Mining: Extraction and Cultural Heritage
Jamie DeAngelo
Decipher City
Indigenous perspectives on mining operations in Kanaky/New Caledonia
Matthias Kowasch, Simon P.J. Batterbury, Antoine Cano Poady, and Chanel Ouetcho
University College of Teacher Education Styria / University of Melbourne / Environord / Humaa-gué
Extractivism and civil society's operational space in Northern Chile
Viktoria Reisch
Goethe-University Frankfurt
Confronting metal-mining and advocating eco-friendly economy in Armenia: The movement of local residents and civil initiatives to “Save Amulsar”
Milena Baghdasaryan
National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia
Extraction and the durée moyenne: Long-term community change in the context of extraction transformations
Glenn Banks
Massey University
Comments 11
Kia ora kotou, and Welcome to the Living in Extractive Landscapes panel,
My name is Nicholas Holm, and I’ll be acting as the virtual chair for this panel. I’m a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, and quite some time ago I was one of the co-founders of the Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC).
I’d like to begin by thanking all the presenters for their thoughtful and fascinating presentations, all of which explore the diverse ways in which communities living alongside extractive industries learn to adapt, resist and relate to the environmental, economic and cultural changes that those industries bring. The five presentations on this panel span the globe from Kanaky/New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea in the Pacific, to Chile and Utah in the Americas and Armenia in Central Asia. They showcase the amazing diversity of local responses and adaptations, while looking across the presentations allows us consider some of the similarities in their experiences.
Inspired by Glenn’s presentation on the “durée moyenne,” my question for the panel is about the different time scales under consideration and how they might illuminate the concept of resistance. The presentations by Viktoria Reisch, Milena Baghdasaryan and Matthias Kowasch’s group address recent attempts to resist or recuperate mining operations: how effective do you think such actions might be in the ‘medium’ term? Is there the possibility that they might prevent mining from taking place, or might enable the realisation of more equitable or environmentally sound arrangements in the future, or are they simply delaying tactics?
Conversely, in relation to your presentation, Jamie, I was wondering what role historical resistance might have played in the multiple intersecting narratives that the Bingham mine evokes? Finally, in relation to your presentation Glenn, what concerns and possibilities do you think are made more visible in the middle-term, and which ones might fade away as we extend that timeline into the future?
Other folks, please feel free to ask your own, hopefully less opaque, questions and comments!
Thanks,
Nick
Hi everyone! Thank you for very interesting presentations! To respond to Nick Holm’s question, in the case of Amulsar, local residents certainly do not aim to just delay the project. For them this issue has become a vital question of further existence of their community, protection of nature, their rights and so forth. They are not willing to surrender and are ready to defend the mountain with their bodies. The residents established wagon-houses near the roads leading to the mountain, to be able to be there day and night during all seasons. Their actions are gendered, men have regular shifts during which they stay at these posts, women cook and provide them with food. Many had to sacrifice their time that they would otherwise devote to work. They call themselves “Defenders of Amulsar”, and call their protest “defending the homeland”. They claim that they would not allow mining there even if other companies come in the future. If any tensions arise, crowds gather near the mountain, with visitors from Yerevan and other regions too. This has protest has been ongoing since two years. Furthermore, the project, if realized would not just have local impacts. According to experts, it would affect water resources that are very important for the entire country, so there has grown a significant opposition to the mine also in the capital of Yerevan, including political forces. Since the revolution, demonstrations for Amulsar have been the largest. A recent independent opinion poll showed that the majority of Armenian population is opposed to the project. This has become an issue of national significance, it is framed in terms of maintaining national sovereignty. Intellectuals also frame it in terms of capitalism, social injustice and even pure irrationality, since in this case the country would have to suffer immense externalities, while most of the income would serve private interests abroad. One famous poster plays on the similarity of the words “criminal” and “miner” in Armenian language (հանքագործ and հանցագործ), and often representatives of the former regime are considered crimilans for allowing such projects. Given the determination of the population, there may indeed be hope that the residents will be able to prevent this project and have legal assurances that this territory would never be touched by mining. In therms of long-term processes, I should also add that experiences with other mining projects have also had an impact on this case and have increased public opposition to mining. For instance, years ago another controversial project was approved, because of which a large forest had to be cut down. As always, the company promised to hold up to best environmental standards. However, just 3 years into the project, investors left the project due to noncompliance with environmental standards. The company had to stop operations because the tailing pond was unstable. Now the company became property of a foreign investor bank and is being exploited in spite of warnings and pollution. In this case the local population was and still is supporting mining. However, the promises of good standards and income for the country turned to nothing. When residents of Jermuk speak of Amulsar, they do refer to mining failures in other places in Armenia and of having been healing children from mining communities for years in their sanatoriums. Of course this struggle may also help improve Armenian legislation and mining practice in other already existing mines in Armenia. However, this is a very difficult process, since punishing polluting companies is not in the interest of governments …
Dear Nick, Dear all,
Thanks for organizing this wonderful and enriching panel. And sorry for late reply.
