Political Environments

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Political Environments
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Blood and oil?
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The Ethical Business sustainability and public
engagement

• this review is thefirst account of our
  sustainability performance which forms a part
  of our commitment to local engagement ....,
  www.bp.com

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Finding Facts in Turkey and the Caucasus
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(No Transcript)
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The Politics of Natural Resources

• Natural resource conflicts key to a series of
  violent and non-violent international political
  disputes today (in Latin America, Middle East,
  Central Asia, Africa)
• Key area for the development of corporate social
  responsibility and transparency (by institutions
  such as World Bank and multinationals such as BP
  and Shell)

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Oil and Politics1. The resource curse
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• Resource economics the resource curse
  thesis
• Agency problems arise in resource rich
  countries whenever information is imperfect, and
  hence there is a need to emphasize transparency,
  or improving the openness and availability of
  information in the attempt to control corruption
  (Humphreys et al, Escaping the Resource Curse,
  2007 26, my emphasis)

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• - large revenues from extractive industries
  associated with corruption, rent-seeking
  behaviour, absence of democracy, violence
• - associated with demands for transparency as a
  solution to the problem of the resource curse in
  resource rich countries
• see also the work of Paul Collier

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2. Blood and Oil American Dependency

• In summary, then, four key trends will dominate
  the future of American energy behavior an
  increasing need for imported oil, a pronounced
  shift toward unstable and unfriendly suppliers in
  dangerous parts of the world a greater risk of
  Anti-American or civil violence, and rising
  competition for will likely prove a diminishing
  pool Michael Klare, Blood and Oil

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• Associated with growing stress on energy security
  in the US (reducing reliance on dangerous parts
  of the world)
• In Europe, energy security concerns directed
  towards Russia
• A new orientalism?

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Or a new imperialism?

• from the standpoint of capital accumulation,
  imperialistic politics entail a the very minimum
  sustaining and exploiting whatever asymmetrical
  and resource endowment advantages can be
  assembled by way of state power David Harvey

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Michael Watts Political ecology and government

• 1. Oil is not scarce!
• 2. There is no necessary link between oil and
  war..
• 3. But new military neo-liberalism (Marx)
• the dominant capitalist core finds it harder
  and harder to benefit from consensus market
  expansion.that the new preference for the
  military option makes sense Retort p.74
• 4. Oil has an imaginative geography (Derek
  Gregory)

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• 5. Oil is associated with the creation of new
  (un) governable spaces (see Foucault on
  governmentality) each governable space is
  marked by differing sorts of rule in which the
  oil complex has contributed directly to a
  restructuring of pre-existing forms of
  governance, Watts, Geopolitics, 2004, p.75

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(Un)governable Spaces
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Violence and Governable Space

• .while oil can and does generate rents, and can
  and does enhance the military and security
  budgetthe sorts of conflicts and politics that
  emerge from what I have called the oil complex
  are spatially heterogeneous.each governable
  space is marked by differing sorts of rule in
  which the oil complex has contributed directly to
  a restructuring of pre-existing forms of
  governance Watts 2004, p.75

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Political Ecology Resistance?

• What sort of articulation of indigenous identity
  and political subjectivity did Saro-Wiwa pose?
  What sort of governable space did Ogoniland
  represent? It was clearly one in which territory
  and oil were the building blocks upon which
  ethnic difference and indigenous rights were
  constructed. And yet it was an unstable and
  contradictory sort of articulation. First, there
  was no simple sense of Ogoniness, no simple
  sense of Ogoniness, no unproblematic unity, and
  no singular form of political subject.It
  represented a fractious and increasing divided
  we as the splits and conflicts between
  Saro-Wiwa and other elite Ogoni confirms Watts
  (Liberation ecologies) 2004, p.289

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Political ecology

• to make rigorous and explicit the causal
  connections between the logics and dynamics of
  capitalist growth and specific environmental
  concerns
• M Watts and R Peet, Liberation Ecologies, 2004,
  p.13

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Criticisms..

• Tends toward economic determinism
• Lack of analysis of politics of corporate social
  responsibility and transparency
• Or performativity of economic and political
  analyses
• Or internal complexity of oil complex

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Transparency and the Production of Knowledge

• Economists analysis of resource curse has
  effects
• Associated with creation of space of transparency
  
• Particular objects (e.g. oil revenues) and spaces
  are rendered visible to international
  institutions

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A new politics of knowledge..

• Expansion of knowledge production about oil
  revenues, social and environmental impacts etc.
• And the constitution of witnesses who are able to
  witness (or contest) the truth of these accounts
• E.g. Creation of multistakeholder forums in
  Azerbaijan