Gavin Bridge

Mapping the Bonanza: Geographies of Mining Investment in an Era of Neoliberal Reform

Geographic analyses of how national policies of economic liberalization influence global patterns of economic activity often draw their conclusions from studies of the paradigmatic sectors of manufacturing and, to a lesser extent, services. There is, by contrast, relatively little work examining how neoliberal policy reforms in the developing world may be driving changes in the geography of primary sector (i.e., extractive) activities at the global scale. This article presents and analyzes new data on direct investment in the international mining industry. It reports methods and results from a research project to systematically map and evaluate changes in the commodity mix and geographical spread of mining-related investment in the world economy since 1990. It confirms and quantifies what was hitherto anecdotal evidence of a geographic shift in investment during the 1990s away from mature targets toward a small number of “rising stars” in the developing world, following the adoption in many countries of neoliberal economic policies from the mid-1980s onward. However, the findings challenge conventional interpretations of this shift as an investment “bonanza” in the periphery and highlight how recent investment trends are highly specific in geographical scope, concentrated within a few commodities, and how the allocation of investment between established and emerging targets is variable over both time and space.

Sticks and Stones: Environmental Narratives and Discursive Regulation in the Forestry and Mining Sectors

As visibly extractive industries reliant on the material and semiotic commodification of nature, forestry and mining have come to be popularly viewed as “environmental pariahs.” Yet forestry and mining continue to be successfully profitable enterprises despite a significant increase in environmental awareness and activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. To understand the relative stability and growth of these sectors in the face of overt contradictions arising from their use of the environment, this article revisits the work of regulation theorists who asked similar questions about the persistence and maintenance of capitalism in general. Two case studies are presented–forestry in British Columbia and gold mining in California and Nevada–which demonstrate how the political economy of forestry and mining is subject to contradictions arising out of the technological and organizational mechanisms through which nature is appropriated during production. Analysis of the case studies shows that the regulation of these contradictions is increasingly achieved through the deployment and cooptation of sustainability narratives. The case studies therefore juxtapose the recent proliferation of sustainability narratives within the forestry and mining sectors with the sectors’ persistent challenge to concepts of sustainable development.

The social regulation of resource access and environmental impact: production, nature and contradiction in the US copper industry

Abstract The ecological processes underpinning commodity production have been largely overlooked by theories of social regulation and governance. Conventional applications of regulation theory, for example, often reduce the complex interactions between the environment and processes of accumulation to an homogenous surface on which the institutions of social regulation are inscribed. By contrast, this paper illustrates how the metabolism of production – the flows of raw materials, energy, and wastes central to the production of commodities from the natural environment – can provoke its own set of contradictions for particular industrial sectors. These contradictions can emerge to challenge accumulation in specific industrial sectors when existing practices and institutions fail to ensure continued access to resources and/or to effectively regulate the impacts of production on the environment. This paper describes how historical patterns of using nature in one primary commodity sector – copper mining and processing – contributed to declining profitability in this industry during the early 1980s. The process of copper production is analyzed to identify a series of underlying ‘ecological contradictions’ that have the potential to impact profitability. The expression of these contradictions is then examined in the specific context of the US Southwest during the 1980s, with particular attention paid to conflicts over the environmental impacts of mining and the accessibility of land to mining firms. The emergence of social conflict over land access and the environment is interpreted in terms of the historical specificity – and obsolescence – of the framework of institutions, legislation and customary relations between corporations, the state and activist groups that had formerly contained and regulated these contradictions.

Resource Triumphalism: Postindustrial Narratives of Primary Commodity Production

It is now commonplace to assert that the contemporary discursive landscape is strewn with an abundance of environmental narratives. Yet these stories about nature seldom speak of the material geographies that link practices of postindustrial consumption to often-distant spaces of commodity supply. A postscarcity narrative in which the availability of natural resources no longer poses a limiting factor on economic growth, therefore, characterizes the current period. In this paper I examine how these narratives of ‘resource triumphalism’ construct the nature of commodities and the places that supply them. Using a range of sources, I illustrate how extractive spaces are constructed through a discursive dialectic which simultaneously erases socioecological histories and reinscribes space in the image of the commodity. The paper advances the claim that, despite their apparent marginality in narratives of postindustrialism, primary commodity-supply zones play a key role within broader narratives about modernity and social life. I draw on Hetheringtons reworking of the concept of heterotopia to argue that commodity-supply zones be considered contemporary ‘badlands’, marginal spaces in and through which broader processes of sociospatial ordering are worked out. By examining the geographical imaginaries associated with mineral extraction, I demonstrate how contemporary discourses of commodity-supply space facilitate the material practices through which such ordering occurs.

