Works in Favor of Extraction: Labor in Land-Use Competition

Anke Schaffartzik
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Anke Schaffartzik: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), 08193 Bellaterra, Spain

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: Despite their negative social and environmental consequences, claims to land for resource extraction are dominantly asserted under conditions of land-use competition. The ‘success’ of the extractive expansion relies on very specific labor arrangements. Through dispossession and unfulfilled promises of long-term employment, an overabundance of labor (or employment gap) is generated at extractive sites. Poverty is exploited in order to sustain business as usual: environmental degradation, low average wages and high wage inequality, and abysmal working conditions. In resolving global land-use competition for sustainability transformations, it is necessary to address labor arrangements as a mechanism through which the claim to land for resource extraction is asserted.

Keywords: abundance of labor; appropriation; claims to land; dispossession; employment; resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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