Mining and Social Conflict in Latin America
An Empirical Analysis of Conflict Escalation
This article is a popularization of my master thesis in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
In an analysis of 296 mining conflicts in Latin America, I found that there is no influence of the type of material extracted on the stage of conflict escalation. The type of groups involved and the timing of mobilization, however, show effects on the escalation stage.
The growing global consumption, especially of electronic goods, increases the demand for metals and minerals among other natural resources. They are needed for the construction and maintenance of buildings, transport and communication infrastructures, machinery, and consumer goods. The extraction of these resources exerts pressure on the environment (e.g. through pollution and waste) and on society (e.g. displacement of people and destruction of livelihoods). For these reasons, mining conflicts emerge as social conflict between local populations, mining companies and the state.
In 2018, more than three activists were killed every week on average worldwide defending territories against the invasion of industries like mining, logging or agribusiness, with mining being the deadliest sector of all. Half of those killings occurred in the region of Latin America [1]. In Latin America, the mining sector experienced an increase in investments in the past decades and the occurrence of mining related conflicts increased accordingly. The Environmental Justice Atlas, a database monitored by scientists of the University of Barcelona, contains 296 cases of mining conflicts in Latin America [2] (See Figure 1).
In most mining projects, foreign companies lead the extraction of metal and mineral ores (76 %, see Figure 2). Several groups can be active in the mobilization against the projects. The groups active in most cases are neighbours/citizens/communities (224) and local EJOs (Environmental Justice Organizations) (221), indigenous groups or traditional communities (182), farmers (179), social movements (154), local government/political parties (139) and local scientists/professionals (129) (See Figure 3).
How to define escalation in mining conflicts?
In my Master thesis, I analyzed 296 cases from the Environmental Justice Atlas to find out which factors influence escalation in mining conflicts. The escalation stages are defined by the forms of mobilization (actions by protestors, see Figure 4) and the responses by the company or the state (see Figure 5). Each form of mobilization and conflict outcome/response was categorized into escalation stages that I define in the following section.
I defined four escalation stages:
A) campaigns, protests, blockades: conflicts can be of moderate intensity with street protests and media campaigns or petitions, but they can also include actions like blocking roads
B) legal action: conflicts with judicial activism, or court decisions
C) violent action: from corruption and repression to assassinations of activists
D) nationalization or internationalization: conflicts reaching (inter) national awareness
Which factors influence certain escalation stages in mining conflicts?
To find out, which factors influence certain escalation stages in mining conflicts, I applied a multinomial logistic regression. In a regression, it is assumed that one dependent (outcome) variable is determined by a number of independent (explanatory) variables. If the dependent variable is a binary variable, meaning that it takes on either the value 0 or 1 (e.g. a conflict being nationalized/internationalized, or it is not), a logit model can be used. Here, the probability is transformed into the “odds”, which indicate how often something happens relative to how often it does not happen. The log of the odds is the “logit”. A multinomial logit model performs a logistic regression on multiple nominal outcomes, meaning a regression on outcomes A, B, C, D for the escalation stage in this case. The multinomial logit model can be thought of as an extension of the binary logit model, estimating binary logits for all possible outcomes among the outcome categories. This way, it is possible to calculate the odds of each outcome given the explanatory variables.
As influencing factors, I assumed:
Type of resource: base metals and ferroalloy metals, nonferrous metals, precious metals, nonmetallic minerals, energy sources, biological resources
Operator origin: foreign company, local company, illegal miners (See Figure 2)
Mobilizing groups (See Figure 3): I divided the different groups into four categories — organization, economic actors, local people, excluded/marginalized
Timing of mobilization: preventive, during construction, for reparations
Environmental impacts: visible or potential
Socioeconomic impacts: visible or potential
Health Impacts: visible or potential
Additionally, I controlled for country-specific effects.
Results
(1) There are no significant effects for type of resource, company origin, or presence of visible/potential mining impacts on escalation stage.
(2) When excluded/marginalized groups are involved in conflicts, it is more likely that conflicts include violent responses or reach the national or international level. When local people are involved, the conflicts are less likely to include violent responses.
(3) In comparison to preventive mobilizations, mobilizations in reaction to construction or implementation and mobilizations for reparations increase the likelihood of conflicts with violent action.
An issue of Environmental Justice
The results relate conflict escalation less to firm and commodity characteristics than to socio-environmental factors. Affected communities in mining conflicts suffer from environmental, health and socioeconomic impacts, regardless of the type of resource extracted. Thus, it seems that not the type of material extracted, or the toxicity of the extraction techniques affect how resistance to mining escalates. Rather, social processes related to extraction influence the development of mining conflicts. The theory of Environmental Justice brings attention to these social processes: Groups mobilizing against mining projects demand equity in distributional justice, recognition of their rights and participation in decision-making processes [3][4]. The dependency of Latin American economies on primary material exportation requires increased investments in the industry and new territories. Their dependency reinforces the process of Accumulation by Dispossession [5]. It is mostly rural people who are affected by dispossession when it comes to making place for resource extraction (69 % of cases). Extraction practices bring physical landscape modifications and wastes as pollution, but also drive regional and global environmental change, which in the end is disproportionately affecting low income communities, especially those living in the Global South [6] [4].
Those affected most frequently by violent responses to their resistance are excluded or marginalized groups such as indigenous people, women, or ethnic minorities. In most cases, affected communities are excluded in the planning process of extraction projects, which could explain their unrest in mobilizations in reaction or for reparations once impacts have been felt. For those groups, it might not be that relevant whether it is lead, gold or lime that is extracted, even if the extraction techniques can change aspects in the mobilization. The protection of their lands and culture might be more important in their fight to gain their right to participate in decisions that most of all affect their way of living.
Limitations
The results are important to understand similar characteristics of different mining conflicts that escalate. They emphasize the importance of taking on those conflicts with specific characteristics which make them more likely to escalate in order to increase prevention and reduce impacts. The generalizability of the findings is most of all limited due to the small sample size and lack of variation in the observation of specific metals and minerals. With a larger sample size, more variation would be given to the nominal outcomes for escalation stages. The classification of escalation stages applied on the Environmental Justice Atlas data can help to improve research on intensity in mining conflicts. What remains unclear in this study is in which order escalation stages develop and if there are any effects of specific metals or minerals, price levels, level of investments, and amount of extracted material.
References
[1] Global Witness (2019). Enemies of the State: How governments and business silence land and environmental defenders. Tech. rep. Global Witness.
[2] EJAtlas (2019). Environmental Justice Atlas. www.ejatlas.org [accessed on 20.11.2019].
[3] Martínez-Alier, Joan (2003). The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
[4] Schlosberg, David (2007). Defining environmental justice: theories, movements, and nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[5] Harvey, David (2003). The New Imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press.
[6] Bridge, Gavin (2004). “CONTESTED TERRAIN: Mining and the Environment”. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 29.1, pp. 205–259.