Grounding globalization: the prospects and perils of linking economic processes of globalization to environmental outcomes

Abstract This article advances the argument that economic geography has prioritized the understanding of processes over the evaluation of outcomes. Contemporary research on globalization—like earlier studies of industrial restructuring, deindustrialization, and “localities”—tends to address outcomes only in so far as they shed light on underlying processes. Yet the earlier generation of research also produced a number of instructive methodological and epistemological critiques that now frame current attempts to understand the socioenvironmental effects of globalization. Three of these challenges are outlined in the context of research on the environmental effects of foreign direct investment: linking processes with outcomes; bridging across scales; and demonstrating the “difference that difference makes.” The article contrasts the limited engagement by economic geographers with globalization’s environmental effects with a growing body of work outside geography. Preliminary links between this well-developed, external literature and proximate bodies of geographic scholarship are put forth to demonstrate how hybrid approaches may best be able to capture the ways in which processes of economic globalization drive environmental outcomes. The article concludes with a worked example of ongoing research into the environmental impacts of foreign direct investment to illustrate how such an approach may engage globalization “on the ground.”

Resource geographies II The resource-state nexus

This progress report surveys recent work in human geography on the resource-state nexus. This choice reflects several contemporary trends in the governance of land, water and energy resources that, taken together, suggest a renewed significance of the state: examples include resource ‘scrambles’ and land and water ‘grabs’, and calls for state intervention in the face of perceived food, energy and resource shortages. The report examines research themes and conceptual frameworks emerging at the resource-state nexus within human geography, and is organized into two sections. The first highlights research that unpacks processes of resource-making and state-making through close attention to scientific and political practices. The second section considers research examining the state’s role as a significant ‘extra-economic’ actor, enabling resource mobilization and capital accumulation. The report concludes with a brief summary.

Mercury Contamination of Alluvial Sediments within the Essequibo and Mazaruni River Basins, Guyana

Small- and medium-scale mining operations in Guyana have increased significantly since the late 1980s. The majority of these gold mining operations utilize mercury (Hg) amalgamation methods in the recovery process, raising the question as to the significance of Hg inputs to the environment from mining activities. In March and April, 2001, 168 samples were collected from floodplain, sand bar, and channel bed deposits along a 350 km reach of the Mazaruni River and a 160 km reach of the Essequibo River. Distinct trends in the geochemical data suggest that much of the Hg found in the alluvial deposits is related to anthropogenic sources, including (1) Hg concentrations in floodplain, channel bed and sand bar deposits locally exceed background values defined by ferralitic soils; (2) core data reveal that Hg concentrations within floodplain deposits have increased in recent years; and (3) high Hg concentrations along the channels can be attributed to the influx of material from tributaries affected by mining operations, or to mining activities along the rivers. Recent investigations in Amazonia have argued that Hg from amalgamation mining represents a small portion of the total Hg load to riverine systems, the majority coming from the erosion of Hg enriched upland soils within deforested terrain. Geochemical data from the Essequibo and Mazaruni Rivers suggest that Hg from mining may be a more significant source in Guyana where large-scale deforestation is limited. However, it is unclear whether the increased Hg represents the direct input associated with the amalgamation process, or Hg associated with the erosion of soils and sediments that results from activities that accompany mining.

