Mozambique

By Justiça Ambiental! and WoMIN - World Rainforest Movement, July 9, 2021

Industrial consumption is an intrinsic aspect of capitalist’s logic of increasing accumulation. It is also an underlying cause of the current crisis, which is being reinforced by initiatives promoting a ‘green’ label for the same production chains. This article highlights the voices of Justiça Ambiental! in Mozambique and the African ecofeminist alliance WoMIN.

This article highlights the voices of two organizations: Justiça Ambiental! (JA!) in Mozambique, which is accompanying the struggles in Cabo Delgado against the extraction of offshore and inland gas deposits; and WoMIN, an African ecofeminist alliance that works with movements of women and communities impacted by mining activities.

The world is in the midst of a serious and manifold crisis, one that brings together concerns over environmental devastation, climate chaos, loss of biological diversity, large-scale deforestation, social inequality, food insecurity, increasing poverty levels, and the concentration of power and land into fewer hands. And the list could go on and on. Industrial consumption is a vital aspect of what is driving this crisis, that is, an underlying cause. These are causes that operate on a global scale and consist of economic, political and social components that influence each other.

It is important to remark that the term industrial consumption should be understood not as the individual act of consuming, but rather as a consequence of the systemic logic of the capitalist economy of ever increasing accumulation. That means that each company, in order to make more profits, needs to grow and, in many cases, produce more and promote bigger and new markets for expansion; but to produce more, a company also needs to consume more resources (particularly energy, land and water).

Massive amounts of energy, from different sources, are distributed to industries to feed their production chains. Thousands of hectares of fertile land are turned into cash crops for industrial purposes. Mines and industrial plantations around the world siphon off and pollute enormous amounts of already scarce water sources. (1) Land is increasingly under the control of fewer individuals. Each day, enormous quantities of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and fertilizers are produced and used by tree plantation companies and other agribusiness sectors. Minerals and fossil fuels continue to be extracted and transported across the globe via long and frequently militarized corridors of pipelines, waterways and roads. Ports, airports, highways and storage units are constantly being built and expanded to facilitate faster and cheaper connections between industries and markets. And so on. This systemic logic of ever-increasing production and consumption reinforces, at the same time, models of structural oppression, racism and patriarchy.

Industrial consumption, by and large, is now being reinforced by official and corporate initiatives trying to promote a new ‘green’ label for the same economic model. The targets set by companies and governments to reduce pollution, deforestation and biodiversity loss are mostly presented next to economic packages endorsing economic growth, free trade and globalized capitalism. And what does this mean? Basically, more industrial consumption and production. Likewise, the so-called ‘green’ or ‘low carbon’ economy is being promoted alongside market-based policies that pretend to offset the pollution and destruction that is intrinsic to such an economic model. In a nutshell, the so-called ‘transition’ aims to maintain and allow the same economic model that is actually driving the crisis to continue uninterrupted.

By Andrew Casey - Working Life, February 13, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

AUSTRALIAN unions will lead a new global push against the big Australia-based multinational Rio Tinto with a focus on the mining giant’s poor behaviour in its worldwide activities.

Rio operates in 40 countries with more than 70,000 employees and is worth about $60 billion.

But the new global union campaign will put the spotlight on the bad behaviour of Rio Tinto in two key countries – Mongolia and Madagascar.

Global union campaigns are spreading.  Workers and their unions banding together to campaign as one, in a common fight against the same boss – whether they work in Sydney, Jakarta, Ulan Bator, Cape Town, Budapest, London, New York or Sao Paulo.

The aim?  To win global union agreements where multinationals:

•   accept and respect union organising;
•   maintain minimum global labour standards; and
•   agree to a fair collective agreement process.

After protests in South Africa last week mining unions expect to bring rallies to the streets of London and Melbourne in April and May this year – and onto the floor of Rio Tinto’s shareholders annual general meetings.

Australia in the badlands of resource investment

In Mongolia, Rio Tinto is the dominant mining giant – in a mineral-rich nation widely known in the resource world, only half jokingly, as Minegolia.

Minegolia is also the ‘badlands’ of resource investment.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative  reports that Rio Tinto’s big Oyu Tolgoi project will supply one third of Mongolia’s GDP by 2020. Ongoing disputes about the profit split between the government and Rio has hurt the jobs of Mongolians – thousands of whom were sacked last year.

Anger over misbehaviour of resource companies sees foreigners regularly entangled in an opaque legal system, used by populist politicians to assuage local anger.

Minegolia should be of special interest to Australians. We play a big role in foreign investment in this small nation stuck between the giants of Russia and China.

The poor behaviour of Rio Tinto, as well as other Australian resource companies, has given Australia a bad reputation, particularly among ordinary Mongolians.

Human rights organisations have in the past called on the Australian government to monitor Australian investors, to ensure they do not harm Mongolia’s local communities. As many of the world’s mining giants call Australia home, Oxfam Australia has also been a vocal critic.

Now, after a two-year lead up period to allow for corporate investment research, mapping of potential allies and the development of an effective strategy IndustriALL Global Union – representing more than 50 million workers – is ready to join the battle