egoism to Ecoism: Psychedelics and Nature Connection | Sam Gandy | TEDxOxford.
Gandy, S., Forstmann, M., Carhart-Harris, R., Timmermann, C., Luke, D., & Watts, R. (2020). The potential synergistic effects between psychedelic administration and nature contact for the improvement of mental health. Health psychology open, 7(2), 2055102920978123. doi:10.1177/2055102920978123
Hathaway, M. (2015). Wild elephants as actors in the Anthropocene. In T. H. A. Research (Ed.), Animals in the Anthropocene (Vol. 4, pp. 221-242): Sydney University Press.
Hill, R., Adem, C. i. d., Alangui, W. V., Molnár, Z., Aumeeruddy-Thomas, Y., Bridgewater, P., . . . Xue, D. (2020). Working with Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge in assessments of nature and nature’s linkages with people. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 43, 8-20. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2019.12.006
Inoue, C. (2018). Worlding the study of global environmental politics in the anthropocene: Indigenous voices from the Amazon. Global Environmental Politics, 18(4), 25-42. doi:10.1162/glep_a_00479
Lee, S. H., Kang, Y. H., & Dai, R. (2021). Toward a More Expansive Discourse in a Changing World: An Analysis of Political Leaders’ Speeches on Biodiversity. Sustainability, 13(5), 2899. doi:10.3390/su13052899
Ramp, D., & Bekoff, M. (2015). Compassion as a Practical and Evolved Ethic for Conservation. BioScience, 65(3), 323-327. doi:10.1093/biosci/biu223
Santiago-Ávila, F. J., & Lynn, W. S. (2020). Bridging compassion and justice in conservation ethics. Biological Conservation, 248, 108648. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108648
Todd, Z. (2016). An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism. 29(1), 4-22. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124
White, M. P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J., Wheeler, B. W., Hartig, T., Warber, S. L., . . . Fleming, L. E. (2019). Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 7730. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3
This is a lightly edited and expanded testimony made at the European Parliament PETI Hearing, “Environmental and Social Impacts of Mining Activity in the EU,” on December 2, 2021. It confronts the European Commission for publicly funding practices organized to persuade publics to accept mining operations. This funding stream, it is argued, should be re-directed to degrowth research and development schemes.
I want to frame this intervention by stating something obvious, but largely neglected in public policy. While this hearing is about mining today, it is really about the unrestrained industrial production, consumption and profiteering that generates enormous energy and material needs. This includes the production and rapid spread, and profiteering, of additional low-carbon infrastructures dependent on iron ore, aluminum, copper, rare earth elements and more. Modernist infrastructures and consumerism necessitates more mines, larger tailing dams, waste dumps, transportation logistics and smelting plants that have severe ecological impacts and are among the main contributors enabling and propelling the current climate catastrophe. We should not speak past the root cause of the current socio-ecological problem, which also serves to justify the expansion of mines for electric vehicles and low-carbon infrastructures.
Now that we have heard about the insufficient ecological standards of mining in the EU and their impacts (see figure 1 & 2), let me focus on the social impacts of mining and infrastructure projects (see figures 3, 4 & 5).
Buying the Social License to Operate (SLO)?
While extraction and infrastructure companies claim to generate employment and social development, in reality these claims are often grossly overstated—especially with the rise of automation and digitization. Likewise, there are profound psychosocial impacts on people that are rarely acknowledged in public policy, such as socio-cultural change from project development, long-term landscape degradation, technological integration and changing labor regimes. This raises the question: what does “social acceptance” or gaining a “social license to operate” really entail?
The general idea is that by gaining approval for mining or infrastructure projects from the local or regional population, companies can minimize conflict, create mutual social benefits and, most of all, prevent unexpected costs, delays and maintain a steady profit stream from a given project. This, in actuality, is a negotiation process attempting to persuade people to give up their local environments, collective resources and, it many instances, their livelihoods. Social acceptance and corporate social responsibility schemes attempt to organize the sacrifice of ecosystems to enclosure, privatization and extraction to create manufacturing materials to be bought and sold on national and transnational markets. Frequently, this also involves writing off basic rights, such as informed public participation, and the duty to report environmental offences and crimes of corruption associated with mining and infrastructure projects.
