Extracting For Progress

Yannick Beaudoin, Chief Scientist

By GRID-Arendal

May 24^th, 2016

The first day of UNEA-2 is over and Yannick Beaudoin reflects on one of many important events - Extractive resources, peace and sustainable development: natural resource management and mediation in conflict-affected areas.

Conversations on the extractive sector in the global forum are still largely dominated by the act of extracting (e.g. mining or oil development) and the mitigation of its negative impacts (e.g. social and environmental impacts). In current global discourses, the extractive sector is still considered a central pillar of development for the ‘global south’.

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There is a good argument to be made that under certain conditions, and in certain countries (e.g. Canada, Norway, Australia) extractivism has indeed led to a measure of progress over time. With respect to emerging countries, however, extractivism has historically been a mechanism of colonial and neocolonial appropriation. This is of course a challenging truth to admit. Fortunately, it is a truth that is starting to be critically questioned.

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At UNEA-2, the perceived benefits of conventional extractivism is being scrutinized in different ways. Though the scrutiny remains superficial for the most part, it does exemplify a growing questioning of how the extractive sectors are currently contributing to societal progress and how they may be transformed to contribute in socially enhanced, inclusive and ecologically sound ways.

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In many cases, extractive-based economies actually generate underdevelopment since proceeds from development are either controlled by a few and/or are exported to far away shores.

UNEP and other UN agencies as well as supportive countries can help identify and innovate choose different, ‘post-extractivist’ progress paths that would help avoid the ‘resource curse’ and the curse of orthodox and dogmatic development views that keep many countries and their peoples subordinated to transnational power.