Blockadia

Last updated

Blockadia is a global anti-extractivism movement; [1] and a roving, transnational conflict zone where everyday people obstruct development of extractive projects, especially in the fossil fuel industry. [1] [2] [3] Blockadia resistance movements differ from mainstream environmentalism by use of confrontational tactics such as civil disobedience, mass arrests, lockdowns, and blockades to contest perceived threats arising from extractivist projects’ contributions to global climate change and local environmental injustice. Some researchers have concluded that Blockadia contributes to a transition toward a more just society. [4]

Contents

Blockadia's divergence from mainstream environmentalism was initially identified in relation to environmental conflicts that contested development of the Alberta Tar Sands. [2] Increasing use of Blockadia tactics may indicate that more people are losing trust in capitalism’s ability to avert a climate crisis. [1] [2]

Background

Failure of corporations and governments to address the climate crisis has been described as state-corporate crime. [2] In particular, scholars have presented evidence that collusion between the Canadian government and multi-national corporations to develop of the Alberta Tar Sands is an example of state-corporate crime, because tar sands oil is especially resource intensive to extract, refine, and transport. Tar sands contribute disproportionately to carbon emissions. These scholars say that tar sands’ contributions to global warming and ecological destruction constitute an assault on humans and other species, including local residents and First Nations communities. [2]

Blockadia's divergence from mainstream environmentalism took place in the context of resistance to tar sands development with this understanding of tar sands' contribution to the climate crisis. [2]

History

Blockadia's confrontational tactics have a long history in environmental activism. Joan Martinez-Alier points to the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People as an important precedent in the use of Blockadia tactics against the fossil fuel industry. [5]

Naomi Klein attributes the origin of the term Blockadia to the activist group Tar Sands Blockade during their resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline in 2012. The group produced an hour-long documentary Blockadia Rising (2013) that described the dangers of tar sands extraction and the group's direct actions, which included a network of blockades and tree-sits that they occupied for 86 days, forcing TransCanada to reroute the pipeline. [2]

Klein popularised the term in her 2014 book This Changes Everything to describe a “roving transnational conflict zone…where regular people…are trying to stop this era of extreme extraction with their bodies or in the courts.” Klein writes that.

Blockadia is not a specific location on a map but rather a roving transnational conflict zone that is cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines. [5] [6]

The term also had early associations with the Idle No More movement. [3]

The struggle against the Keystone XL pipeline effectively introduced Blockadia to the American public. [2]

Examples

The Environmental Justice Atlas has complied several examples of Blockadia campaigns from around the world. [5] [7]

Civil society in South Africa has restructured its challenges to state-supported extractivist projects with Blockadia tactics in response to the Marikana massacre of mine workers in 2012. [8]

Characteristics

In addition to its adoption of confrontational tactics, Blockadia movements differ from mainstream environmentalism by integrating environmental justice concerns and building diverse grassroots coalitions, where environmentalism had previously emphasised NIMBY campaigns, celebrity environmentalism, and advocacy for legislative action. [1] [3]

Blockadia participants tend to be more concerned with legitimacy than legality, and are responding to a perceived planetary emergency. [3] Blockadia movements have formed unexpected alliances between grassroots groups responding to perceived local threats. [3]

Blockadia relies primarily on decentralised leadership and frequently organises actions through social media. [3]

Martinez Alier and other scholars describe Blockadia as a network of glocal campaigns with a deeply democratic approach: participants are aware of the connections between local injustice and the global climate crisis. Blockadia’s strategies include legal approaches asserting the right to a healthy environment and protecting local means of subsistence. [5]

Stephen Collis’s poetry collection The Barricades Project includes a volume titled “Once in Blockadia” that critiques neoliberalism and cultural nationalism while also noting that poetic critique is insufficient resistance to these issues. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naomi Klein</span> Canadian author and activist

Naomi A. Klein is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism, organized labour, leftism and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism, ecofascism and capitalism. As of 2021 she is Associate Professor, and Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, co-directing a Centre for Climate Justice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TC Energy</span> Canadian energy company

TC Energy Corporation is a major North American energy company, based in the TC Energy Tower building in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that develops and operates energy infrastructure in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The company operates three core businesses: Natural Gas Pipelines, Liquids Pipelines and Energy.

