IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v70y2010i2p219-227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A glocal environmental movement against gold mining: Pascua-Lama in Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Urkidi, Leire

Abstract

Gold mining projects are spreading in Latin America due to increasing international interest in gold and to the legal reforms that attract mining investment to the region. As metal mining has critical social and environmental impacts, conflicts related to it are also soaring. The conflict around the Pascua-Lama mining project in Chile is a paradigmatic example of these conflicts. Starting with the defence of some mountain glaciers being endangered by the mine, local protests have been internationalized. It has become one of the most important Chilean environmental conflicts of recent years. In order to characterise the movement, the article analyses its social bases or participants, the values and arguments articulated and the strategies developed. This agency analysis shows that it is not a case of environmentalism of the poor or of post-materialist environmentalism, but a glocal environmental movement. The movement has not achieved to stop the project due to structural limitations; but it has been able to problematise and politicise the concept of development in the affected Chilean valley.

Suggested Citation

  • Urkidi, Leire, 2010. "A glocal environmental movement against gold mining: Pascua-Lama in Chile," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 219-227, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:70:y:2010:i:2:p:219-227
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(10)00194-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mudd, Gavin M., 2007. "Global trends in gold mining: Towards quantifying environmental and resource sustainability," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-2), pages 42-56.
    2. Stern, David I., 1995. "The contribution of the mining sector to sustainability in developing countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 53-63, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cem Iskender Aydin & Begum Ozkaynak & Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos & Taylan Yenilmez, 2017. "Network effects in environmental justice struggles: An investigation of conflicts between mining companies and civil society organizations from a network perspective," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(7), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Etxano, Iker & Villalba-Eguiluz, Unai, 2021. "Twenty-five years of social multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE) in the search for sustainability: Analysis of case studies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    3. Jacobo Ramirez, 2021. "Contentious Dynamics Within the Social Turbulence of Environmental (In)justice Surrounding Wind Energy Farms in Oaxaca, Mexico," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 387-404, March.
    4. Garmendia, Eneko & Urkidi, Leire & Arto, Iñaki & Barcena, Iñaki & Bermejo, Roberto & Hoyos, David & Lago, Rosa, 2016. "Tracing the impacts of a northern open economy on the global environment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 169-181.
    5. Karolien van Teijlingen & Barbara Hogenboom, 2016. "Debating Alternative Development at the Mining Frontier: Buen Vivir and the Conflict around El Mirador Mine in Ecuador," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 32(4), pages 382-420, December.
    6. Geenen, Sara, 2019. "Gold and godfathers: Local content, politics, and capitalism in extractive industries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Haslam, Paul Alexander & Ary Tanimoune, Nasser, 2016. "The Determinants of Social Conflict in the Latin American Mining Sector: New Evidence with Quantitative Data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 401-419.
    8. Saleem H. Ali, 2018. "Extracting at the borders: Negotiating political and ecological geographies of movement in mineral frontiers," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(5), pages 481-490, September.
    9. Odell, Scott D. & Bebbington, Anthony, 2023. "Mine ownership and community relations: Comparing hydrosocial dynamics of public and private companies in Chile," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    10. Figge, Frank & Givry, Philippe & Canning, Louise & Franklin-Johnson, Elizabeth & Thorpe, Andrea, 2017. "Eco-efficiency of Virgin Resources: A Measure at the Interface Between Micro and Macro Levels," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 12-21.
    11. Paul Alexander Haslam, 2020. "States and Firms Co-producing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Developing World," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 36(3), pages 270-289, September.
    12. Nathaly M. Rivera, 2020. "Is Mining an Environmental Disamenity? Evidence from Resource Extraction Site Openings," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(3), pages 485-528, March.
    13. Schoderer, Mirja & Ott, Marlen, 2022. "Contested water- and miningscapes – Explaining the high intensity of water and mining conflicts in a meta-study," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    14. Odell, Scott D., 2021. "Hydrosocial displacements: Sources and impacts of collaboration as a response to water conflict near three Chilean mines," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    15. Haslam, Paul Alexander, 2021. "The micro-politics of corporate responsibility: How companies shape protest in communities affected by mining," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    16. Schaffartzik, Anke & Mayer, Andreas & Eisenmenger, Nina & Krausmann, Fridolin, 2016. "Global patterns of metal extractivism, 1950–2010: Providing the bones for the industrial society's skeleton," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 101-110.
    17. Joseph Horrocks-Taylor, 2018. "Dirty Water, Muddied Politics: Hybridisation of Local and National Opposition to Kumtor Mine, Kyrgyzstan," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-18, April.
