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Unsustainable extraction of natural resources has come under increasing criticism since the 2000s, as global commodity prices have risen, and new waves of land grabbing and investing have put resource politics in the limelight of global development. The concept of extractivism has been gaining scholarly and policy relevance and is becoming more widely used as an organizing concept to explore a range of unsustainable practices. The study of extractivism and its impacts extends to the deeper historical and structural features that underlie unsustainable practices, including economic models and ideologies. The concept of extractivism is useful for highlighting the deeper and systemic roots of unsustainability. The phenomena surrounding resistance to extractivism are highly useful for understanding the often-overlooked struggles of local communities. It is through such local struggles that communities may pursue more sustainable land-use practices, and more just socio-ecological conditions. This resistance often involves a deep critique and rethinking of the ways of understanding and conceptualizing nature, through which alternatives to extractivism, as a basis for sustainability, can be developed. ; Peer reviewed

This month's Review of the Month by John Bellamy Foster illuminates the idea of extractivism, a key concept in understanding our current planetary crisis. The accelerated extraction of Earth's resources since the mid-twentieth century, Foster notes, threatens not only the natural world, but the means of life for the entire planet.

"This book investigates the many ways in which industrial capitalist agriculture has penetrated and transformed contemporary Latin America. Using a range of case studies from across the region, the book considers the socio-economic, political and ecological implications of the agro-industrial model when compared to alternative, less intensive models based on cooperative, smallholder or peasant agriculture and with agroecological farming methods. The concept of agrarian extractivism challenges the idea that industrial agriculture is bringing lasting local benefits, instead arguing that it is characterized by a few multinational corporations controlling both ends of the value chain, and extracting natural and surplus value, whilst exploiting labour and contaminating the ecological material base. At a time when most influential development institutions are promoting the agro-industrial model for combatting rural poverty and feeding the world, this book provides a nuanced assessment of the social, economic and environmental implications of intensification. Highlighting the importance of adopting a critical engagement with the dominant model of agricultural development, this book provides a timely contribution to debates regarding agrarian and environmental change and rural transformations. It will be of interest to scholars across critical development studies, rural studies, environmental studies, and Latin American studies."

"This introductory book on the one hand adopts an interdisciplinary and critical perspective, incorporating contributions from economics, politics, ecology, and more. On the other hand it is an exercise in the politics among humans and with the environment. Eduardo Gudnyas explores negative local impacts such as ecological and health degradation or violence, along with spillover effects that redefines democracy and justice. Significantly, presented for the first time in English is a comprehensive overview of the theoretical innovations currently being discussed in the South, such as the distinction between appropriation and production modes and a redefinition of surplus to include social and economic features or new understandings on conflict dynamics. Furthermore, Gudynas discusses the Latin American peculiarities of extractivisms produced both by conservative and new-left governments, making clear that it has very deep roots in culture and ideologies, and offers solutions for the future."--

Abstract | The challenge of interdisciplinary intellectual and strategic work in the extractive industries is particularly acute at the interface of research and social activism. Numerous social movements which are dedicated to sustainability fail to 'connect the dots' between their campaigns and broader political-economic and political-ecological visions. This is becoming a critical challenge in Africa, where the extreme damage done by mining and fossil fuels has generated impressive resistance.However, the one obvious place to link these critiques from African activists was the Alternative Mining Indaba in Cape Town in February 2015, and a survey of narratives at that event leads to pessimism about interdisciplinary politics. The potential for much greater impact and deeper critiques of unsustainable extractivism lies in greater attention to combining social reproduction and production (as do eco-feminists), and to tackling social, economic, political and ecological factors with a more explicit structuralist critique and practical toolkit. Areas such as energy, economics and climate are ripe for linkages. One reason for optimism is a climate justice declaration made by leading civil society activists in Maputo in April 2015.

"The Rise of Green Extractivism tackles the understudied interconnections between extractivism and climate-smart policies and their implications for rural livelihoods, both theoretically and empirically. This new variation of extractivism arises as an innovative way in which capitalist production and accumulation unfolds and constitutes a convenient analytical tool in today's focus on reducing or compensating for emissions. The book consolidates "extractivism" as a theoretical framework that fully challenges contemporary capitalism's dynamics, particularly in the current global environmental crisis. It explores new dynamics of accumulation, resource grabbing and legitimation strategies. These are approached as mechanisms of appropriation of resources that produce social, economic and ecological implications to be considered in the current agrarian question debates. By analysing the implementation and outcomes of green policies, the author shows that new strategies of capital accumulation arise through the creation of new commodities, markets, vehicles of accumulation and ways of legitimising capital accumulation. A new and "greener" frontier of accumulation is constituted. These emerging processes of commodification bring along new waves of expropriation that further cut into the necessary consumption of rural populations. Insights from empirical cases explored in this book show how this new wave of green investments and projects, directly linked to climate change concerns, are further expropriating livelihoods and fuelling capital accumulation in the name of the fight against climate change. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of political economy, globalisation, development studies, economics, political ecology, agrarian studies and environmental studies. It will also inform and provide policymakers with evidence-based insights into their decision-making process when designing and implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, especially in developing countries"--

"This book explores the impact of resource extraction and the dynamics of great powers competing for natural resources in the Caribbean. The book analyses labour-capital relations between China, the United States, the European Union, and Russia in the Caribbean, as competition increases with the arrival of non-traditional sources of foreign investments in infrastructure from the East. Chapters assess these dynamics through varying historical and current forms of worker, community, and organisation resistance in the Caribbean's extractive industries from the 1970s to the present. In doing so, the book critically analyses the interplay of extractive capital with labour unions, community organisations, management and the state, particularly regarding the struggle for higher wages, improved working conditions, and the broader issues of extractive capitalism and underdevelopment, dispossession, social exclusion, and environmental degradation. The first book on extractivism and labour in the Caribbean and a major contribution to critical development studies literature, it will appeal to policymakers as well as students and scholars in the fields of Development Studies, Development Economics, Sociology, Politics, and International Relations"--

Since commercial production of oil and gas started in Ghana over a decade ago, the salt sector which has historically been dominated by artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has seen renewed corporate interest. Aided by the state's preference for large-scale mining (LSM) over ASM since the days of the Economic Reform Program, several tens of thousands of acres of areas previously operated by artisanal and small-scale miners for salt mining have been leased to large-scale salt mining companies. Situated in political settlement and infrapolitics theoretical frameworks, with a focus on two key salt producing sites (Songor and Keta lagoons) and using qualitative research methods through ethnographic engagement with affected regions, the study explores the consequences of this new extractivism in the salt sector to assess the long-term consequences of forced evictions, as well as role of civil society in the retention or otherwise of the now dominant LSM in the salt sector.