Geography and resource nationalism: A critical review and reframing

Coal and climate change

“…Here a natural initial focus would be on the countries which dominate the global coal trade: China, India, Australia, Indonesia, Russia, and to a smaller extent Colombia and South Africa. Connections could also be developed to the literature on the changing geographies of resource extraction in the context of economic liberalization (e.g., Bridge, ), which has more recently analyzed the emergence of ‘resource nationalism’ and ‘neo‐extractivism,’ both of which see control over resources and the proceeds of export‐oriented extractivism as intrinsic to economic development and—in the latter case—wealth redistribution (Burchardt & Dietz, ; Childs, ; Childs & Hearn, ; Rosales, ). To date little of this broader resource geographies literature has focused on coal, and Bridge (, p. 828) observed that “there have been very few efforts by geographers to think about the logics of care and responsibility associated with fossil fuels,” despite the fact that climate change can be understood “as fundamentally a problem of carbon mobilization” (Bridge, , pp.…”

Explaining Resource Nationalism

“…The contribution of Childs () a geographer, is distinct in its tone from other discussions of RN. Childs (, p.54) argues that RN has hitherto been conceived through a ‘narrowly defined, pro‐market scholarship’ in which it is reduced to a ‘language of energy security and economic wellbeing’ that are ‘read in a timeworn framework of geopolitics and international relations’. Such ‘free market apologists’ instinctively evaluate RN negatively as ‘limiting the operations of international companies, and asserting greater national control over natural resource development’.…”

“…Such ‘free market apologists’ instinctively evaluate RN negatively as ‘limiting the operations of international companies, and asserting greater national control over natural resource development’. Its complexity (Childs, , pp. 540–541) is thus condensed to a clash of state versus private control, and its conceptual range reduced to a ‘language of economics alone, overlooking the political dimensions of identity and justice’.…”

“…He notes how heavily taxed petroleum operations in, for instance, Norway, are lauded and that oil export restriction in the USA and Canada are widely accepted as in the national interest, while elsewhere RN is denounced. This ‘reductive dichotomy’ between acceptable and unacceptable forms of RN fails to recognise how it is one means by which ‘hybrid’ or ‘post‐neoliberal forms of governance’ have recently emerged (Childs, , p. 541). Contemporary RN marks a shift towards ‘more productivist and nationally‐owned development strategies’(Childs, , p. 542).…”

“…This ‘reductive dichotomy’ between acceptable and unacceptable forms of RN fails to recognise how it is one means by which ‘hybrid’ or ‘post‐neoliberal forms of governance’ have recently emerged (Childs, , p. 541). Contemporary RN marks a shift towards ‘more productivist and nationally‐owned development strategies’(Childs, , p. 542).…”