Extractive Geographies and Their Impact on Marginalized Communities

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Extractive Geographies

Alina Reyes

GEOG 334 – Political Ecology and the Environment

Dr. Michael Hargrove

21 July 2025

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Extractive Geographies and Their Impact on Marginalized Communities

The annotated bibliography investigates extractive geographies through environmental, social, and political aspects during resource extraction in the Global South. Resource extraction creates physical and conditional spaces known as extractive geographies. Numerous scholars present extraction processes as economically advantageous, yet such activities commonly lead to environmental destruction, forced population moves, and worsening socioeconomic gaps. The rising scale of extraction operations worldwide generates immense changes to local power systems and regional ecological and community health conditions.

The analytic study of extractive geographies holds strong personal significance due to its application in modern environmental conflicts and social equality situations. I experienced the direct and indirect consequences of extractive activities on local people throughout my life in an area containing extractive industries and marginalized populations. The economic contribution of these industries leads to wealth inequality between populations and drives increased social conflict and destructive effects on our ecosystems. I direct this research toward uncovering critical facets of resource extraction that usually go unnoticed, especially in Indigenous communities and rural citizens, in addition to the social dimensions of the urban.

The subject holds significant importance to the course because it investigates crucial ideas stemming from neoliberalism, environmental justice, and resource extraction operations’ economic framework. As part of our educational journey, we explored how extractive businesses use worldwide capital streams under economic development priorities competing with social care and environmental protection. The investigation shares connections with the course material that analyzes the combination of capitalism, colonialism, and ecological destruction and their negative impact on Global South ecosystems.

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Justification for the Topic

Extractive geographies have gained substantial scholarly attention due to worldwide natural resource demand growth, particularly within accelerating developing areas in the past decades. Multiple industrial extraction methods, including mining, oil extraction, logging, and agricultural practices, create disastrous environmental ailments and consequences for the human community. The extraction process creates substantial environmental damage while bypassing the significant social and cultural impacts. Primary resources situated in the Global South primarily affect marginalized communities and Indigenous peoples because extractive procedures force them to experience land confiscation and population relocation alongside negative health results.

Global inequalities continue to increase through resource extraction because of the developing discussions about “climate necropolitics” and “environmental justice.” This bibliography uses geographic extraction analysis to understand how resource extraction simultaneously modifies natural environments and political and cultural domains. Research fills a needed function for addressing historical and present-day exploitation of marginalized communities with solutions to develop better development frameworks for people and ecological protection.

Such subject matter remains vital because it addresses present global sustainability discussions. International concern about climate change requires an urgent understanding of extractive industries because their environmental destruction happens in the name of development and economic progress. My selected research examines extractivist’s relationship with global and local governance systems, which reveals how power divides across these spaces and how sustainability efforts tend to miss the core issues of injustice.

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Selection and Review of Materials

To collect materials for the annotated bibliography, I targeted various resources that explore extractive geographies from multiple viewpoints. My research included academic works that studied the political, economic, and social aspects of extraction processes and studies that analyzed extractive industries’ health risks and environmental impacts. Given the extensive nature of my research topic, I chose study materials that span four academic areas: geography, sociology, ecological science, and political economy. My research involved selecting materials that analyze modern extractive businesses and their specific implementations throughout Namibian uranium mining and Angolan oil operations.

Numerous sources demonstrate how extractive activities harm marginalized communities to a greater extent. The articles analyze how Indigenous peoples and rural communities from the Global South experience all the adverse social and environmental effects, yet obtain limited economic advantages from extractive projects. According to most scholarly research, extractivism demonstrates multiple connections to neoliberal governance systems. Studies show that capital mobility from multinational companies and neoliberalism public policies establish exploitative frameworks that nations support for development purposes. The research examined alternative and sustainable resource extraction models and sources that explored local control and native perspectives in resource management.

