By Joan Martinez-Alier and Marcel Llavero-Pasquina
Par of the Commodity Frontiers Journal, N. 7, free acces HERE.
Abstract
This article follows on previous EJAtlas work on the Vale company, Impregilo-Salini, and Total Energies, focusing on the difficulties that such companies face when confronted by socio-environmental protestors. The article draws on EJAtlas entries on the transnational metal mining company Zijin as a protagonist of socio-environmental conflicts in all continents. It looks at Zijin’s reactions and achievements while successfully mining or attempting to mine copper, gold, tin, zinc, tungsten, nickel, platinum, and lithium. Extractivist transnational companies such as Zijin have a crucial role in the geographical transfers of low-entropy energy, materials and also human labour-time imported from the Peripheries in order to sustain the metabolism of the industrialised Cores. Zijin is a top company in terms of the tonnage mined and also financially. Its socio-environmental liabilities must be assessed in an analytical framework of comparative business ecological economics and political ecology.
The project ENVJUSTICE has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 695446)