Book Review: The Rise of Green Extractivism & The Face You Were Afraid to See
Natacha Bruna. 2023. The Rise of Green Extractivism: Extractivism, Rural Livelihoods and Accumulation in a Climate-Smart World. Routledge. & Amit Bhaduri. 2009. The Face You Were Afraid to See: Essays on the Indian Economy. Penguin Books.
Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD|
Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU
At the outset, it is useful to thickly underline, following the Friends of the Earth International, that “Understanding extractivism means understanding that nearly anything can be extracted: mineral resources, labour, data, and cultures. It is a take, take, take logic, not one of giving. It is a logic of violence that includes abuses to life, health, land, food, and water; displacement of people; violations of Indigenous Peoples rights; gender-based violence and discrimination against women; criminalisation of workers and human rights and environmental defenders; and the use of military and security forces to protect natural resources and corporate interests.”
The books taken up for review here are in tune with the above understanding. and Bhaduri discusses, inter alia, extractivism in India with his dedicated research on land acquisition for a more than a decade, and Bruna discusses green extractivism as her well-done doctoral work “aiming to investigate the implications of extractivism based on resource grabbing and its intersections with climate change mitigations and adaptation policies in Mozambique.”
Extractivism since colonial times to the present means extraction of raw materials such as metals, minerals, oil and gas, as well as water, fish and forest products, new forms of energy such as hydroelectricity and solar energy, and industrial forms of agriculture, which often involve land and water grabbing by the extractive industries. It is also discussed as ‘urban extractivism’ in terms of the fashion industry extracting cheap labour and human rights violations that are erased by a marketing machine to ‘just do it’ and consume; as ‘data extractivism’ in terms of development of information technologies where data effectively becomes a raw material that can be extracted, commercialised, refined, processed, and transformed into other commodities with added value, like the billion-dollar profits of Amazon, Google and Facebook; as ‘financial extractivism’ by way of gentrification of our cities where rich investors buy social housing without a care for the building or the community it may serve; and as ‘green extractivism’ in the global transition to renewable energy, in which we are witnessing corporate and private interests putting pressure on countries in both the Global South and Global North to satisfy the global economy’s demand for minerals and raw materials for ‘green’ growth and the ‘green’ transition.
Bruna’s book is a valuable addition to the increasing critique of and resistance to extractive projects branded ‘green’. These projects constitute a system of extractive development that harnesses climate change and other socioecological crises as profit-generating and re-branding opportunities. There are diverse manifestations of it, well documented, across the Global North and South, with serious socioecological issues and violence related to them. They are showcased as ‘green’, ‘environmental’, ‘clean’, ‘decarbonized’ and ‘sustainable’ even as they have actually expanded capitalist relations, land control and extractivism to intensify modernist development and wealth accumulation in the interests of a super-rich minority. Activist scholars have exposed these processes as green pretensions advancing neocolonial and capitalist land control for extraction at an alarming rate. The noises of Green New Deals are rapidly colonizing collective imaginations with ‘lower-carbon’ lifestyles, thereby advancing faulty climate change mitigation/adaptation strategies. They are creating new and intensifying existing inequalities, injustices and a multiplicity of harms across the world via land grabbing, displacement, dispossession, ecological destruction, repression, violence against women, femicide and elite profiteering. The colonially shaped North-South relations are reproduced along with various forms of internal colonization leading to more and more ecocide and homicide.
Bhaduri has discussed corporate-led extractive model of development in India as “Developmental Terrorism” practised by the state in the name of development (industrializing and modernizing the economy) with the sole purpose of enriching the big business by crushing the democratic aspirations of the people at large. None of the political parties has really opposed this, and endeavoured to bring economic democracy closer to political democracy for the majority of Indians. Unfortunately, the middle class has supported this terrorism and has been afraid to see the “Other India”, not the “Shining India”.