Beyond greening: new dialogue and new approaches for developing sustainability

The Sixth International Conference of the Greening of Industry Network, Developing Sustainability: New Dialogue, New Approaches, was held in Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 16–19 November 1997. This special edition of Business Strategy and the Environment attempts to capture the dialogue from the conference by presenting seven edited papers from the conference, a review of the conferences objectives and achievements from the perspective of the conference organizers, and this introductory essay. Each of the seven papers takes a different cut at theoretical, empirical and methodological questions around the focus of the conference. Together they represent the diversity and creativity of approach that is central to the conferences objective of establishing new dialogue on processes of greening and progress towards sustainable development. The organization of the conference and significant conference highlights, such as the incorporation of CERES into the organization of the conference, and the expansion of the Network into Asia, are reviewed by the conference organizers in this special edition (Fatkin and Fischer, 1998). This essay discusses new dialogues and new approaches to industrial transformation emerging from Santa Barbara.

Making a global gas market : territoriality and production networks in liquefied natural gas

abstract Energy markets are an important contemporary site of economic globalization. In this article we use a global production network (GPN) approach to examine the evolutionary dynamics of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector and its role in an emerging global market for natural gas. We extend recent work in the relational economic geography literature on the organizational practices by which production networks are assembled and sustained over time and space; and we address a significantly underdeveloped aspect of GPN research by demonstrating the implications of these practices for the territoriality of GPNs. The article introduces LNG as a techno-material reconfiguration of natural gas that enables it to be moved and sold beyond the continental limits of pipelines. We briefly outline the evolving scale and geographic scope of LNG trade, and introduce the network of firms, extraeconomic actors, and intermediaries through which LNG production, distribution, and marketing are coordinated. Our analysis shows how LNG is evolving from a relatively simple floating pipeline model of point-to-point, binational flows orchestrated by producing and consuming companies and governed by long-term contracts, to a more geographic and organizationally complex production network that is constitutive of an emergent global gas market. Empirically the article provides the first systematic analysis within economic geography of the globalization of the LNG sector and its influence on global gas markets, demonstrating the potential of GPN (and related frameworks) to contribute meaningful analysis of the contemporary political economy of energy. Conceptually the article pushes research on GPN to realize more fully its potential as an analysis of network territoriality by examining how the spatial configuration of GPNs emerges from the organizational structures and coordinating strategies of firms, extraeconomic actors and intermediaries; and by recognizing how network territoriality is constitutive of markets rather than merely responsive to them.

Beyond the social construction of nature: rethinking political economies of the environment

The papers in this issue stem from a substantial thematic series of papers presented at the Annual Association of American Geographers Conference held in New York City in February 2001. Our intent in convening these sessions was to re-examine political–economic approaches to environmental questions in light of social constructivist approaches developed within the social sciences over the last decade. By drawing attention to the social origins of the ‘natural’ and demonstrating the historical fluidity of ideas about nature and environment, social constructivism has highlighted the ways in which particular constructions of nature—at once both material and discursive—can do political work. Yet until recently, political–economic approaches have tended either to overlook the question of nature or to treat it unproblematically—see Fitzsimmons (1989) & Smith (1984) for early notable exceptions. Our aim, then, was to encourage papers that simultaneously drew on the constructivist critique but also moved beyond it to examine how ideas about nature and the environment become incorporated into the real frameworks of policy and planning in ways that have material effects. In so doing, we hoped to help drive forward an emerging interest in ‘taking nature seriously’ in accounts of political–economic transition (see also Bridge & Jonas, 2002). The four papers selected for this special issue are reworked contributions from the conference addressing the sub-theme of ‘Governance, economy and nature’. All four papers address issues of planning, regulation and governance, exploring linkages and tensions between economic and environmental forms of planning at different spatial scales and in contexts that range from post-industrial Hamburg, industrialization in the Tennessee Valley in the 1930s, contemporary regional development planning by England’s local authorities, and the emergence of post-productivist landscapes in the valleys of South Wales. In each case, the authors of the papers seek to identify how environmental issues are framed and incorporated into the planning process, and to understand the particular politics to which these constructions of nature give rise. The four papers adopt and explore different theoretical approaches towards the common theme of governance, economy and nature. This, we believe, is a particular strength of the collection since, as Gibbs et al. assert, research in the areas of environmental policy and sustainable development has largely remained under-theorized in comparison with an increasingly rich body of work on regulation and governance. Two papers explicitly adopt regulationist accounts and interpret environmental policy and planning frameworks as socially contested institutions that shape the rate and form of capital accumulation. In their study of contemporary Hamburg, Bauriedl