Due to Corona measures, the mining sector in New Caledonia/Kanaky experienced some cut-downs. The Koniambo smelter for example runs with only one production line (instead of two). The Goro Nickel smelter is to going be sold by Vale. The Brazilian company actually negotiates with New Centruy, a Melbourne based mining group.
And as Simon said, there is an ongoing geopolitical struggle for Kanak independence. The Kanak indipendence movement wants to use the nickel sector as an instrument for economic emancipation from France. Therefore, there is little resistance from Indigenous communities to mining development, because they want to show that they are able to run a giant mining project at the global scale and benefit from their own mineral resources. Nevertheless, this strategy seems to be not very sustainable, because the local economy depends on global market prices. And in the last months, New Caledonia/Kanaky just exports more raw ores to China (despite two “new” smelters and the strategy to process more ores locally). The mining strategy of the Indigenous indipendence movement thus seems to be very risky. The good point is that they control at least a part of the mineral resources of the country.
The resistance actions that you have addressed, Nick, – for example protest songs, etc. – will continue, but they seem to be marginal. There are of course Kanak people who are against mining development, but they “fight” not only against multinational companies but also against their brothers and sisters who think that the Kanak need the incomes from the new mining projects.
It’s a complex issue that is largely politicized.
Please, send me an email if you have further questions (matthias.kowasch@phst.at). Thanks!
Kia ora,
and thanks to the panelists for some really interesting presentations. Glenn, I really enjoyed your consideration of the duree moyenne, and the questions and considerations that this throws up when looking at issues as transformations rather than snapshots. The adaptations in terms of population change, inmigration and outmigration, social relationships with land, social relationships within groups /generations, and understandings of NGO’s, Govt, industry and so on and how these changes are made sense of by the people living in the area are really indicative of why this thinking frame is an important contribution to the overall debates. (Also, an indication of how complex !)
Thankyou – I will reply first since I am on Australian time. Community responses to mining conflicts in New Caledonia arise for some of the reasons the other presenters mention – attacks on land ownership and ancestral heritage being the main one, and with some environmental protest [small until recent decades and with the UN classification of the reef system, where a lot of mining pollution flowed out to, and recognition of numerous endemic treasures on land]. The complicating factor in New Caledonia is that there is an ongoing geopolitical struggle for Kanak independence going on – this is an un-decolonised territory under French control. So micropolitical mine protests always sit within larger geopolitical struggles. Small struggles need to get broader backing to survive and win. We can cautiously claim that the Koniambo project, being an instrument for Kanak political and economic aims to delink or gain independence from France, is unique in the world because of its Indigenous control at scale. In which case, local Kanak resistance to it [which we show in a slide] is bound to be pushed back by the authorities – but it is listened to, nonetheless and Antoine Poady has documented many meetings between the key players. Matthias can add more.
We have just published a paper on the durée moyenne of mining on the islands with Séverine Bouard, a fantastic geographer and long-term resident researcher, which has a better and longer response. In brief – mining=politics=power.
see
Simon P.J. Batterbury, Matthias Kowasch, Séverine Bouard. 2020. The geopolitical ecology of New Caledonia: territorial re-ordering, mining, and Indigenous economic development. Journal of Political Ecology 27: 594-611. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE/article/view/23812 Résumé en francais en bas.
