‘Critical’ Minerals and the Politics of Refusal

Dayna Nadine Scott, Associate Professor & York Research Chair in Environmental Law & Justice in the Green Economy, York University. Header image credit: Allan Lissner, PraxisPictures. Source: Neskantaga: We Love Our Land — PraxisPictures A quiet struggle has been playing out in Ontario’s far north as a wave of Indigenous cultural and political resurgence collides … Continue reading ‘Critical’ Minerals and the Politics of Refusal

‘El aire está malo’: Living with toxics in a Chilean sacrifice zone

Efren Legaspi, Citizen of Horcón (V Region of Valparaíso, Chile)/Universidad de Sevilla. efrenlb@gmail.com ‘El aire está malo’ (‘the air feels bad´) is a common expression among people from the Quintero-Puchuncaví bay (V Region of Valparaíso, Chile), who must deal with the atmospheric emissions generated by the industrial complex Ventanas on a daily basis. In the … Continue reading ‘El aire está malo’: Living with toxics in a Chilean sacrifice zone

Mine tailings and enviromental (dis)controls in a Brazilian coastal area

Eliana S. J. Creado – Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil[1] eliana.creado@gmail.com When we started to study the possibilities of sociotechnological disasters (see Zhouri et al., 2017) in a fishery village, called Regência Augusta, at Espírito Santo State, Brasil, where Doce River meets the Atlantic Ocean, we were thinking about something related to oil or … Continue reading Mine tailings and enviromental (dis)controls in a Brazilian coastal area

Making Mercury History: Toxic Assets and Neocolonial Extraction

Ruth Goldstein- Department of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine. ruth.goldstein@uci.edu (See below for Spanish translation) “In the neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.” Exiled Uruguayan scholar Eduardo Galeano writes about toxic neocolonial alchemies in the first pages of The Open Veins of Latin America (Las Venas Abiertas … Continue reading Making Mercury History: Toxic Assets and Neocolonial Extraction

Editorial: Environmental Justice in the Global South: Uneven Geographies of Extractivism, Industrial Pollution and Toxicity

David Brown, University of Warwick The environmental justice paradigm has its origins in the United States in the 1980s, as a social movement which aimed to tackle the uneven distribution of toxic waste sites and polluting industries located in minority and socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods. Much of the early environmental justice research focused efforts on issues, … Continue reading Editorial: Environmental Justice in the Global South: Uneven Geographies of Extractivism, Industrial Pollution and Toxicity

‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel, and related Industries’: The 2019 Toxic Expertise Annual Workshop

David Brown, University of Warwick On May 30th and 31st, the fourth annual Toxic Expertise workshop took place at the Arden Conference Centre, University of Warwick. The two-day event involved contributions from 20 scholars from multiple disciplines, backgrounds and perspectives. Entitled ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel, and related Industries’, the workshop brought together scholars … Continue reading ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel, and related Industries’: The 2019 Toxic Expertise Annual Workshop

Fighting fossil fuels in South Africa, campaigners invoke the spectre of climate chaos

Patrick Bond, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg  South Africa is one of the most difficult places to combat fossil fuels, including the petrochemical complexes that regularly poison the third largest city, Durban, founded by white settlers on the east coast in the mid-19th century. The average South African emits 9 tons of … Continue reading Fighting fossil fuels in South Africa, campaigners invoke the spectre of climate chaos

The Peruvian oil company Petroperu uses fear and bribery to silence local people and prevent environmental justice

Adrian Gonzalez, University of York adrian.gonzalez.2013@live.rhul.ac.uk; Twitter: @AGonzalez05 Imagine you and your family suffering from the effects of oil pollution and feeling powerless to report it and seek justice. My research shows that this is the situation that rural Peruvian communities face today. Two villages in Peru’s Amazon region of Loreto have both been affected … Continue reading The Peruvian oil company Petroperu uses fear and bribery to silence local people and prevent environmental justice

Lago Agrio – Sour Lake: Environmental justice through art

Amelia Fiske a.fiske@tum.de  Institute for History and Ethics in Medicine, Technical University of Munich  It is mid-June 2012, and I have travelled from the Amazon to the southern highlands of Ecuador, to see Pablo Cardoso’s exposition of Lago Agrio-Sour Lake in the artist’s home city of Cuenca.[i] Lago Agrio-Sour Lake merges art and activism to … Continue reading Lago Agrio – Sour Lake: Environmental justice through art

Social impacts of oil developments in Uganda: The past, present and future scenarios

Tom Ogwang, Department of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Contact details: t.ogwang@rug.nl, or ogwangtom@gmail.com  Introduction Following the discovery of oil in 2006, production licences were issued to the Joint Venture Partners, CNOOC (2014), Total E&P Uganda (2017), and Tullow Uganda Operations (2017). The licences will run for 25 years, … Continue reading Social impacts of oil developments in Uganda: The past, present and future scenarios