We can hold finished goods such as clothes and laptops in our hands, and imagine a little of the sewing or assembling that went into their manufacture. We can also imagine what our food looked like when it was still growing in the sunlight or chewing grass in the fields. But few of us have been witness to the ways oil drilling can change a landscape, or what copper ore looks like as it’s ripped from the earth. At the origin of global supply chains, natural resource extraction is shrouded from consumers’ view. But it accounts for as much as 20 percent of the global economy.1
Raw materials such as iron, copper, and aluminum are purchased by builders and manufacturers and end up becoming our cars and homes, our can openers and cell phones, not to mention the roads, buildings, and infrastructure that make modern living possible. Energy from fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas account for nearly 85 percent of global energy consumption. Petroleum is not just a leading source of energy production—it’s also a major ingredient in plastics, synthetic fabrics, pesticides, medicines, and countless other consumer goods.
In short, taking resources out of the ground is where the modern global economy begins. It’s no surprise, therefore, that so many of our global conflicts can be traced to a struggle for control over these very resources.
In the 1500s, fleets of European ships set off for North and South America, digging mines in what would become Mexico, Central America, Bolivia, and Brazil to inlay churches and castles of the European monarchies. Native populations in the Americas were decimated and displaced.
In the following centuries the discovery of diamonds and later oil in Africa led to infiltration by foreign powers from Tunisia to South Africa. A pattern of resource exploration and colonization played out around the globe through the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into the twentieth century, with major world wars fought over control of resource-rich lands.
Today, the struggle for resource control continues to shape global politics. As was the case when European prospectors first found gold in the New World, the discovery of rich deposits of minerals or fossil fuels has rarely been good news for the people who live above them. Economists have labeled this problem the “paradox of plenty” or the “resource curse.” In many developing nations, the wealth generated by mining natural resources ends up mostly in the hands of multinational corporations that can afford pricey extraction technology, and the political elite who lease them land or are otherwise paid off. For communities living near oil wells or copper mines, social, political, environmental, and economic instability is the norm. Aside from encouraging warfare and corruption, valuable resources can distort national economies, driving up exchange rates and making it difficult for farmers, manufacturers, and other industries to compete on the global market.2
In the resource-rich region known as the Copperbelt of Zambia, workers scramble to take even the most harrowing jobs with mining operations. Though often rife with hazards, copper mining represents a unique opportunity to escape low-income agricultural work for Zambians such as Albert Mwanaumo. In the midst of China’s enormous push for resource acquisition, Chinese corporations have established large mining operations in Zambia, negotiating deals with the Zambian government that leave local mineworkers with little legal recourse to address labor disputes. In the past five years, numerous strikes and wage protests have been met with violence. Albert was one of the workers shot when the Chinese mining company he worked for opened fire on demonstrating workers in 2006. Albert was hospitalized for his injuries, and survived with bullets still embedded in his body. Desperate as he was to make a living wage and feed his family, Albert tried to return to work for the very company that nearly killed him, only to be turned away.
The largest mining and petroleum-extraction companies in the world have operations on all seven continents, and have operating budgets larger than those of most nations. These companies are so large, so ubiquitous, sometimes we hardly notice them at all. Most readers will be familiar with the names of the world’s major petroleum producers—Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum—but few of us know much about the companies that pull mineral ore from the ground.
One such company is Rio Tinto Group, a nearly 150-year-old mining conglomerate headquartered in London. Rio Tinto is a world leader in the production of aluminum, copper, diamonds, iron, and uranium, as well as a major producer of gold and coal. The company runs mining operations throughout North and South America, Australia, Africa, and the South Pacific. With assets of over $90 billion and active mining operations in dozens of countries, the company is a global economic powerhouse.
In Papua New Guinea, Rio Tinto has been accused of using its financial clout to devastating effect. As a teenager in the 1970s on the tiny Melanesian island of Bougainville, Clive Porabou took up arms after Rio Tinto’s massive copper-mining operations threatened to make his island uninhabitable. Because the mines were such a rich source of revenue for Papua New Guinea, the government brutally suppressed local resistance to them; the conflict led to a decades-long war of independence for Bougainville.
In a small community in southern California, relatively favorable labor regulations make bargaining with Rio Tinto possible. Borax miner Terri Judd and her co-workers took on the company in a major contract dispute that led to a worker lockout in 2010. Eventually Terri and her co-workers were able to negotiate for better wages and clearer grievance procedures, though for months they risked the closure of the borax mine, their town’s primary source of income.
Across the developing world, government authorities collude with extraction conglomerates to generate wealth for a few at the expense of many. In Nigeria, revenue sharing and kickbacks from Shell Oil have ensured that the Nigerian government reacts forcefully to any resistance to extraction operations. Nigeria is a top-ten oil-exporting country, generating hundreds of billions in revenues, yet poverty rates in the country have actually increased since oil extraction began fifty years ago. For Nigerians living near drilling operations such as Bere Suanu Kingston, the oil wells have disfigured the landscape, polluted the river deltas where his people have farmed and fished for centuries, and made their traditional economy untenable. Yet that same oil wealth hasn’t led to basic infrastructure investments like paved roads or electrical lines for Bere’s community.
The dangers to workers and communities presented by natural-resource extraction do not end once the materials are aboveground. Much of the processing of minerals and petrochemicals into raw materials for industry takes place in the poorest, least protected communities. Industrial pollution leads to increased risk of acute and chronic illnesses as well as land degraded for other uses, such as agriculture.
On the night of December 2, 1984, an explosion at a petrochemical-processing plant in Bhopal, India, caused a leakage of deadly gases leading to what is considered the worst industrial accident of the twentieth century. Sanjay Verma was an infant when his parents, some of his siblings, and more than three thousand other residents of Bhopal were killed instantly after exposure to the gas. Though Sanjay was saved by his sister, he’s spent a lifetime coping with a disaster that caused physical and psychological damage still felt throughout Bhopal, even if the story is no longer in the headlines. Heavy metals such as arsenic, toxic petrochemicals, and numerous carcinogens still pollute Bhopal’s groundwater decades after the initial explosion.
1 Statistic according to the World Trade Organization. This figure is made up largely of fossil fuels and mineral extraction (nonrenewable resources), but also includes renewable resource extraction as in the logging and fishing industries.
2 This phenomenon is known as “Dutch Disease.” For more information, see glossary, page 348.