People recognize extractive impositions as attacks on where they live, and as processes of unequal exchange. This is apparent by watching people with closer connections to their environments, who value the quality of water, air, food and social relationships where they live. Research has shown, contrary to the easy claims of the Not in My Backyard “syndrome,” that people recognize extractive impositions as being connected not only to environmental degradation and corruption but also to wider patterns of consumerism, profiteering and unsustainable urban lifestyles. The causal connection between mining and large-scale infrastructure projects with capitalism and climate change are all too apparent.
Gaining a social license to operate for mining, or corresponding infrastructure projects, leads us to believe that environmental justice is occurring through inclusion in project planning and decision making; equitable social development; and maintenance of the highest ecological standards. Yet, in reality, everything is done by companies to avoid addressing the hard scientific realities of water, air and soil contamination, land–use changes, the impacts on flora, fauna, existing social fabrics and governance practices. The EU, as Dr. Emmerman just reminded us, has lower environmental standards and mining regulations than four Latin American countries (e.g. Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Peru). Not to forget, mining is used for generating more profit and, in the case of wind and solar panels, privatizing common resources to extract more kinetic energy. More still, companies are designing “social license” standards that are voluntary and with minimal public oversight or enforcement. The EU, even more than other countries, foots the bill for this maneuvering, already convinced these activities are ‘green’, ‘clean’ and ‘sustainable’. This is nothing short than insanity.
Figure 2. Power Point Slide 4, the Hambach Coalmine. Source: Perschke
Welcome to the Social Engineering of Extraction
At this point, the real issue emerges. Social license to operate, in actuality, is a weapon to control land and people, degrading ecosystems and generating profit. Take the Hambach forest coalmine (shown above), which resembles systematic attributes we can find in mining projects all over Europe, like the proposed lithium mines of Cáceres in Spain, Covas do Barroso in Portugal, or Jadar in Serbia.
Figure 3. Power Point Slide 5, RWE CSR initiatives.
In Germany, mining and energy major RWE, found various ways to sponsor politicians, town halls, and police departments. The company built coal mining museums, created bar-restaurants that celebrate mining (Terra:Nova), organized festivals and sponsored schools. They even hired ecologists to manage (required) ecological reclamation schemes, which claim ecological degradation and ancient forests eradication can be compensated using environmental ‘offset’ schemes. In Spain, Portugal, and Serbia, populations are confronted with massive public relations campaigns by Infinity Lithium, Savannah Resources, and Rio Tinto. Yet these companies ignore public risks, as Dr. Emerman has already shown us. The social response to such plans is usually branded as the uninformed opinion of a few. While this sounds innocent, it is far from it.
Figure 4. Power Point Slide 6.
This approach to obtaining a social license to operate is public relations or, more accurately, propaganda—nothing objective by any honest standard—which works to pre-empt local economic, social and ecological concerns through discursive manipulation, money, gifts and token social development. This includes setting up astroturf groups or proxy-NGOs, such as “Our region—our future” in Germany or “Mineros Touro-O Pino” in Galicia, Spain.
Figure 5. Power Point Slide 7. Terra Nova coal mining tourism site.
In Germany, Peru and elsewhere, company representatives—formally and informally—walk door-to-door, make speeches at public events or schools, companies dispense money, roll out an entire public relations apparatus. Yet these efforts to win over the public are also matched by the deployment of armed forces, whether local police or private security, to ensure local submission to ecological extraction and business as usual. These efforts display slow and long-term attempts, which erode people’s critical facilities, their ability and—and more so—their willingness to identify and report corruption and ecological damage created by the mine. My research, and others, have demonstrated how this maneuvering closely mimics military manuals and population-centric counterinsurgency tactics deployed to occupy foreign countries.
