Extractivism, ecologically unequal exchange and environmental impact in South America: A study using Material Flow Analysis (1990–2017)

Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU’s global environmental governance

“…Second, and even more illustrative of the dependency conundrum, SAPReF and the UBS do not adequately acknowledge, and address inequalities embedded in the production, trade and consumption of products that cause tropical deforestation. As noted earlier, tropical deforestation is embedded within the global economic and trade structures where the global North has the privilege of exploiting the land, forests and labour from tropical countries (Alonso-Fernández and Regueiro-Ferreira 2022 ; Hickel et al 2021 ). There is considerable evidence that inequality produces and exacerbates tropical deforestation (Ceddia 2019 ; Ferraro and Simorangkir 2020 ; Miyamoto 2020 ) because many countries in the global South need to exploit ever more for their forest resources to raise revenue to pay off their debts to the global North (Hickel 2018 ; McMichael 2017 ).…”

“…Recognising the asymmetry in resource flow between rich and poor countries in the global economy, some scholars position countries along a core-periphery world order, with Wallerstein ( 1974 ) nuancing a semi-periphery as a category between the dichotomous typologies, possessing attributes of both core and periphery. The literature indicates that economic inequality persists due to the global North’s desire to remain at the core of the global hierarchy while relegating the global South to the periphery—mainly as subordinates that are sources of cheap raw materials and labour required for production and further surplus capital accumulation in the North (Alonso-Fernández and Regueiro-Ferreira 2022 ; Hickel et al 2021 ). Yet, acknowledging the strong relationship between per capita footprint and levels of economic development, some scholars use unequal ecological exchange theory to explain how the global North appropriates resources and economic surplus from the global South whilst externalizing the environmental burdens from economic production to the latter (Jorgenson 2006 , p. 687).…”

“…As a high-income bloc, the EU has a per capita material throughput of 27 tonnes per annum, which is more than 13 times the average person in a low-income country (International Resource Panel (IRP) 2019 ). Maintaining such high material throughput in the bloc and other high-income regions relies on the disproportionate exploitation of land, labour and raw materials from the global South, drawing upon unequal material and power relations that evolved from the global North’s colonisation of the former (Alonso-Fernández and Regueiro-Ferreira 2022 ; Hickel et al 2021 ). Besides, decades of the global North’s meddling in the global South, including through its structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) imposed on many global South countries in the 1980s, is documented to have deepened the former’s control over many countries in the region, carving them open for multinational companies to exploit their natural resources, peoples and environment further (McMichael 2017 ).…”

World-making technology entangled with coloniality, race and gender: Ecomodernist and degrowth perspectives

“…Degrowth advocates examine technology on scales ranging from case studies of computer-organized time-banking (McGuirk, 2017) or communal bike maintenance (Burkhart et al, 2020) to quantitative analyses of material and energy flows across global value chains enabled by digital and industrial technologies (Alonso-Fernández and Regueiro-Ferreira, 2022;Warlenius, 2017). A special issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production brings together 23 articles applying degrowth analyses to technological innovations from smartphones to smart cities (Kerschner et al, 2018), and Part II of Degrowth & Strategy assesses practical applications of technology in initiatives surrounding food, housing, digital technologies, energy, transportation, health care, money, and finance.…”

Universities Participate in the Study of Environmental Protection Ideology in Ecologically Fragile Areas

“…College students are a group of contemporary high-level and high-quality young citizens, who shoulder the task of future development and the historical mission of national rejuvenation. Their mastery of environmental protection awareness, environmental protection knowledge and skills, and the ability to solve environmental problems will have a significant impact on the long-term development of the nation (Alonso Fernández, & Regueiro Ferreira, 2022). At the same time, at present, there are still some deficiencies in the education of environmental awareness in colleges and universities (Shafiei et al, 2020).…”