Environmental justice or eco-justice, is a social movement to address environmental injustice, which occurs when poor and marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harm is inequitably distributed.

Anti-environmentalism is a movement that favors loose environmental regulation in favor of economic benefits and opposes strict environmental regulation aimed at preserving nature and the planet. Anti-environmentalists seek to persuade the public that environmental policy impacts society negatively. The movement's goals include to counter the effects of environmental ideology and movements, to diminish public concern about the environment and to persuade politicians against increasing environmental regulations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keystone Pipeline</span> Oil pipeline in North America

The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, commissioned in 2010 and owned by TC Energy and, as of March 2020, the Government of Alberta. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and an oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">350.org</span> International environmental NGO

350.org is an international environmental organization addressing the climate crisis. Its stated goal is to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy by building a global, grassroots movement.

Greenpeace USA is the United States affiliate of Greenpeace International, an environmental nonprofit organization that spawned a social movement inspired by direct actions on the high seas to stop whaling and nuclear testing. Headquartered in Washington D.C., Greenpeace U.S.A. operates with an annual budget of approximately $40 million, employing over 500 people in 2020. The organization relies on donations from members, refuses corporate contributions and refrains from endorsing political candidates, though in 2020 Greenpeace USA issued climate scorecards for presidential candidates and ranked them from best to worst on climate

Rising Tide UK is the United Kingdom part of the International Rising Tide Network, both of which were created in 2000 to carry out direct action against the root causes of climate change, and to work towards a fossil fuel free future. RTUK takes a no-compromise position and believes that only the complete dismantling of the fossil fuel industry and a shift to low consumption lifestyles will be sufficient to halt climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tar Sands Blockade</span>

Tar Sands Blockade is a grassroots coalition of affected Texas and Oklahoma people and climate justice organizers who use peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Tar Sands Blockade used nonviolent direct action to stop construction of the pipeline throughout East Texas including banner drops, lockdowns, and tree sits. They are best known for a large scale tree sit outside Winnsboro, Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2013 Mayflower oil spill</span>

The 2013 Mayflower oil spill occurred on March 29, 2013, when the Pegasus Pipeline, owned by ExxonMobil and carrying Canadian Wabasca heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands, ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Little Rock releasing about 3,190 barrels of oil. Approximately 3,190 barrels of oil and water mix was recovered. Twenty-two homes were evacuated. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified the leak as a major spill.

<i>This Changes Everything</i> (book) 2014 book by Naomi Klein

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is Naomi Klein's fourth book; it was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster. Klein argues that the climate crisis cannot be addressed in the current era of neoliberal market fundamentalism, which encourages profligate consumption and has resulted in mega-mergers and trade agreements hostile to the health of the environment.

Subhashni Raj is a Fijian activist on environmental issues such as climate change, and also related food systems. After her doctoral studies in Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo, New York as a Kauffman Fellow, she has been active in the Climate movement in the Pacific Island countries raising funds for pursuing her initiatives. Her objective is to create a "sustainable future for her native Fiji through climate action planning".

The Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer is an aquifer in Texas, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extractivism</span> Process of extracting resources from the earth

Extractivism is the removal of natural resources particularly for export with minimal processing. This economic model is common throughout the Global South and the Arctic region, but also happens in some sacrifice zones in the Global North The concept was coined in Portuguese as "extractivismo" in 1996 to describe the for-profit exploitation of forest resources in Brazil.

Melina Laboucan-Massimo is a climate justice and Indigenous rights advocate from the Lubicon Cree community of Little Buffalo in northern Alberta, Canada. Growing up with firsthand experience of the effects of oil and gas drilling on local communities, she began advocating for an end to resource extraction in Indigenous territories but shifted focus to supporting a renewable energy transition after a ruptured pipeline spilled approximately 4.5 million litres of oil near Little Buffalo in 2011.

