Environmental justice: resources; confrontation of cultures

Summary

How are we to understand the impact of the oil and gas industry? At different times the possession of natural-resource wealth has been widely regarded either as a blessing or a curse on national development. However, looking critically and comparatively across varied socio-economic experiences, stretching from Northern Europe to the Caucasus, and from the Gulf of Guinea to Latin America, presents challenges to catch-all concepts applied to oil-producing economies. The apparent distance and discursive disjuncture between the troubled production and the smooth consumption of energy appears to be ideologically loaded.

Britain's transformation under Margaret Thatcher into a supposedly post-industrial society, orientated towards consumer sovereignty, was paid for with revenues from the North Sea oil industry, which remains out of sight and out of mind for many British citizens. Drawing on extensive in-depth research, the authors of Flammable Societies, who come from three continents, reflecting the geographical and cultural scope of their collective study, call into fundamental question the political and scientific basis of international policy aimed at resource governance. Standard Western models of economic governance, institution building and national sovereignty fail to comprehend the problematic overlapping of different conceptions of sovereignty. At the heart of that problem the editors, McNeish and Logan, decipher the reality of ‘resource sovereignties’ which tend to expose failed social contracts and demand various radical alternatives.

In the global North, the commoditization of creativity and knowledge under the banner of a creative economy is presented as the post-industrial answer to dependency on labour and natural resources. Not only does this promise a more stable future, but an economy focused on intellectual property is more environmentally friendly, so it is suggested. These fixes offered by the supposedly post-industrial model are bluffs; development as witnessed in Latin American energy politics and governance remains hindered by a global division of labour and nature that puts the capacity for educational and technological advancement in private hands. Coming from Latin America, Europe and North America, the authors of Contested Powers: The Politics of Energy and Development in Latin America reveal a multi-layered understanding of sovereignty, arguing that it holds the key to understanding the relationship between energy resources, socio-economic development and politics. This critical focus is crucial to wider debates on education, development, and sustainability.