Understanding the relationships between extractive activity and landscape change: theoretical and methodological challenges

Presenting author: Gisselle Vila Benites (Clark University)

Other author: Alejandra Villanueva Ubillús (KU Leuven)

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is often associated to its environmental impacts on local communities and landscapes, rather than to the processes upstream and downstream that critically affect environmental performance. In this presentation we bring renewed attention to the latter, focusing on the ASGM value chain. Approaching formal ASGM in the Peruvian Amazon, we follow a relational geographic perspective to ensemble a framework that bridges global production networks with global value chains. This allows us to disentangle the ecology of actors that shape mining governance and affect small-scale miners' possibilities to improve environmental performance.

By "following gold", we examine the barriers that impede miners' articulation to responsible markets: (a) incertitude about mining rights and the legal framework, (b) an impoverished offer of formal supplies, and (c) criminal groups and buyers-sellers take of gold revenues during commercialization. We propose that these barriers are under: (a) the promotion of environmental and coercive policies with limited consideration to local market effects, and (b) emerging markets neglect to ensure due diligence in the gold value chain. In that way, we enlighten the barriers to access responsible markets as an exercise of active informalization, with counterproductive consequences for sustainable development in the Amazon. 

Presenting author: Ana Estefania Carballo (University of Melbourne)

Other authors: Tim Werner (University of Melbourne), Gillian Gregory (University of Melbourne)

Increasing urgency transition to sustainable forms of energy has elicited an unprecedented interest in lithium worldwide, and particularly in South America. The 'Lithium Triangle' alone, located at the intersection of the borders of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia, holds 60% of worldwide lithium reserves (USGS 2020). In Argentina, this 'white gold rush' has resulted in a remarkable and very rapid expansion of new projects and concessions awarded for lithium extraction, particularly in the northern provinces, where currently over 45 lithium mining projects are at various stages of development-up from only two projects in 2008. This booming industry means lithium is often presented as a strategic resource that can provide new and significant opportunities for socioeconomic growth and technological advance in a region rife with development challenges (Barandiarán 2019; Fornillo 2018). Yet, the manner and extent to which this lithium mining expansion is impacting social, ecological, and political systems is not yet well understood. In this paper, we use GIS and remote sensing techniques to investigate the lithium industry in Argentina, and assess its real and possible impacts across a multiplicity of spatial considerations in the northern provinces of the country. Drawing on data compiled from a diversity of sources-including provincial and state mining concessions databases, environmental regulations, social indicators, and water and natural resources availability-we outline some of the key methodological challenges to using GIS and remote sensing to understand these impacts. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of mixed methods for understanding the intersecting social, political, and ecological effects of a relatively young and now-booming extractive industry. In doing so, we contribute a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities for, and limitations of, lithium mining as a contemporary development strategy in Argentina.

Presenting author: Glenn Banks (Massey University)

One of the most frequent observations regarding resource developments in the Pacific - particularly mining - is that they drive the development of 'novel inequalities' among adjacent and affected communities. That inequalities arise is itself a recognition that there are some in the communities who do well from these developments, and that social and economic stratification within the community is a corollary of mineral development. Typically labels such as 'elites', 'corrupt representatives', brokers or 'middlemen' come with the implication that this stratification can be easily understood and categorised ('elites' and others).

Drawing on long-term longitudinal fieldwork and recent comparative literature  I argue that not only are the nature, extent, causes and implications of these novel inequalities seriously under researched, but the moral tone of much of the critique carries a neo-liberal flavour that obscures local cultural frames and processes. In particular, the ways in which notions of dependency and reciprocity are conceived and deployed in Melanesian cultures and contexts produces a very different understanding of these resource-driven stratifications. Such a reconceptualization demands both methodological innovation and an interrogation of the ideological underpinnings of much of the western critique of the resource driven model of development in the region.

Presenting author: Stephen Northey (University of Technology, Sydney)

Other authors: Laura Sonter ( University of Queensland), Damien Giurco (University of Technology, Sydney)

Primary demand for metals has been rapidly increasing due to adoption of modern technology, population growth, and the gradual transition towards an electrified and decarbonised global economy. Currently, there is limited understanding of how the massive increase in metallic mining required to fuel the growing economy will translate into land-use transformations and subsequent impacts on ecosystems. Furthermore, we have poor understanding of the potential impact in individual regions due to the conceptual difficulties in predicting where future raw material extraction may occur.

In this presentation, we provide an overview of a modelling framework capable of probing how global metal demand scenarios may drive land use change for mine development and expansion. The capability of this modelling framework addresses many of the limitations of existing scenario models for long-term metal production, and allows the incorporation of regional datasets for mineral resources, geochemistry, mine development risks, water resources and biodiversity. The outputs of this will provide new insights into the potential long-term impacts of material extraction and the leverage points for improving system wide outcomes. This may facilitate improved land-use planning and greater understanding of the role circular economy and dematerialisation strategies in improving long-term sustainable development outcomes.