Environmental defenders or environmental human rights defenders are individuals or collectives who protect the environment from harms resulting from resource extraction, hazardous waste disposal, infrastructure projects, land appropriation, or other dangers. In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously recognised their importance to environmental protection. The term environmental defender is broadly applied to a diverse range of environmental groups and leaders from different cultures that all employ different tactics and hold different agendas. Use of the term is contested, as it homogenizes such a wide range of groups and campaigns, many of whom do not self-identify with the term and may not have explicit aims to protect the environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental conflict</span> Social conflict caused by environmental factors

Environmental conflicts or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are social conflicts caused by environmental degradation or by unequal distribution of environmental resources. The Environmental Justice Atlas documented 3,100 environmental conflicts worldwide as of April 2020 and emphasised that many more conflicts remained undocumented. Parties involved in these conflicts include locally affected communities, states, companies and investors, and social or environmental movements; typically environmental defenders are protecting their homelands from resource extraction or hazardous waste disposal. Resource extraction and hazardous waste activities often create resource scarcities, pollute the environment, and degrade the living space for humans and nature, resulting in conflict. A particular case of environmental conflicts are forestry conflicts, or forest conflicts which "are broadly viewed as struggles of varying intensity between interest groups, over values and issues related to forest policy and the use of forest resources". In the last decades, a growing number of these have been identified globally.

Environmentalism of the poor is a set of social movements that arise from environmental conflicts when impoverished people struggle against powerful state or private interests that threaten their livelihood, health, sovereignty, and culture. Part of the global environmental justice movement, it differs from mainstream environmentalism by emphasizing social justice issues instead of emphasizing conservation and eco-efficiency. It is becoming an increasingly important force for global sustainability.

The Keystone Pipeline oil spill occurred on December 7, 2022, when a leak in the Keystone Pipeline released 14,000 barrels of oil into a creek in Washington County, Kansas. The leak is the largest in the United States since the 2013 North Dakota pipeline spill and the largest in the history of the Keystone Pipeline.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Chen, Sibo (2021-12-02). "The rise of blockadia as a global anti-extractivism movement". Local Environment. 26 (12): 1423–1428. doi:10.1080/13549839.2021.1969352. ISSN   1354-9839. S2CID   238736509.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Bradshaw, Elizabeth A. (2015). "Blockadia Rising: Rowdy Greens, Direct Action and the Keystone XL Pipeline". Critical Criminology. 23 (4): 433–448. doi:10.1007/s10612-015-9289-0. ISSN   1205-8629. S2CID   254412504.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Chen, Sibo (10 March 2021). "'Blockadia' helped cancel the Keystone XL pipeline — and could change mainstream environmentalism". The Conversation. Retrieved 2023-01-28.
  4. ↑ Thiri, May Aye; Villamayor-Tomás, Sergio; Scheidel, Arnim; Demaria, Federico (2022-05-01). "How social movements contribute to staying within the global carbon budget: Evidence from a qualitative meta-analysis of case studies". Ecological Economics. 195: 107356. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107356. hdl: 2445/183207 . ISSN   0921-8009. S2CID   246560505.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Martínez-Alier, Joan; Owen, Alice; Roy, Brototi; Bene, Daniela Del; Rivin, Daria (2018-07-20). "Blockadia: movimientos de base contra los combustibles fósiles y a favor de la justicia climática". Anuario Internacional CIDOB: 41–49. ISSN   2014-0703.
  6. ↑ Klein, Naomi (2014). This changes everything : capitalism vs. the climate. London. ISBN   978-1-84614-505-6. OCLC   890974047.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ↑ EJOLT. "Blockadia: Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground! | EJAtlas". Environmental Justice Atlas . Retrieved 2023-01-28.
  8. ↑ Finkeldey, Jasper. "Lessons from Marikana?: South Africa's sub-imperialism and the rise of Blockadia". South Africa's sub-imperialism and the rise of Blockadia. doi:10.4324/9780203732809-12. S2CID   188588702 . Retrieved 2023-01-28.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  9. ↑ Nilson, Geoffrey (2020-09-22). ""It was always what was under the poetry that mattered": Reading the Paratext in Once in Blockadia by Stephen Collis". Canadian Literature (242): 79–100.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.