Extractivism is a destructive and exploitative model of development that extracts natural resources on a massive scale, disrupts or destroys biodiversity, impacts global ecosystems and devastates the health and well-being of local communities, while creating significant economic profits for the privileged few.
“Extractivism is the unrestrained tendency of the economic system to convert the goods of nature into capital. It is the action of extracting the greatest quantity of materials in the least amount of time possible in order to convert them into raw materials and supplies that industry uses to transform into products and services that others commercialize, the society consumes and are later returned to nature in the form of contaminated waste. It is the consumer circuit that is being generated with ever increasing speed and risk.”
–Pastoral Letter, CELAM, 2015-2019 N.11
The extractive development model contributes to poverty, inequality, ecological destruction, and human rights violations. It is by definition unsustainable and non-renewable. (NGO Mining Working Group, Advocacy Brief 2015)
Extractive Industries consist of corporations and multinational corporations that seek to profit from extracting raw materials of oil, natural gas, coal, and minerals. We have come to understand that extractivism also includes commercial over-fishing, deforestation for agricultural commodities and taking of land for tourism. These companies often align with national and local governments while engaging in a deeply exploitative model of development. Extractive industries set up their operations primarily in or near communities inhabited by the economically poor and ethnic and racial minorities. Their practices forcibly displace people from their homes and expose nearby local populations that cannot relocate away from the harmful effects of the extraction processes. In addition, extractive industries rely on infrastructure development such as building access roads and installing pipelines, which exposes environmentally sensitive areas to further damage while threatening the health of traditional indigenous communities. Deforestation, the irreparable destruction of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity result from extractive industries.
Corporate mining (as opposed to traditional small-scale artisan mining) is one type of extractive industry. It uses a destructive process to extract profitable coal and minerals from the deep recesses of the Earth in the most cost-effective and efficient manner. This process involves toxic chemicals, which produce contaminated waste and runoff, poisoning land and water. Large-scale mining operations export profitable metals such as gold, silver and copper as well as minerals such as lithium and tantalum, which are used in electronic devices and electric vehicle batteries. Diamonds, another profitable mineral extracted through the corporate mining process, are typically exported to manufacture heavy industrial equipment (e.g., cutting, grinding and drilling machinery).
The Effects of Extractivism
Whether extractive industries are engaged in fossil fuel extraction or mineral mining, they produce serious social, health and environmental consequences. The extraction process most severely impacts indigenous groups, racial and ethnic minorities, and economically challenged communities. Too often, their lands become "sacrifice zones" to the interests of extractive industries and consumers who benefit from the extracted products. Rivers, lakes and other water sources are seized and diverted, forcing local populations to change how and where they access healthy water.
Most communities find themselves resisting or facing forced eviction from their homes. Other communities get economically trapped in poisoned environments. Workers become victims of exploitation; violence against women rises; and human trafficking emerges. Those who oppose extractive industries often are treated as criminals and face violence from companies and governments; a reported 199 people worldwide were killed in 2022 for defending their land and the environment. Local communities experience a host of "mysterious" health issues—the ill effects of contaminated air, water and land. Cancers, skin conditions and lung diseases occur at higher rates.
Depending on the process used, the extraction of fossil fuels and minerals releases tons of carcinogenic toxins into the air, such as benzene and hydrogen sulfide, while poisoning water aquifers, groundwater, and other water resources with such toxics as arsenic and chromium. The land is also poisoned by both waste production and the chemical processes used during extraction. Land scarred by extractive industries becomes an uninhabitable wasteland. Open-pit mining causes land degradation, erosion, the eradication of localized biodiversity with wide-reaching effects on regional and global biodiversity, as well as the contamination of local water resources such as rivers, lakes, and groundwater/aquifers.
The "clean" energy of hydroelectric power has serious implications for local biodiversity and regional and global ecosystems. Rivers seized for hydroelectric dams are severely altered or disappear altogether, and the ecosystems that were dependent on the flow of rivers deteriorate and degrade. The artificial lakes formed by the dam process become susceptible to higher levels of evaporation and hotter temperatures. They block the natural migration of fish populations such as salmon. Artificial lakes stagnate with warmer temperatures, especially in summer droughts, and in warmer climates produce toxic algae blooms that kill fish, mammals, and birds and are harmful to human health. In addition, artificial lakes tend to have poor quality, even harmful, water instead of the healthy water of natural rivers.
Humans are not the only victims of extractivism, as diverse ecosystems are eradicated or irreparably altered. Healthy water resources become invisible channels of toxic waters. Mammals, fishes, and birds die in large numbers from extractive processes. Native plant species dependent on water access, healthy air, and local wildlife dwindle and diminish. The effects of extraction processes affect more than local biodiversity. They impact an ever-widening network of regional and global ecosystems. For example, the burning of huge swaths of the Amazon Forest has tremendous repercussions as this ecosystem has long been considered the planet's lungs. Razing these forests for purposes of planting monocrops and opening its lands for mineral extraction has and will continue to damage the process that keeps ecosystems around the Earth healthy and viable.
Examples of Extractive Industries
- Companies that extract fossil fuels, including oil, gas and coal. The extraction processes for fossil fuels include hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as "fracking"), the open-pit mining of coal and bitumen (commonly known as "tar sands"), and well-pumping (e.g., pumpjacks) that include a flaring process to burn off unwanted natural gas.