Abstract
In the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, conflict and difference between Indigenous Kanak people and European settlers has existed at least since the 1850s. We interrogate the geopolitical ecology of these islands, which is deeply wedded to natural resource extraction, is instrumentalized in political debate, power struggles, conflict, and the mining sector. Territoriality, including changes to political borders and access to land, has promoted the interests of the key actors in shaping the future of the islands. Violence in the 1980s was followed by the Matignon Accords (1988) and three provinces were established (North, South, Loyalty Islands). The South Province is governed by a party loyal to France, and the others are in the hands of the Indigenous Kanak independence movement seeking full decolonization and independence. The strengthened regional autonomy that emerged from the creation of provinces has permitted the Kanak-dominated ones to control certain political competencies as well as to guide economic development much more strongly than in other settler states, notably through a large nickel mining project in the North Province. Provincialization has not diminished ethnic divisions as French interests hoped, as signaled by voting in the close-run but unsuccessful 2018 referendum on independence from France. We explore the ironies of these efforts at territorial re-ordering, which are layered on significant spatial and racial disparities. Re-bordering has enabled resurgence of Kanak power in ways unanticipated by the architects of the Accords, but without a guarantee of eventual success.
Key Words: New Caledonia, geopolitical ecology, politics of mining, decolonization, Kanak identity
Résumé
Dans le territoire de la Nouvelle-Calédonie du Pacifique français, les conflits et les différences entre les peuples autochtones kanaks et les colons européens existent au moins depuis les années 1850. Nous interrogeons l’écologie géopolitique de ces îles, profondément ancrée dans l’extraction des ressources naturelles, instrumentalisée dans le débat politique, les luttes de pouvoir, les conflits et le secteur minier. La territorialité, y compris les modifications des frontières politiques et l’accès à la terre, a promu les intérêts des acteurs clés dans la construction de l’avenir des îles. La violence des années 1980 a été suivie par les accords de Matignon (1988) et la création de trois provinces (Nord, Sud, îles Loyauté). La province du Sud est gouvernée par un parti loyaliste, c’est-à-dire attaché à la République française et contre l’indépendance, et les deux autres sont gérées par le mouvement indépendantiste kanak qui cherche à obtenir une décolonisation et une indépendance complètes. L’autonomie régionale renforcée qui a résulté de la création des provinces a permis aux Kanak de contrôler certaines compétences politiques telles que le développement économique beaucoup plus fortement que dans d’autres États colonisateurs, notamment grâce à un projet d’extraction et de transformation de nickel d’envergure international en province Nord. La provincialisation n’a pas atténué les aspirations indépendantistes et les divisions ethniques autant que l’espéraient les intérêts français, comme l’a montré le vote lors du référendum de 2018 sur l’accès à la pleine souveraineté, au résultat très serré mais sans succès. Nous explorons l’ironie de ces efforts de réorganisation territoriale, qui reposent sur d’importantes disparités spatiales et raciales. Redessiner les frontières et compétences provinciales a offert un espace d’expression du pouvoir kanak d’une manière inattendue pour les architectes des accords, mais sans garantie de succès.
Mots-clés : Nouvelle-Calédonie, écologie politique, politiques minières, décolonisation, identité Kanak.
Hi everyone,
thank you very much for your interesting presentations.
To Glenn, I think the methodological issues you are adressing are extremely important, especially when we are considering the necessity of medium- and long-term studies. In the case of the Atacama communities in Northern Chile that is also crucial to understand their relationship with the mining companies (especially in comparison to other places in Chile where mining can be relatively young and/or specific companies are new in the field). And on behalf of Nicholas’ question to Glenn, what may be more visible are among others, but especially important when it comes to policy-making, the “real” effects on (economic) benefits and environmental damages I’d say. And this leads me also to Nicholas’ question regarding my presentation: it is absoluetly crucial to accompany practices of community-company parnterships on a medium-term level to see the effects. As has been shown in the cases I looked at, juridification has been really energy-consuming for communities, even though they they had been successful, companies come back again and again. This is something that can only be seen by doing medium- and long-term studies.