DeBoom, M. J. (2021). Climate Necropolitics: Ecological Civilization and the Distributive Geographies of Extractive Violence in the Anthropocene. Routledge EBooks, 281–293. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003208211-30

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In his article “Climate Necropolitics: Ecological Civilization and the Distributive Geographies of Extractive Violence in the Anthropocene,” DeBoom investigates the connection between climate mitigation strategies and resource extraction while showing how these activities mainly affect disadvantaged populations. In this context, the author establishes climate necropolitics as an analytical construct to interpret how climate protection measures might unknowingly worsen present racial biases and devastation of ecological resources. DeBoom examines the Chinese Communist Party’s Ecological Civilization and Namibian uranium mining activities to show how environmental conservation rhetoric enables mining violence targeting minority communities adjacent to the mines. The article supports geographers in developing multiscalar analytical frameworks for tracing the uneven social and ecological violence patterns in the Anthropocene. DeBoom provides essential research on the combined effects of climate politics, extractivism, and social justice, illustrating the consequences of environmental policies serving minority exploitation through insufficient local knowledge assessment.

Kotsila, P., Anguelovski, I., Baró, F., Langemeyer, J., Sekulova, F., & Connolly, J. J. T. (2020). Nature-based solutions as discursive tools and contested practices in urban nature’s neoliberalisation processes. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 4(2), 251484862090143. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620901437

Kotsila, Anguelovski, and Connolly evaluate the increasing use of nature-based solutions (NbS) in European urban sustainability frameworks through their article Nature-based Solutions as Discursive Tools and Contested Practices in Urban Nature’s Neoliberalisation Processes.

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The NbS concept serves as an all-encompassing solution for urban ecological issues, yet its European scientific frameworks allow for the unintended development of neoliberal socio-economies. This article examines two Barcelona urban projects along Passeig de Sant Joan and Espai Germanetes while studying NbS under the municipal Pla Buits scheme to show the intricate relationship between neoliberal governance and resulting social and environmental effects. Two projects originating from a neoliberal political background produce different economic results. One project accepts neoliberal elite interests, and the other promotes urban nature participation among residents. The authors support a comprehensive review of urban planning related to NbS by proposing an evolution from neoliberal methods toward societal practices, which include ecological components. The management of urban nature requires fundamental reevaluation as part of ensuring public advantages.

Aldred, T., Alderfer‐Mumma, C., de Leeuw, S., Farrales, M., Greenwood, M., Hoogeveen, D., O’Toole, R., Parkes, M. W., & Sloan Morgan, V. (2020). Mining Sick: Creatively Unsettling Normative Narratives about Industry, environment, extraction, and the Health Geographies of rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous Communities in British Columbia. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe Canadien, 65 (1), 82–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12660

This article challenges mining operations’ widespread negative characterization of rural, distant northern Indigenous British Columbian territories. The authors analyze how these geographic areas receive destructive descriptions as toxic domains that validate colonial perspectives while creating more isolation for existing communities. The negative portrayals of northern Indigenous groups and their environments create a physical and moral gap between urban southerners and northern communities so that the former can avoid taking responsibility for destructive industrial operations.

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The study advocates for new stories that show Indigenous people’s enduring power and toughness as an approach to overcoming prevailing negative Western beliefs about them. Through qualitative community research and feminist and anti-colonial methods, the authors demonstrate how Indigenous health and wellness must be redeveloped through methods that fight colonial aggression and showcase Indigenous control and independence. This article establishes insights about sickness spaces through colonialism connections with health sectors and resource extraction activities, thus providing essential knowledge for research and practice in decolonization work.

Frederiksen, T. (2023). Subjectivity and space on extractive frontiers: Materiality, accumulation, and politics. Geoforum, 103915. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103915

Frederiksen examines in his article Subjectivity and Space on extractive frontiers: Materiality, accumulation, and Politics how large-scale mining operations affect local subjectivities found in the extractive frontiers of the Global South. This paper evaluates extractive industry effects on space and identity through material changes, inclusion and exclusion patterns, and governance modifications based on fieldwork in Ghana, Peru, and Zambia. Frederiksen demonstrates that mining operations change physical landscape structures and how people connect socially and politically. The physical modifications that occur because of environmental destruction and infrastructure construction, together with community relocation, cause deep transformations in how local communities earn a living and maintain their connection to their land. Through their involvement, miners assume state functions that affect both political systems and public relationships between local communities and state institutions. The research describes how profitable opportunities in mining fail to reach most of the local population through uneven benefit distribution. Through his subjectivity analysis, Frederiksen makes global connections between local experiences in mining regions that examine capitalism and resource extraction dynamics while creating an understanding of power systems and identity changes.

