School of Geography - Research Publications
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ItemMining, movements and sustainable development: Concepts for a framework(WILEY, 2018-09-01)Abstract Mining disrupts: it ruptures the boundary between the surface and the sub‐surface, it upsets pre‐existing modes of living on the surface, it changes biogeochemical, social and economic flows across surfaces, and it transforms imaginations of the future. Mining not only moves mountains, it also moves people – physically, emotionally, politically and economically. Some people leave, some refuse to get out of the way, some carry on, some stay but build new livelihoods, and others arrive in pursuit of the livelihoods made possible by this particular form of development. Development also disrupts: it modifies modes of living and social organization, it alters relations between humans and nature, it deepens the integration of places into broader flows of finance and ideas, and it shifts ideas about the future. Development is also implicated in the forced, voluntary and induced movement of people. Analytically, mining and development are therefore not dissimilar. This paper works from this similarity to suggest concepts for thinking about the relationships between mining, movement and development. These concepts are drawn from literature in Human Geography, Rural Territorial Development and Development Studies. It then uses these concepts to frame the relationships between mining and sustainable development.
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ItemSocio-environmental Conflict, Political Settlements, and Mining Governance: A Cross-Border Comparison, El Salvador and Honduras(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2019-03)During the mid-2000s, Honduras and El Salvador implemented mining moratoria. By 2017 El Salvador had legislated a globally unprecedented ban on all forms of metal mining, while in Honduras mining was expanding aggressively. These neighboring countries present the explanatory challenge of understanding the distinct trajectories of mining policy and politics. These divergent pathways can be explained by the interactions between the political economy of subsoil resources, national political settlements, and the ways in which diverse actors have taken advantage (or not) of openings in these settlements. A mediados de la década del 2000, Honduras y El Salvador implementaron moratorias mineras. Para el 2017, El Salvador había legislado una prohibición sin precedentes a nivel mundial de todas las formas de minería de metales, mientras que en Honduras la minería se estaba expandiendo agresivamente. Estos países vecinos presentan el desafío explicativo de comprender las distintas trayectorias de la política minera y la política. Estas vías divergentes pueden explicarse por las interacciones entre la economía política de los recursos del subsuelo, los acuerdos políticos nacionales y las formas en que diversos actores han aprovechado (o no) las aperturas en estos acuerdos.
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ItemTroubling the idealised pageantry of extractive conflicts: Comparative insights on authority and claim-making from Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and El Salvador(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2021-04)This article challenges simplified and idealised representation of conflicts between corporations, states and impacted populations in the context of extractive industries. Through comparative discussion of mineral extraction in Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and El Salvador, we argue that strategies of engagement over the terms of extraction vary significantly as a result of the interaction between relations of authority and recognition in the context of specific projects and the national political economy of mining. As mineral extraction impinges on their lands, livelihoods, territories and senses of the future, affected populations face the uncertain question of how to respond and to whom to direct these responses. Strategies vary widely, and can involve confrontation, litigation, negotiation, resignation, and patronage. These strategies are targeted at companies, investors, the national state, local government, multilateral institutions, and international arbitrators. We argue that the key to understanding how strategies emerge to target different types and scales of authority, lies ultimately with inherited geographies of state presence and strategic absence. This factor shapes the construction of “community” claim-making in relation to state and non-state authorities, and calculations regarding the relative utility of claiming rights or mobilizing relationships as a means of seeking redress, compensation or benefit sharing. In the context of plural opportunities for claim-making, we query whether plurality is more emancipatory or, ironically, more constricting for impacted populations. In response to this question, we argue that “community” strategies tend to be more effective where they remain linked in some way to the territorial and legislative structure of the national state.
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ItemNegotiating the mine Commitments, engagements, contradictions(Routledge, 2021)This Handbook provides an essential guide to the study of resources and their role in socio-environmental change.
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ItemRural social movements: Conflicts over the countryside(Routledge, 2018-01-01)This chapter begins with a reflection on the meanings of social movements and follows this with a discussion of what it might mean to place the word rural in front of this term. It discusses the historical nature and role of rural social movements in the region, and reflects on some contemporary movement processes in the Latin American countryside. The chapter draws out broader observations on “Conflicts over the countryside.” It conveys the idea that there are many conflicts spread across Latin American countrysides, that these are conflicts over what that countryside should be for, who it should be for, and what its future should be, and that these conflicts are not just rural in nature but instead about country in the fullest sense of the term.
