Amidst the popularizations of eco-crisis in movie and television media in the past two decades, the internationally vaunted eco-fiction film “Don’t Look Up” (2021) stands as a recent, explicit near-term allegory for political-economic culpabilities, technocratic infatuations, and social-ecological consequences of anthropogenic climate change. How might this contemporary, culturally acclaimed allegory help to illuminate some of the textures of environmental violence as proposed by Marcantonio and Fuentes; and how might notions of climate coloniality challenge the allegorical presentation of climate crisis in Don’t Look Up? Drawing on ecocinemacriticism, literary ecocriticism, contemporary Indigenous studies, and social theory, this chapter assesses the presumptive Whiteness of vaunted mainstream ecocinema as a form of cultural narrative; the generally myopic coloniality of apocalypse narratives; and linkages to other forms of spectacle in an international polity dependent on neoliberal political economics and structures of extraction. If these dynamics are interwoven with legacies of colonialism and racism, what are the implications for media representations of environmental violence?

The introduction takes the reader into the history of oil in the Ecuadorean Amazon in the twentieth century. Zooming out from the testimony of a former oil worker, a historical overview sheds light on the dynamics of oil extraction in the region by national and international companies. This history is analyzed from the interdisciplinary perspective of the Environmental Humanities, combining archival and oral sources, sociological and anthropological concepts, and a mixed-methods approach. From this vantage point, the changes in the rainforest brought by the oil industry can be narrated as a fundamental metamorphosis of the landscape, its ecology, and its inhabitants. Drawing from Amazonian and European notions of metamorphosis, four dimensions of this process are particularly relevant for the historical analysis: conceptual, material, toxic, and social. The metamorphosis as metaphor offers a perspective on historical change in the Amazon as a process driven by the conflictive interaction between the rainforest ecosystem and the narrative and material manifestations of the oil industry.

In this chapter, I compare national debates around the definition of the collective subject that should be granted access to a new participatory mechanism for development and resource governance called Free Prior and Informed Consent/Consultation (FPIC). This is an interesting case, I argue, around which to discuss a type of recognition conflict that I call participation conflict. These conflicts result from the implementation of means of recognition (through categorisation exercises) in contexts where opportunities to control new strategic resources are pursued by traditionally marginalised social actors. Regulated by ILO Convention 169 and included in most Latin American legal frameworks since the 1990s, in recent years, FPIC has suddenly catalysed the attention of both governments and social movements. FPIC aims at achieving more effective bottom-up participation by establishing an obligation to consult – or obtain the consent of – indigenous peoples before large development projects and legal reforms that would affect them can proceed. Given its relevance for natural resource governance, interest in FPIC initiatives has been growing, particularly in the framework of political economy models that increasingly rely on commodity exploitation to sustain economic growth and welfare investments. The Andean region has been pioneering the implementation of FPIC worldwide. Here is where the most advanced legislation and institutionalisation processes in regard to FPIC have developed over the past decade. However, these advances have not occurred without tensions. Heated disputes on the definition of the collective subject that should be granted this new right have led to very different outcomes in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. Some crucial knots in this discussion have revolved around how to operationalise the distinction between ethnic and non-ethnic communities and, notably, whether or not peasant communities should be entitled to FPIC. This represents, therefore, a telling example of an ethnic boundary-making exercise (a classic ‘means of recognition’) with important implications for groups’ self-perception and mutual relationships. The different answers offered by the three countries to the subject question not only have important implications in terms of the inclusion and exclusion of considerable parts of the rural population from new mechanisms of participatory governance; they also reflect the models of citizenship and development that these countries are committed to building through the redefinition of identity articulation/disarticulation processes and delimitation of social boundaries.1

Resource extraction has grown to global significance as part of a particular version of industrial modernity. This modernity emerged with the industrial revolution, accelerated dramatically during the twentieth century, and is now changing rapidly. The fossil fuel-driven world as we know it is questioned and in many parts of the world already taking a downturn. Resource extraction modernity came with a particular kind of societies, based on values linked to gender-, ethnic- and social hierarchy and with largely unsustainable practices. As this modernity is challenged, political and cultural tensions have grown around extractive industries that go far beyond those we saw in the past captured in concepts such as preservation and conservation. To make sense of these comprehensive changes the chapter unites two key concepts: the Anthropocene and the Planetary Mine that together shape the new extractivist paradigm. The Anthropocene speaks to the profound geo-anthropological transformation of the human-earth relationship. The Planetary Mine brings out the interconnected global character of contemporary resource extractivism of which Arctic mining is a significant part.

Chapter 8 argues that any steps or program can be effective only if they adopt a justice lens and reject proposed technical and market fixes that threaten to perpetuate the same inequities, corporate agendas, and extractivist mentality that created the climate and ecological crisis in the first place.