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Lesutis, G. (2023). Scenes of subjection: Extractive frontiers, symbolic violence, dispossession. Geoforum, 103681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103681

This article by Lesutis examines coal extraction in Tete through an analysis of extractive, symbolic violence, and community dispossession in Mozambique. According to the paper, extractivism inflicts more than physical injuries because it also involves symbolic capital damage through its misleading promise of enhanced quality of life that rarely materializes. Using the Cateme community’s displaced settlement experience, the article suggests that extractive projects generate delayed symbolic violence in the shape of development promises that produce additional anxiety and distress to the affected communities. Material hardships do not stop dispossessed communities from investing hope and despair into unrealized prospects of increased wealth. The author utilizes “scenes of subjection” to depict how extractive forces shape local communities while these communities work to fight against extractive symbolism. The framework demonstrates that extractive frontier violence exists within an area of transformation because communities contest its power, and this process mirrors the ongoing transformations of dispossession and extraction dynamics.

Magrin, G., & Perrier-Bruslé, L. (2011). New geographies of resource extraction. EchoGéo, 17. https://doi.org/10.4000/echogeo.13093

The article “New Geographies of Resource Extraction: Introduction” by Géraud Magrin and Laetitia Perrier-Bruslé delves into the evolving landscape of global resource extraction. The paper examines such mixed aspects of extractive activities by discussing the environmental, political, and economic aspects of mining and drilling operations in Burkina Faso, Guyana, Gabon, and South Asian nations.

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From a historical perspective, the authors show how resource extraction keeps the global economy operational. It also identifies the increasing global political problems arising from extraction, which leads to the ‘resource curse’ and environmental damage. The article examines the global effect of China and how it is rising as a powerful nation through its oil exploration across the globe, changing the international political structure. Industry practices are now changing because increasing attention is focused on sustainable development and its associated corporate social responsibility (CSR), but most efforts are shallow or partial. The article collection is used as a critical assessment tool to explore modern resource extraction geographies and investigate development through exploitation relative to environmental sustainability.

urbanNext .net. (2017, February 8). Geographies of Extraction: How Global Trade Has Impacted Urban Inequality – Architizer Journal. Journal. https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/stories/saskia-sassen-geographies-of-extraction/

Saskia Sassen addresses the modern global extraction patterns in her article by showing how foreign trade and population movements have altered national power centers. Sassen demonstrates that today’s main geographies revolve around extraction instead of imperialistic activity because wealthy countries extract natural resources and materials. She examines Luanda and Rio de Janeiro as examples to illustrate extraction economics as developers build cities by focusing wealth on an elite few at the expense of overall equality in both locations. The booming oil industry in Luanda fails to create affordable luxury real estate options because more than half of its population remains poor. Sassen examines New York as a global city and other urban settings where property investments from outside have developed heterogeneous economic conditions between the rich and the poor. She criticizes the apparent urban prosperity because she demonstrates that existing economic systems lack sustainability and depend on exhausted resources, leading to financial collapse.

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Peša, I., & Ross, C. (2021). Extractive industries and the environment: Production, pollution, and protest in global history. The Extractive Industries and Society, 8(4), 100933. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2021.100933

The article published at EchoGéo under the title “New Geographies of Resource Extraction” investigates the evolving patterns of resource extraction while exploring their environmental effects. Through analysis, the authors study how global politics and economics impact mining activities, mainly in developing nations, along with understanding their effects on land and the population. The research investigates environmental damage alongside cultural and social impacts of extractive activities that intensify social inequalities. The author takes an analytical approach to examine how corporations and governments employ sustainable development to defend extractive activities, but displays conflicting perspectives about the application of sustainability in resource extraction. The article supports research into local environments and population effects by analyzing historical and current examples of resource extraction interactions between socio-political dynamics and environmental transformations.

maarqa, miguel costa. (2024). Geographies of Extraction / Floating Economies. InVisible Culture. https://doi.org/10.47761/494a02f6.205a262f

Based on the research of Dr. Miguel Costa, the From Bad Airs – Geographies of Breathing, Transplantation, and Power, an Artistic Installation that deals with the historical, cultural, and ecosystem implications of the European colonial project as exposed by Quinine, a primary treatment of malaria.