Both the books along with numerous similar writings in various parts of the world indicate that we are not definitively moving into an expansive visionary world beyond extractivism, a world of post extractivist circular economies and circular societies that protect cultural and biological diversity, where there are national and local systems of care, job guarantee or access to universal basic income, food sovereignty is prioritised, information and communication modes are restored and rooted in society, and there is less production and consumption towards degrowth. All conversations about lower-carbon technologies and greening are pointless until capitalist growth imperatives are stopped. This demands the rethinking and reorganisation of planetary existence to live in harmony with the land and our habitats. For example, I am not really standing for green when I purchase an electric car. The construction of an electric vehicle involves more than six times the volume of minerals than a conventional car. Therefore, the energy transition will provoke an unseen growth in demand for minerals and metals such as copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which are needed to sustain the shift towards a low-carbon world economy This green-washing trend has already begun at the cost of the rural livelihoods. In effect, socioecological and climate crises are cleverly used to reinforce existing or generate new markets and profit-generation opportunities; and claims of ecological sustainability and carbon neutrality are cleverly mobilized to legitimize and rationalise bloody extraction.
Both the books call for an end to ecological destruction conflicts and land grabbing including green grabbing—a task which is, of course, easier said than done. But Bhaduri is the only one pragmatically bold economist in India who is very clear about a sensible alternative to begin with. And that is why his very lucid book is ever-green and needs to be read again and again by people of India, despite being ignored by the mainstream economic pedagogy as “a powerful ideology in the service of the ruling classes.”
Bhaduri’s portrayal of the alternative, in a nutshell, goes like this: “The alternative way of industrializing would involve the poor and the illiterate, who constitute the skilled and semi-skilled labour force, operating in their traditional environment. Through a productive full-employment programme, they could become a propelling force for the creation and distribution of wealth. Existing livelihoods would not be destroyed in this process without people’s consent and generating local employment would ensure that its beneficiaries would have not just a habitat but also an alternative livelihood. In the present Indian context, this specifically means that industry should come up on vacant and uncultivable land while the productivity of cultivable land should be increased. Decentralized, efficient and participatory management of land, water and tree-cover with human power can achieve this. Alternative industrialization begins by giving agriculture the attention it deserves. We have to start by extending the employment guarantee scheme everywhere, to urban and rural areas, at a minimum, uniform wage for 300 days a year, available on demand. With work opportunities conceived by the communities through innovative plans aimed at fulfilling basic needs within a short radius of the village centres, this alternative industrialization would be characterized by labour-intensive technology, small-scale production by the masses and maximum direct linkage between consumer and producer. The large projects, enterprises, and heavy industries considered essential would need the consent of the community, compliance with social and environmental rules, justice for both labourers and investors involved in improving the productivity of land and economic viability of community-oriented projects without seeking maximum profit. The guidelines would be environmental sustainability, equity and justice, monitored by wider institutions and agencies that would work with unit tiers like the present Panchayati Raj, with suitable amendments to draw units on the basis of ecosystem boundaries. Neither the centre nor the states have been enthusiastic about giving full decision-making autonomy or even a limited financial autonomy to local governments. The legal first step is to actualise the 73rd Amendment with the help of Article 243 of the Constitution. The legal framework exists, but mainstream political parties would rather see our countryside in crisis than give up control to the people. Only irresistible people’s movements will make it a reality. The cost of such an employment programme works out to approximately 6-7 percent of the GDP. We must afford this as the highest priority, increasing the central government budget deficit as and when necessary, by doing away with the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. The funds would be held in a separate account in nationalized banks, and local governments or panchayats would be provided credit lines without interference from central and state governments.
The mechanism for supervision would be a system of checks and balances between the banks and the panchayats with a compatible incentive scheme. This way of industrialization would produce a large range of goods and services for the local market, created through purchasing power generated locally in the hands of the poor. This is the route through which the poor, rejected by today’s industrialization, would enter the larger economy with dignity as both producers and consumers. The composition of our national output would change as we put the internal market, constituting many local economies and populated by the poor, at stage centre. The composition of output produced in this manner at the local level would be much less intensive in its use of natural resources. No big dams or ruthless exploitation of natural resources would be needed. To reduce the pace of mad urbanization that sucks enormous natural resources for a rich handful by dispossessing the overwhelming multitudes of the poor is a task only this alternative can achieve.”
The Indian masses, and their counterparts in the rest of the world too, thus, need economists such as Amit Bhaduri and ecologists such as Madhav Gadgil and biologists such as the Uruguayan Eduardo Gudynas Silinskas, ecofeminists such as Vandana Shiva and think tanks such as the International Catalan Institute for Peace to work in tandem for a new beginning. Bhaduri’s book should be translated into all Indian languages.
References
https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/6131/