This does not only happen in particular sites, but is systemically encouraged by the European Commission. In its 2020 Communication on “Critical Raw Materials Resilience” it identified “public acceptance” as one of four major challenges while its 2021 Raw Materials Scoreboardactually lists and recommends many of the methods used in Hambach to mitigate reactions to mining:
Tailings dam failures, chronic pollution, and fatal accidents are abrupt drivers of opinion. Changing public opposition to passive tolerance or active support requires a lot of persistent effort. Public relation campaigns, transparent stakeholder dialogues, cultural heritage (mining museums, local heritage ceremonies) may help develop positive public opinion (p. 27).
Horizon 2020 funding scheme, hosted by the European Commission, seeks to support research relevant to Europe. The Horizon 2020 grant scheme, however, has and continues to fund ‘soft’ counterinsurgency initiatives designed to enforce mining and industrial production—regardless of the ecological and climate catastrophe slowly taking place as we speak. Think about the “Vectors to accessible critical raw materials” (VECTOR) or the controversial “Mining and Metallurgy Regions of EU” (MIREU) research initiatives. The latter meanwhile admitted that key parts of their results do not comply with scientific standards.
Counterinsurgency is about capturing the ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’ of local populations, working by every means to pre-empt potential resistance. This is attempted by buying the support of local leaders; popularizing corporate science; distributing t-shirts and inundating entire regions with multi-media advertisements; sponsoring sports clubs and events; organizing school visits and creating “educational’ materials with a distorted vision of mining. This social engineering initiatives promote a surreptitious vision that mining is good for their lives and the environment. This, on the flipside, entails the criminalizing resistance and allowing violent action to be carried out against concern citizens.
Figure 6. Power Point Slide 9, Protests in Spain and Portugal against mining.
Take for example, the arson attacks carried out to intimidate locals protesting the EU funded San Finx tin and tungsten mine in Spain. In the name of ecological and climate policy, the EC must stop criminalizing land defense activities.
In her 2019 mission letter to Thierry Breton from Ursula von der Leyen highlighted the importance of strengthening “the link between people and the institutions that serve them”. She also stated that: [And I quote] “A stronger relationship with citizens starts with building trust and confidence. I will insist on the highest levels of transparency and ethics for the College as a whole. There can be no room for doubt about our behaviour or our integrity.”
Meanwhile the Commission, the last five years, has allocated over 100M€ to over a dozen of Horizon2020 projects with objectives of both researching and at the same time influencing social acceptance of domestic raw material extraction. This includes mapping civic actors and campaigning at primary schools. All of the projects consortia have rejected NGO requests to disclose their public funding agreements, referring to “commercially sensitive information.” The European Commission has endorsed this activity in all cases, negating a public interest in disclosure and transparency. The Commission, moreover, has nearly financed 30 “Wider Society Learning” projects through the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) RawMaterials, with a similar objective of “building the social license” and to “achieve society acceptance” by targeting NGO’s or initiating social engineering efforts against citizens through schools and museums. The European commission must stop the various funding streams aimed at social engineering extraction in or outside the EU in order to comply with its own standards of ethics and transparency.
Conclusion: Stop Green Washing and Reallocate Funds
Equally alarming as these insidious and repressive maneuvers are the attempts at justifying this mining by calling it “green”, “environmentally friendly”, “responsible” or the even more preposterous “sustainable.” There is nothing ecologically sustainable about these projects, except the green 100€ notes backing and being made from these projects. The low-carbon infrastructures necessitating mining, fossil fuels, chemical leaching, smelting, manufacturing and operation are an expansion of ecologically destructive projects that are being added to the existing energy mix of coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric dams. Carbon accounting is not enough for understanding ecological and climate catastrophe. Life cycle assessments are not enough for understanding the real socio-ecological harms of low-carbon technology supply webs. This money used to pacify conflict in favor of ecological and climate catastrophe must be put into actually trying to mitigate and remediate ecological destruction, not renewing and extending it. Research funds should be urgently dedicated to developing degrowth and post-economic growth strategies so the European Commission can actually start taking environmental policy seriously. Members of parliament, this destructive socio-ecological trajectory must be derailed and transformed immediately.
POLLEN 
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