Extractivism has been predominant in the Arctic since whaling and sealing campaigns began in the sixteenth century, followed by mining and drilling for oil and gas. In this chapter we present some of the main features of this ‘extractivist history’ of the circumpolar region. We organize this development along a set of themes. First, we explore the extractive frame of mind in Western thought and how it has continued to shape visions of the region. Second, we explore the material and social impacts of historical extractivism. Third, we use the theoretical lens of colonialism and decolonialism to understand the social and political relations, especially with aboriginal populations. Fourth, we examine the, often fraught, recent and contemporary debates around contemporary and future extractivism and its implications for the Arctic. The historical overview serves the purpose of providing a legible pattern from what is also a range of diverse and rich variations. A key finding is that extractivism is a lasting legacy and a path dependency of the region. At the same time resource extraction has many problematic sides that the seeking of new Arctic futures will have to deal with.

The first Amazon rubber boom (1870–1912) represents a defining event in the history of the Amazon and a pivotal moment in the development of modern industry. This chapter traces, from a transnational perspective, some of the most significant Brazilian and Spanish American literary responses to the cultural, political, territorial, and environmental transformations brought on by rubber extraction in turn-of-the-century Amazonia. It also examines how the literature of the period reinterpreted major rubber-related international incidents, such as the Acre territorial dispute (1899–1903), the Putumayo scandal (1907–1914), and the rubber regime known as “La Funera” (1910–1921). The chapter situates the works of Euclides da Cunha (1866–1909), Alberto Rangel (1871–1945), José Eustasio Rivera (1888–1928), and César Uribe Piedrahita (1897–1951) within regional narrative traditions and in connection with later literary and cultural production related to the Amazon rubber boom.

This chapter shows that the seeds of a global failure to live relationally with the Earth are embedded in colonialism, which is the source of state-powered international law. State-powered international law must be decolonised, and this chapter points to ways this could be done through examining the ‘old ways’ of Aboriginal Peoples of the continent now known as Australia. Those ‘old ways’ sustained and constituted laws for thousands of years and remain our future; always was, always will be, even though colonialism has challenged Aboriginal obligations and relationships to the natural world. Aboriginal laws respected the authority of hundreds of different nations and continue to respect those old ways and authorities in the face of neoliberalism and ongoing colonialism. Colonial Australia denied our existence, yet attempted to demolish our languages and cultures and assimilate the consequences. This chapter interrogates how states could respect and acknowledge all Peoples as having an inherent right to self-determination, and as a consequence, all Peoples as having a right to collectively care for country and benefit from a relationship to land which sustains future generations.

This chapter shows how, from Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly to Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum, American horror erupts out of the violence performed on indigenous people by white settler society, on people and land on the slavery plantation, and on citizens in the Global South and Middle East during period when the United States has extended and protected American global hegemony. By reading American colonialism and neo-imperialism as central to American extractivist capitalism, the chapter reveals how American horror also narrates the devastating violence done to the planet itself. The chapter observes that much American horror produced by and for white settler society represents settler violence against people and land as justified and regenerative, but it also discusses a number of less reactionary texts that make plain the horrific violence inherent in the capitalist colonial project.

Chapter 13 focuses on sustainable development in contemporary Latin America and, more specifically, on the impact of neoextractivism–the exploitation of primary products–on the quality of life of the communities where this economic activity is based. It shows that, although neoextractivism has led to short-term economic growth, it has also created environmental damage that has been especially detrimental to indigenous peoples and the rural poor. It explores protests against neoextractivism through case studies of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, and shows that affected communities had some success in ameliorating the negative consequences of neoextractivism only in Bolivia. Finally, to explain the impact of protests it highlights several factors. Democratic institutions and decentralization create incentives for greater accountability at the local level. Moreover, in some cases, the mobilizational strength and political coordination of local communities leads to collective action. However, the impact of protests is reduced most critically because leaders across the political spectrum have been committed to neoextractivism and have co-opted the mechanism of prior consultation.

This dark parable of the Anthropocene describes the terrible assault of the Anthropoi on the sacred Living Mountain and on those who once flourished in its shadow. The Anthropoi with their armies and their savants who justify their actions enter the Valley, and desecration follows. They force the Valley-dwellers to aid their assault on their revered Living Mountain. Worse, the Anthropoi's insatiable desire eventually infects the Valley-dwellers themselves until they too willingly join the assault, climbing, digging, and exploiting the heights, even as its snows melt, crevasses widen, and avalanches destroy the Valley floor. The lone exception is one old woman who can still feel the Mountain's heartbeat with the soles of her feet and knows no one can master it. "The Ascent of the Anthropoi" lays bare modernity's consoling lie that growth is the key to justice and that instrumental knowledge trumps the sensuous acceptance of life within the constraints of Earth's bounty.

This chapter examines the nineteenth-century black radical David Walker’s preoccupation with resource extraction and the history of New World slavery in his 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Walker’s account of the history of colonization and enslavement as a matrix of dehumanization, violence, resource extraction, and capital accumulation highlights the importance of understanding the long history of extraction as more than just an effect and driver of capitalist appropriation, expropriation, and accumulation, and brings into focus the global and racialized dimensions of that history, which disrupt the standard teleology of capitalism’s appropriation of resources.