Contesting post-communist economic development: gold extraction, local community, and rural decline in Romania

Abstract

Plans to open a globally significant gold mine at Roşia Montană, in the Transylvanian region of Romania, have led to decades of controversy and struggle. This paper explores different understandings of extraction amongst advocates for and opponents of the mine over the last two decades. We discuss the shifting roles of capital, the state, civil society organizations, and the local community over time, arguing for the need to distinguish between their different positions on mining. In particular, we contend that the understanding of extraction promoted by the owners of the mine, and by the local community, is fundamentally different in terms of cultural, social, and economic priorities. The local community argue for a traditional type of mining, embedded in local ownership and established labor identities, whereas the neoliberal vision of capital for the Roşia Montană site is that of a globally competitive, technologically advanced form of extraction. In uncovering and developing these hermeneutic differences, the paper reveals that pro-traditional development attitudes among economically marginalized groups are not necessarily attuned to the material global interconnections shaping neoliberal capitalism.

Can Mixed-Ownership Reform Drive the Green Transformation of SOEs?

“…The obtained environmental protection funds are more likely to expand SOEs' scale and produce a "crowding effect" on the resources of green innovation activities. This is similar to the case in which local communities of Roşia Montană carefully weigh the costs and benefits of gold-mining projects to make decisions for avoiding village decline [36]. Existing research manifests that environmental regulations have a positive impact on green innovation, but the high political connection of state-owned controlling shareholders provides the possibility for SOEs to circumvent environmental regulatory constraints, which will reduce the incentive function of environmental regulations.…”

“…The interaction coefficients (MIXS × CSRE, MIXO × CSRE, and MIXB × CSRE) in columns 2-4 of the degree of mixed-ownership reform of SOEs and environmental responsibility are all significantly positive, indicating that the diversity of mixed shareholders, the depth of mixed equity, and the restriction of mixed equity have active effects on the relationship between environmental responsibility and green innovation. The above consequences show that heterogeneous strategic investors' participation has made SOEs receive extensive attention from external investors, which greatly increases the possibility of investors opposing projects that harm the ecological environment [36]. Under the interests driven, non-state-owned shareholders improve the awareness of environmental protection and attach importance to environmental compliance, strengthen the performance and disclosure of environmental social responsibility, and enable stakeholders to gain access to environmental information [20].…”

Characteristics and Influencing Factors on the Hollowing of Traditional Villages—Taking 2645 Villages from the Chinese Traditional Village Catalogue (Batch 5) as an Example

“…Generally speaking, the hollowing of the population largely determines the main behavior of hollowing land use in traditional villages. The hollowing of buildings and culture greatly affects governance and resource utilization [ 22 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ].…”

Unpacking Decades of Multi-Scale Events and Environment-Based Development in the Senegalese Sahel: Lessons and Perspectives for the Future

“…To frame environment-based development, we first constituted and compiled a list of key references. This initial literature review gathered references with different scales of analysis (global, Sahel, Senegal, and Ferlo), with particular attention paid to development studies in southern countries [8,9,[11][12][13][14][35][36][37] and sustainable development and/or environmental based development [10,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. Given the study area, this review included literature on conservation issues [4,26,[46][47][48], desertification in the Sahel [5,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56], actions of reforestation and environmental restoration [27,[31][32][33][34][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64], issues around livestock and development dynamics [19,…”

“…These actions are often ill-adapted to both the ecological and social realities of the area [57,92] and as a result, often fail to fully achieve their objectives. Moreover, if environmental concerns appear secondary and/or ill-adapted in the Ferlo, it is partly because the very framework in which development is designed and implemented is contradictory with environmental and restoration goals [42]. The case in the Ferlo echoes the challenge of the development paradigm based on neoliberal logic.…”