    18. Delina, Laurence L., 2021. "Topographies of coal mining dissent: Power, politics, and protests in southern Philippines," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    19. Edwards, Eric C. & Cristi, Oscar & Edwards, Gonzalo & Libecap, Gary D., 2018. "An illiquid market in the desert: estimating the cost of water trade restrictions in northern Chile," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(6), pages 615-634, December.
    20. Vela-Almeida, Diana & Kolinjivadi, Vijay & Kosoy, Nicolas, 2018. "The building of mining discourses and the politics of scale in Ecuador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 188-198.
    21. Abdul–Wadood Moomen & Ashraf Dewan, 2017. "Probing the Perspectives of Stakeholder Engagement and Resistance Against Large‐Scale Surface Mining in Developing Countries," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(2), pages 85-95, March.
    22. Figge, Frank & Thorpe, Andrea Stevenson, 2019. "The symbiotic rebound effect in the circular economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 61-69.
    23. Eerola, Toni, 2022. "Corporate conduct, commodity and place: Ongoing mining and mineral exploration disputes in Finland and their implications for the social license to operate," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Khalil Nimer & Muath Abdelqader & Cemil Kuzey & Ali Uyar, 2024. "Emission targeting and carbon emissions: The moderating effect of female directors," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 3480-3504, May.
    2. Krausmann, Fridolin & Gingrich, Simone & Eisenmenger, Nina & Erb, Karl-Heinz & Haberl, Helmut & Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, 2009. "Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 2696-2705, August.
    3. Magambo, Isaiah & Dikgang, Johane & Gelo, Dambala & Tregenna, Fiona, 2021. "Environmental and Technical Efficiency in Large Gold Mines in Developing Countries," MPRA Paper 108068, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Guiomar Calvo & Gavin Mudd & Alicia Valero & Antonio Valero, 2016. "Decreasing Ore Grades in Global Metallic Mining: A Theoretical Issue or a Global Reality?," Resources, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-14, November.
    5. Ki‐Hoon Lee, 2017. "Does Size Matter? Evaluating Corporate Environmental Disclosure in the Australian Mining and Metal Industry: A Combined Approach of Quantity and Quality Measurement," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 209-223, February.
    6. Allan Trench & Dirk Baur & Sam Ulrich & John Paul Sykes, 2024. "Gold Production and the Global Energy Transition—A Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-13, July.
    7. Sinha, Suranjan & Bhattacharya, Rabindra N. & Banerjee, Rajasree, 2007. "Surface iron ore mining in eastern India and local level sustainability," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-2), pages 57-68.
    8. Henning Wigger & Till Zimmermann & Christian Pade, 2015. "Broadening our view on nanomaterials: highlighting potentials to contribute to a sustainable materials management in preliminary assessments," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 110-128, March.
    9. Gholami, Alireza & Tokac, Batur & Zhang, Qian, 2024. "Knowledge synthesis on the mine life cycle and the mining value chain to address climate change," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    10. Prince Amoah & Gabriel Eweje, 2021. "Impact mitigation or ecological restoration? Examining the environmental sustainability practices of multinational mining companies," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 551-565, January.
    11. Baur, Dirk G. & Karlsen, Jonathan R. & Smales, Lee A. & Trench, Allan, 2024. "Digging deeper - Is bitcoin digital gold? A mining perspective," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    12. Swart, Pilar & Dewulf, Jo, 2013. "Quantifying the impacts of primary metal resource use in life cycle assessment based on recent mining data," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 180-187.
    13. Yu, Jing & Zhang, Zhongjun & Zhou, Yifan, 2008. "The sustainability of China's major mining cities," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 12-22, March.
    14. Michael Tost & Benjamin Bayer & Michael Hitch & Stephan Lutter & Peter Moser & Susanne Feiel, 2018. "Metal Mining’s Environmental Pressures: A Review and Updated Estimates on CO 2 Emissions, Water Use, and Land Requirements," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-14, August.
    15. Sinan Erzurumlu, S. & Erzurumlu, Yaman O., 2015. "Sustainable mining development with community using design thinking and multi-criteria decision analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(P1), pages 6-14.
    16. Schoenberger, Erica, 2016. "Environmentally sustainable mining: The case of tailings storage facilities," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 119-128.
    17. Bach, Vanessa & Finogenova, Natalia & Berger, Markus & Winter, Lisa & Finkbeiner, Matthias, 2017. "Enhancing the assessment of critical resource use at the country level with the SCARCE method – Case study of Germany," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 283-299.
    18. Magambo, Isaiah Hubert & Dikgang, Johane & Gelo, Dambala & Tregenna, Fiona, 2021. "Dynamic Technical and Environmental Efficiency Performance of Large Gold Mines in Developing Countries," EconStor Preprints 235859, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    19. Yellishetty, Mohan & Ranjith, P.G. & Tharumarajah, A., 2010. "Iron ore and steel production trends and material flows in the world: Is this really sustainable?," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 54(12), pages 1084-1094.
    20. Archana Sinha & Bibhas Chandra & Arvind Kumar Mishra & Shubham Goswami, 2023. "An Assessment on Quality of Life and Happiness Indices of Project Affected People in Indian Coalfields," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-24, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:70:y:2010:i:2:p:219-227. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.