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ItemMining and climate change: A review and framework for analysis(Elsevier, 2018-01-01)In this paper, we demonstrate that climate change is critically important for the current and future status of mining activity and its impacts on surrounding communities and environments. We illustrate this through examples from Latin America, including a spatial analysis of the intersection between projected climate changes and existing mining operations. We then elaborate a framework to identify and investigate the relationships among mining, climate change, and public and private responses to them. The framework also notes the importance of political economy and learning processes to the forms taken by these relationships. Our paper then reports on a focused review of peer-reviewed publications that aims to identify the extent to which a core research literature on mining and climate change currently exists. We show that this literature is still very limited, but that the analysis that does exist can be encapsulated by the main elements of our framework. This enables us to describe the current structure of both peer-reviewed and policy research on mining and climate change, and identify areas for future research. In particular, we note the chronic absence of research on this relationship for the vast majority of developing countries, where some of the most serious vulnerabilities to climate change exist.
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ItemAssessing impacts of mining: Recent contributions from GIS and remote sensing(ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2019-07)Mining produces several environmental, social, and economic impacts which can be analysed spatially using remote sensing (RS) and geographical information systems (GIS). This paper provides an overview of recent studies using these techniques to assess mining impacts on water, land, and society. It also highlights the geographic complexities of these impacts via mining case studies, and discusses spatial research methods, data sources, and limitations. Despite noted simplifications, risks, and uncertainties of mapping the impacts of mining, the cases included in our overview illustrate that there are clearly beneficial applications. At a local level, these include environmental and socioeconomic risk assessments, disaster mitigation, and adjudication on mine-related conflicts. At a regional level, spatial analyses can support cumulative and strategic impact assessments. At a global level, spatial analyses can reveal industry-wide land use trends, and provide key land use data for comparative analyses of mining impacts between commodities, locations, and mine configurations. The degree to which such benefits are realised will likely depend on the resources afforded to what is a growing field of study.
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ItemPolitical ecologies of the post-mining landscape: Activism, resistance, and legal struggles over Kalimantan's coal mines(ELSEVIER, 2020-07)This study explores contestation over the meanings, rules and practices of coal mine reclamation and mine closure in the context of East Kalimantan, Indonesia's major coal producing province. As mining intensified in the province, and coal was mined out, concessions were left with large mine voids un-refilled and abandoned without closure – many within close vicinity to human settlements. Following an extended campaign led by a diverse group of social movement actors, utilising various advocacy and litigation strategies, the East Kalimantan legislature adopted a provincial regulation in 2013, reinforcing higher-level regulations that mandate coal mining companies to conduct reclamation and post-mining clean up. The regulation was the first time that activists had directly influenced policy regulating mining at the sub-national level in Indonesia. Yet the policy outcome alone has not been sufficient to shape change: an estimated 1735 coal mine voids remain un-refilled in East Kalimantan, and the number of human fatalities from deaths in mine voids continues to grow. Remediation of mine sites is rarely performed to return land to its pre-mined conditions. By bringing together relevant scholarship in political ecology, the politics of development and legal geography, we analyse the relationships between pact-making, political settlements, contestation and policy reform related to the governance of post-mine landscapes.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCOVID-19 and the case for global development(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2020-10)COVID-19 accentuates the case for a global, rather than an international, development paradigm. The novel disease is a prime example of a development challenge for all countries, through the failure of public health as a global public good. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the falsity of any assumption that the global North has all the expertise and solutions to tackle global challenges, and has further highlighted the need for multi-directional learning and transformation in all countries towards a more sustainable and equitable world. We illustrate our argument for a global development paradigm by examining the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic across four themes or 'vignettes': global value chains, digitalisation, debt, and climate change. We conclude that development studies must adapt to a very different context from when the field emerged in the mid-20th century.
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ItemCo-Occurrence Patterns of Common and Rare Leaf-Litter Frogs, Epiphytic Ferns and Dung Beetles across a Gradient of Human Disturbance(PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2012-06-11)Indicator taxa are commonly used to identify priority areas for conservation or to measure biological responses to environmental change. Despite their widespread use, there is no general consensus about the ability of indicator taxa to predict wider trends in biodiversity. Many studies have focused on large-scale patterns of species co-occurrence to identify areas of high biodiversity, threat or endemism, but there is much less information about patterns of species co-occurrence at local scales. In this study, we assess fine-scale co-occurrence patterns of three indicator taxa (epiphytic ferns, leaf litter frogs and dung beetles) across a remotely sensed gradient of human disturbance in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We measure the relative contribution of rare and common species to patterns of total richness in each taxon and determine the ability of common and rare species to act as surrogate measures of human disturbance and each other. We find that the species richness of indicator taxa changed across the human disturbance gradient but that the response differed among taxa, and between rare and common species. Although we find several patterns of co-occurrence, these patterns differed between common and rare species. Despite showing complex patterns of species co-occurrence, our results suggest that species or taxa can act as reliable indicators of each other but that this relationship must be established and not assumed.