Apart from that, I’d say it also depends in which way we consider “effective”. I’m not sure if they really can prevent mining from taking place, but – as I was adressing in my presentation – but they can support and maintain the ability for local communities to keep their operational space open, as long as there is a legal framework and legal system that guarantees its accomplishment
I’ve really enjoyed virtually attending this conference… it has been a nice break from the pandemic isolation! I was struck by Glenn’s comments on the lack of research on out-migration and the need to attend to the long-term impacts of extraction on beneficiary communities. I know that this research is lacking in places like Papua New Guinea, but I wonder if it is really not attended to globally? Some of Ferguson’s work seems to speak to this issue, for example. I also think of the research on coal mining in my home state of Kentucky, where some work has been done with out-migration. Of course the drivers of migration and the benefits to people in many parts of the world differ, especially if we consider what we mean by benefits (compensation? ownership? or just employment?). In PNG at least, mining benefits do filter down to landowners in way that my own grandfather never experienced in the coal mines. But such places offer comparative insight into the dynamics that we should attend to.
Also, is it possible that one thing that facilitates the absence of research in the Pacificis the tendency to claim residence in the community, while migrating away from it? Many of the families that I interviewed about the mine maintained more or less two households, one in the community and one outside of it…. with a rather constant flow back and forth. During some research trips, I could interview folks who had not lived in the community for years, while at the same time, others were absent. As such, it often felt like one is studying aspects of out-migration without leaving the community.
I ask about these issues because once travel for research is possible I am planning a project on peri-urban communities around Lae where many of the Hidden Valley beneficiaries have established a primary or secondary home. (I’ve been working with the communities around Hidden Valley in PNG since 1998)
Hi everyone!
Wonderful set of presentations that showcase a lot of different interactions between extraction and it’s communities. I too was intrigued by the lack of research on outmigration, which, having tried to do some of that kind of tracking myself, know is just so tricky to do—especially if people don’t head to similar places.
My main reason for commenting is that I share an interest with Jamie DeAngelo in the Bingham Pit. It’s indeed a historical preservation oddity because so much of what should be preserved is long gone (outside of the pit itself). The question of narratives we tell about these places is particularly of interest to me. I visited the Bingham Pit’s visitors center a while back and it strikes me that it actually attempted to cover more modern history—it talked a bit about the canyon communities, about environmental cleanup, and about recent technology. Of course, that history lesson was all told through exhibits done to promote the mining company (for instance, look what had to get sacrificed in the name of progress, look how great we’ve handled environmental damage, and the like). I guess I’m wondering about companies’ role in preserving the history of these kinds of places. What are your thoughts on the roles they could and should play?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
Dear Viktoria,
I really enjoyed your presentation. I think it is striking how many parallels there are with my own work in Guatemala – about territory defenders that face violence and criminalization on an almost daily basis. My question is: how does the criminalization shape and inform the way that people resist and organize, and how does it affect their daily lifes?
Good luck in finalizing your thesis,
Elisabet
Dear all, during the closing discussion today we talked about connections between scholarly work and activism. I presented the struggle for Amulsar (to save vital water and other resources from potential long-term pollution and destruction in Armenia), in which I am engaged also as an activist. I’d like to use this chance and invite you to support the local residents by signing the petition to Stop Mining in Amulsar. If you’d like to learn more on this issue, please contact me, I will be happy to provide you with materials in English language. https://www.change.org/p/stop-mining-in-amulsar-do-not-finance-lydian-international-%D5%A1%D5%B4%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%AC%D5%BD%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%AB-%D5%B0%D5%A1%D5%B6%D6%84%D5%A8-%D5%B9%D5%AB-%D5%B7%D5%A1%D5%B0%D5%A1%D5%A3%D5%B8%D6%80%D5%AE%D5%BE%D5%A5%D5%AC%D5%B8%D6%82-%D5%A4%D5%A1%D5%A4%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%A5%D6%81%D6%80%D5%A5-%D6%84-%D5%AC%D5%AB%D5%A4%D5%AB%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%AB-%D6%86%D5%AB%D5%B6%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%BD%D5%A1%D5%BE%D5%B8%D6%80%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B4%D5%A8
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