- Companies that extract minerals and other raw materials through large-scale mining operations such as gold, copper, lithium, quartz (silicon dioxide), diamonds and coal. Governments are scrambling for minerals needed for electric vehicles and other renewable energy technology, creating tension between the desire to transition away from fossil fuels to address the climate crisis and concerns about the impacts of mining on local communities. The extraction processes for minerals typically use a cost-efficient process called open-pit mining.
- Mega-projects such as hydroelectric dams. Dams extract energy by channeling and controlling the flow of rivers. Hydro-energy is often considered a "cleaner" energy alternative because it does not release carbon emissions. This kind of energy benefits companies and populations in cities and not indigenous peoples living along the rivers.
Increasingly, the commodification of water and large-scale monocrop plantations are being classified within the extractive development model and as extractivism
- Companies that extract public water resources to commodify water. The commodification of water occurs when companies purchase rights to public water resources. Water is then extracted and processed as "bottled water." These plants can have the right to control, seize and/or divert critical water sources from local communities and ecosystems. The bottling process uses up to 2,000 times more energy than the process to produce tap water. The process of producing plastic bottles requires millions of barrels of oil and water. And the tons of water used in the manufacturing process becomes toxic and unavailable for future use.
- Large-scale monocrop plantations. Monocrops replace biologically diverse ecosystems, including forests that act as the lungs for our planet, by razing the land to plant a single kind of export crop such as palm oil and soybeans. Monocrops reduce organic matter in soil and deplete the soil of natural nutrients. The soil must be supplemented with chemical fertilizers (containing nitrates). The maintenance of monocrops often includes the use of pesticides. During wet seasons, the excessive runoff of nitrates and pesticides leads to contaminated water sources.
Beneficiaries of the Extractive Development Model
The extractive development model, which is driven primarily by multinational and transnational corporations, builds on the ideas of development, progress and profit at the expense of traditional, interdependent and mutually beneficial systems of exchange. The beneficiaries of the extractive development model include:
- Private corporations and/or government-owned or government-controlled corporations;
- Government officials;
- Wealthy advocates and stockholders;
- High-level managers;
- The recipients of the processed goods.
This model benefits relatively few in the name of progress, development and profit and yet disfranchises whole communities, who are left with toxic land, air and water. It exports extracted raw materials, goods and energy (oil, gas, minerals, palm oil, water, etc.) for profit. At the same time, it exacts a high social, political, cultural and environmental cost on local communities, who lose their lands, homes, well-being and access to healthy rivers and sustainable ecosystems.
More Definitions of Extractivism
Extractive Colonialism
For indigenous communities, the extractive development model is a continuation of colonial oppression. Over centuries, communities have been subjected to repeated invasions and violence (e.g., land seizures, genocide), suppressions (e.g., language, spiritualities and culture), and oppression by those who seek profits and an accumulation of wealth. This colonial mentality, lifestyle and values still exerts force on indigenous communities, and it drives the dominating ideas of development and progress as envisioned by the wealthy. When, in the name of progress, states fail to protect and respect the right of indigenous communities, they deny them the right to Free Prior and Informed Consent, which, in effect, denies them the right to make decisions about their land. This right of self-determination is routinely denied to indigenous communities. As a result, they suffer the ill effects of labor exploitation; land dispossession; human-rights violations; and ecological, cultural, and spiritual devastation.
At the same time, those who benefit most from the extractive development model live remotely or far from extraction sites. Progress and development become the rhetorical tools and economic promises that extractors use to manipulate community members into the extraction process, rationalize environmental devastation, and downplay the real effects of extraction on the communities.
Neo-Extractive Model
The neo-extractive model refers to either the nationalization of extractive industries or the development of national extractive industries. Governments seize control of privately owned extractive industries and/or pave the way for further development of extractive industries within their own country to boost their own economies. These emerging economies are driven by foreign demand and by the growth of middle classes in parts of the global South, which are pushing the demand for energy, raw materials and goods.
On the one hand, countries resisting or freeing themselves from foreign colonization claim extractive industries for their own national interests. Still, on the other hand, they are subjected to the grip of global capitalism via financial institutions, especially the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). These financial powerhouses further escalate the drive for extractive industries, especially in the global South. In addition, fueled by foreign investments, infrastructure continues to expose once inaccessible and often environmentally fragile areas to extractive industries. An example is the relatively recent highway construction, which has opened the Amazon Basin for further extractive processes.
Post Extractivism
As communities worldwide and their allies resist the harmful effects of extractive industries, they open up opportunities for imagining alternatives. There is an ever-widening global call to return to more environmentally friendly small-scale extraction processes that encourage the use of local materials, benefit local communities, safeguard ecosystems and produce less of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to the climate emergency. This model of extractivism is driven by local and regional interests and demands (as opposed to global corporate interests). It involves community participation and social control/ownership within the framework of a diversified economy.
Instead of being dependent on the extraction of raw materials, this model gives priority to land-based livelihoods, local foods systems, and types of employment that serve to address issues of poverty. This model does value the limited use of oil, the use of minerals or other non-renewable resources essential to human well-being, but also values cultural beliefs and practices and the protection of land, water, air and other natural goods that benefit the whole community.
Source: This glossary has been revised and adapted from “Extractivism, Neo-Extractivism and Post-Extractivism,” pgs. 6-12 in Women, Gender and Extractivism in Africa: A Collection of Papers, Background Note and Exploration of Key Concepts – An IANRA Initiative. Accessed online at https://womin.africa/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/background-note.pdf (January 29, 2021).