Local Protesters Are Killing Big Oil and Mining Projects Worldwide | Motherboard
BE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY~ Indigenous and Local Protesters Are Killing Big Oil and Mining Projects Worldwide
"Multinational corporations are infamous for pushing native people off
their land in order to open a new gold mine, extract oil, or otherwise
extract local resources. For decades, backlash has been thought to be
both limited and ineffectual, but new evidence suggests that protests
from local people are effective, extremely costly for the companies, and
often lead to substantive changes to or total abandonment of a project.
Researchers at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining
interviewed employees at several dozen major international corporations
who are involved with extractive activities, and found that companies
are increasingly having to deal with the social and environmental
impacts of their work, and that it’s hurting them where it hurts most:
their bottom lines.
The researchers, led by Daniel Franks, took a
look at 50 planned major extractive projects (oil drilling, new mine
construction, that sort of thing) and found that in fully half of them,
local people launched some sort of “project blockade.” In 40 percent of
the projects, someone died as a result of a physical protest, and 15 of
the projects were suspended or abandoned altogether, according to
Franks' study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
“There is a popular misconception that local
communities are powerless in the face of large corporations and
governments,” Franks said in a statement. “Our findings show that
community mobilization can be very effective at raising the costs to
companies.”
