The Golden Peace

A new book is, actually, a guideline to reshape environmental conflicts and to sustain a non-violent life.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

SANTA CRUZ, California – Latin America seems to be the deadliest region in the world for defending the environment. Since 2012, Global Witness, "specifically ... has identified Brazil, Honduras, and Peru as places where this issue concentrates," University of California in Santa Cruz (UCSC)'s Michael Wilson Becerril states in his doctoral thesis, now a book titled Resisting Extractivism, released through Vanderbilt University Press.

 

It took Wilson almost one year and a half of more than 250 interviews with mining executives and managers, community leaders, local people, journalists, academics, and anyone who had something to say, especially about four paradigmatic social conflicts caused by extractive industries in Northern Peru—mining, to be concrete.

 

"One-third of the world’s mining investment concentrates in Latin America,” he says. "In Peru, minerals remarkably represent about 65% of the country’s export income and have guaranteed its standing as one of the world’s fastest growing economies." Gold exports alone represented 18% of Peru's total income between 1995 and 2015, according to media and industry reports.

 

"Perhaps this is why the most common and deadliest conflicts in Peru today, by far, are related to mining," Wilson affirms. "At least 270 people were killed and 4,614 people were injured in Peru’s social conflicts between 2006 and 2016," he quotes.

 

Just in the region of Piura, the Río Blanco Conflict (formerly known as Majáz) caused seven deaths between 2004 and 2009. And Zijin, a Chinese company which acquired the rights of London-based Monterrico Metals, announced it is ready to come back to the deposit, located close to Peru’s border with Ecuador.

 

Defensoría del Pueblo, the Peru Ombudsperson’s Office, counted 200 conflicts in average between 2008 and 2017, two-thirds of which were linked to extractive industries, pitting large corporations on one side against mostly rural communities on the other. In practical terms, the government has fallen in support of the corporations, arguing that their activities are necessary to grow the economy and the nation.

 

"The literature on resource conflicts tends to focus on violence as a possible outcome of weak institutions, but violent coercion is only one way in which different actors participate in a broader process of political negotiation over natural resource management that involves institutions, collective actions, digital media, under-the-table acts, and distant allies," Wilson reflects.

 

From a Peruvian perspective, misunderstandings between the government, corporations, and communities are capable of highlighting and exacerbating unfair conditions, causing a feedback loop that feeds resentments again and again, and nurses the real or perceived need to fight.

 

"Contentious politics take place on physical, legal, and discursive levels," Wilson explains. "Peru’s resource conflicts have become a ‘conceptual epicenter’—they invoke and transverse political, economic, and cultural issues such as violence, corruption, justice, gender, race, class, development, sustainability, and democracy. "

 

Is there a magic recipe?

The researcher revealed how some Peruvian friends warned him that conflicts are not easy to solve, especially remotely. Wilson agrees, and he thinks some locally led and hands-on ways to resolve conflicts could be ushered, and that is where his study could be useful.

 

"By examining patterns in the trajectories and outcomes of conflicts, this dissertation has the potential to make a lasting impact, not only in academic literature but also for practitioners seeking pathways to dialogue and peace," he promises. "It is especially intended to assist company agents, civil society and activists, state actors, and international supporters.”

 

And the magical recipe seems to focus, at least in the thesis, on the following key ingredients:

• Activism is useful when it draws media attention and helps organizers in reframing debates.
• Institutions have to be more robust in channelling conflicts reliably, if they want to prevent them from becoming violent.
• Finally, outsiders and solidarity groups are useful, but their intervention does not have a singular effect on the propensity of movements to escalate or win.

 

“This research reflects a serious underlying intention: to assist policy makers and state officials in fomenting democratic governance and preventing violent conflict, to assist companies in protecting their investment through understanding the adverse effects of short-term conflict avoidance strategies, and to assist communities in fomenting their human and economic development in ways that are both democratic and sustainable," Wilson underlines.

 

In that sense, the state should be the key actor to manage a pacific solution of any conflict, playing an impartial role. But this kind of attitude is not enough. What is needed is a commitment to human rights, to local-led decisions about their own territories, a serious effort to listen, a willingness to cede to community demands, a non-repressive strategy that addresses locals respectfully, meaningful community participation (and not only selected representatives), and communication (especially media) that is invested in dialogue and understanding, rather than on condemning and criminalizing protesters.

 

"Creating peaceful and sustainable development requires building understandings, relationships, and institutions that can channel conflict nonviolently, credibly, democratically, and inclusively," Wilson notes.

 

The photographs featured on this entry are a courtesy of Michael Wilson Becerril. The reproduction is not allowed except by his authorization.