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Costa reimagines the podium as an object of classification and power, benchmarking it with imperial strategies of control and exploitation using the colonial extraction of Cinchona, the plant used to produce quinine. The installation addresses the colonial networks in which the global movement of Cinchona plants was possible by tracing out the strategic transplantation of the plant to colonial territories such as Java in the Dutch East Indies. For Costa, these plants’ circulations point to broader imperialist objectives by colonial powers aiming to monopolize quinine production to sustain their stranglehold over malaria treatments. By way of critical cartography, the work counters and unsettles historical narratives by carving out of the maps of floating economies an image of the ecological and human costs of colonialism and extractive processes.

Rentier, E. S., & Cammeraat, L. H. (2022). The environmental impacts of river sand mining. Science of the Total Environment, 838(1), 155877. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155877

The Environmental Impacts of River Sand Mining aims to systematically review the severe environmental damage caused by river sand mining, a vital construction resource. River sand mining is a pressing environmental issue because the global demand for sand is increasing, and 2050 is likely the year the resource will be depleted. The paper explains how extraction affects physical, biological, chemical, and anthropogenic environments. Significant impacts include riverbed degradation, erosion, and movement of sediment. Mining biologically disrupts habitats, diminishes biodiversity, and affects the food web. Mining activities also cause chemical pollution of water beyond its natural level, causing further water quality degradation. On an anthropogenic level, the practice also undermines infrastructure stability and agricultural productivity, worsening water scarcity in affected areas. It is argued that science-based policies and regulations can mitigate these.

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The authors urge governments to tackle unsustainable mining with a global overview of sand mining’s effects, presenting an international overview of sand mining’s effects to protect ecosystems and communities that rely on these vital environmental services.

Concluding Statement

It has proven to be a valuable annotated bibliography of the various and intricate ways resource extraction figures in local environments and global political economies. Examining how extractivism interweaves with social inequality, environmental justice, and neoliberal governance helps me understand how they affect marginalized communities. There is a repeated theme in the sources of the tension between economic growth and environmental sustainability. Despite its often portrayed cultural and financial power of attraction, extraction is usually responsible for demulching the socio-economic ground and contributing to unsustainable ecological degradation. For example, DeBoom’s ‘climate necropolitics’ concept highlights that environmental policies can backfire by adding to existing injustices when local contexts and power relations are not considered.

The first key takeaway concerns rethinking narratives of extractivism. Most of the sources advocate alternative approaches to development, such as environmental stewardship, local participation, and social justice. Such a thing demands that we confront the systems for resource extraction and governance existing today and attempt to find alternative ways to do them so that people and the planet benefit.

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It has also raised important questions in a rapidly changing world about the future of resource extraction. However, global resources are becoming shorter, and the environmental effects of climate change are becoming. In that case, more assertive extraction will likely continue to have a significant role in the global economy. The reality is that this also poses the opportunity to change how these resources are extracted, who benefits from them, and at what price. This work has given me something to consider, such as how crucial global frameworks are for achieving sustainability, fairness, and equity in managing resources.

Research Strategy

I used academic search engines like Google Scholar, JSTOR, and Science Direct to locate peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. To compile this annotated bibliography, I only used sources that were scholarly and relevant to the course topics, including literary texts, case studies, and contemporary examples of resource extraction practices. The material I used, besides academic articles, is drawn from reputable journals such as Geoforum and The Extractive Industries and Society to give a balanced view of the topic.

Moreover, I also employed the university library’s resources to obtain the books and articles behind the paywalls and pick from as many sources as possible. While reviewing materials, I discussed how each article played a role in deciding the social, environmental, and political side behind resource extraction and built links between themes in the articles presented to the theoretical concepts discussed in the course.

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References