The knock on environmental protests is that they oftentimes only appear to delay the inevitable — be it forcing a coal-fired power plant to shut down for just one day or forcing the construction of a pipeline to be rerouted. But what if those delays really were more than symbolic victories? What if they amounted to something really powerful that actually imposed serious costs on industry? Well, that’s exactly what a new study says.
According to researchers from the University of Queensland, Harvard Kennedy School and Clark University, conflict has become a major contributor to the cost of projects in the mining, oil and gas industries. The researchers looked at 50 planned major extractive projects and found that local communities launched some sort of “project blockade” in half of them, leading to 15 percent of the projects being suspended or abandoned.
“There is a popular misconception that local communities are powerless in the face of large corporations and governments,” said Daniel Franks, Deputy Director of UQ’s Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining. “Our findings show that community mobilization can be very effective at raising the costs to companies.”
The research, which is based on confidential interviews with 45 high-level industry officials, found that delays caused by conflict with communities can result in the loss of $20 million per week for mining projects valued between $3 billion to $5 billion. One company’s costs reached $6 billion over two years — more than 10 percent of its annual operating profits. In general, though, protests were most successful when they took place early on, during the planning and construction phases of a project.
“This [is] in part because the project is smaller in scale and therefore easier to contest,” Franks told Vice’s Motherboard, “but also because at later stages of the project cycle, capital has been sunk into an area, changes become costly to retrofit, revenues begin to be generated, and there are increased incentives for companies and governments to ‘defend’ their projects.”
The lesson for companies, according to the researchers, is to consider the benefits of building relationships with communities.
“If companies are interested in securing their profits,” Franks explained in an interview with Rabble, “then they need to have high environmental and social standards and collaborate with communities.”
While greater control over these projects may be enough for some communities, many others are saying “no” altogether to extraction. And the cost of such resistance should not be minimized either. In 40 percent of the projects researched in this study, at least one person died as a result of physical protest. But knowing that these deaths are not in vain, that they are actually part of successful movements, casts new light on resistance efforts.
Take, for instance, the recent crackdown by Guatamalan police forces on the peaceful protesters who have been blocking the entrance to El Tambor gold mine for over two years. According to the blog MiMundo.org, police violently evicted the locals so that heavy machinery could be introduced to the industrial site. What might normally be considered a tragic scene — women singing and praying until they were faced with tear gas, and others were injured and detained — can now be seen in the broader context of imposing serious costs to the mining industry, costs that could eventually kill the project.
Thanks, Everyone for all you do! We all need to take back our land from our corporate predators and oppressors.
Now if I may: for me, Utah is the most beautiful 85, 000 square miles on Earth. It has magnificent mountains that rival anything in the United States. It has vast deserts. Utah has dinosaurs! Lots of dinosaurs! For many, Utah’s canyon country even eclipses the Grand Canyon in beauty, variety, spaciousness, and grandeur–if you can imagine that.
Now, Utah has innumerable virtues but it possesses (surprise!) a dark side: it has long been cursed with highly conservative, regressive “leadership.” Utah’s politicians seem to have little concern about nature, resource management, and future generations. This highly materialistic and conservative culture celebrates the almighty dollar, above all. That’s the “state.”
Now at the national level, we all must encourage the Obama Administration to preserve the Greater Canyonlands as a National Monument. The Obama Administration must also call off the Tar Sands raping of the Tavaputs Plateau.
I can tell you that as a life-long Democrat, the Democratic Party will get few (if any) votes and cash from me during this election year. The Dems have taken our progressive vote for granted for many years. How can we all persuade the DNC to not be the RNC? Let’s work on this!
Delaying the onset of fracking through nonviolent direct action is what helped stop the spread of nuclear power in the US. There has not been a new nuclear power plant ordered for over thirty years. The cost of building, planning for environmental and safety safeguards, no plan or place to store the waste with the development of renewable alternatives and the reduction of power demands, conservation and energy efficiencies has all led to its demise. Germany will shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. We can do the same with fracking and fossil fuel burning. Fracking is too dangerous, too expensive and totally unnecessary for our energy needs. The fracking industry is using the same lies that the nuclear industry used when attacking our demand that renewable energy can provide for our energy needs. Contrary to their propaganda then and now, we will not “starve nor freeze in the dark.” And transitioning to a renewable energy economy is not wrecking Germany’s economy. To find the means to do this with nonviolent direct action campaigns, read the following including the work of George Lakey and the late Bill Moyer (not the PBS guy) at: George Lakey’s 5 Stage Strategic Framework:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lakeylivrev.html
Bill Moyers MAP Model:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/moyermap.html
Gene Sharps: Politics of Nonviolent Action
http://aeinstein.org/
The Global Nonviolence Database:
http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/
I think we now say that we are prepared to move into the digital age of nonviolent direct action and out of what the late David Dillinger once said in the 1960′ and 1970’s that “we were in the Edison and Marconi stages of nonviolent direct action. The Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring have shown us new protypes. “The revolution will not be televised”, Gil Scott Heron once wrote and sang. But it will be Tweeted, texted, videostreamed and blogged.