Presenting author: Matthew Kearnes (UNSW)

Other authors: Philippa Higgins (UNSW), Martin Andersen (UNSW), Cameron Holley (UNSW), Kirsty Howey (UNSW), Fiona Johnson (UNSW), Stuart Khan (UNSW), Greg Leslie (UNSW), Shar Molloy (UNSW)

While couched in the terminology of environmental sustainability - commonly including provisions for community participation, institutional oversight, the protection of cultural heritage and the provision of compensation and other social benefits - Australian mine governance and approval processes have become a site of intense public and political scrutiny. Often at issue is the asymmetrical relations between mining companies, local communities and NGOs coupled with the proximity between mining operators and state, federal and territory governments. In this light the establishment of an Independent Monitor (IM) with oversight over Glencore's McArthur River Mine (MRM) - a zinc, lead and silver mine situated in the remote Gulf of Carpentaria, 970 km southeast of Darwin - represents a relatively unique response to the political contestation of approval processes. Originally envisaged as a "mine funded monitoring and regulatory agency" (Young, 2015) the establishment of the IM was a condition of the approval for the transition to open cut pit mining in 2006, with the IM providing independent oversight of the environmental performance of the mine operator together with the performance of the NT Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism. In this paper we report on the findings of a temporal synthesis undertaken to critically assess the MRM IM reporting processes, focused specifically on waste rock misclassification, the acidification of mine tailings, impacts to surface and groundwater and impacts on sacred sites in the vicinity of the mine site.

On the basis of this analysis we highlight key problems with the current system of environmental management and environmental oversight of MRM; that the process for addressing IM concerns is too slow and as a result adverse environmental impacts continue for many years; that MRM is too optimistic in the assumptions that are made about the characteristics of the mine waste and the technical solutions that are available to address current problems; that MRM has not comprehensively considered impacts to all systems, particularly with regard to the ecological and cultural values of waterbodies and that insufficient baseline data is available. We conclude by making recommendations for ongoing monitoring processes concerned with MRM together with the wider role of public interest research in these contexts. 

Presenting author: Robyn Mayes (Queensland University of Technology)

Other author: Amelia Hine, Queensland University of Technology

This paper explores the socio-political entanglements of subterranean and surface spaces in post mining landscape futures. In the context of a groundswell of interest in implementing innovative post-mining landscapes we explore post-mining futures put forward in relation to a recently closed coal mine. In this case, as occurs more broadly in coal mining, these futures are complicated / co-constructed by the ever-present risk of underground spontaneous combustion-spon-com-as a result of mining practices. This paper addresses the role of spon-com as not only a physical phenomenon of the underground, but as a socio-environmental mechanism that wields considerable political power in relation to post-mining possibilities.

This paper contributes to the geopolitical discourse on the 'subterranean turn' by drawing on concepts of haunting to explore the political agency of the underground to reach above and manipulate surface politics. As such, we complicate/extend Marilu Melo Zurita's identification of a pre-existing 'sub terra nullius' that positions the subsurface as a political nothingness awaiting human intervention. This is a crucial step forward in thinking through some key concepts in relation to surface-subsurface relations, including spectral forms as part of subterranean geopolitics.  

Presenting author: Nadia Degregori (University of Melbourne)

Social scientists have for long been interested in time and recognised its importance to understand social phenomena. However, seldom have they engaged with temporal concepts in a sustained and theoretically profound way (exceptions to this are, for instance: Adam, 2000; Pierson 2004; Fent and Kojola, 2020; Bopp and Bercht, 2021). My analysis builds theoretically on Barbara Adam's (2000) concept of 'timescape' and Vivien Schmidt's (2008) discursive institutionalism (DI) framework. To ground this analysis, I draw on fieldwork conducted in 2019 as part of my doctoral research project on the closure of Barrick Gold Corporation's Pierina unit, located in Peru. The data informing this paper was collected through semi-structured interviews, casual conversations, and participant and non-participant observation over a period of 9 months in several locations across Canada, the United States of America and, mostly, Peru. Research participants included current and former Barrick staff, residents and authorities of Jangas (the district where Pierina is located), government officials, environmental NGO staff, activists for environmental justice, multilateral institutions and academics.

Drawing on this fieldwork, I argue for a reconceptualisation of the relationship between time, place and resource extraction via 'timescape'. Particularly, I suggest that how time is understood and practiced gives shape to how mining and mine closure are done, and also that the characteristics of resource extraction shape, as well, time ideas and practices that go beyond the realm of extraction. 

Key words: timescapes, time, temporality, landscape, mining, mine closure

Presenting author: Dorothea Hamilton (Justus Liebig University of Gießen )

Other author: Sina Troelenberg (Justus Liebig University of Gießen)

Extractive activity is not limited to mining, it also occurs in the form of large-scale deforestation to employ large infrastructure projects with disastrous effects on the human-environment interactions. While fracking and coal mining have been widely criticized for their obvious damage to ecosystems, the extraction of woodland seems to have been less adressed. The prospects of increased mobility and connectivity between rural areas and larger cities seemingly outweighs the transformation of landscape and the loss of nature.

We use the protest against the cutting of 300 ha of intact woodland in the so called "Dannenröder Forst" (center of Germany) as an example to explore contrasting perceptions and support mechanisms to wood extraction for a new highway. Even though the forest was cut in December 2020, we are eager to connect to other similar protest and discuss methodological approaches to understand tipping points in the social-ecological protest.