Hegemonic transitions and global shifts in social metabolism: Implications for resource-rich countries. Introduction to the special section

Access, power and justice in commodity frontiers : the political ecology of access to land and palm oil expansion in Colombia

“…In view of the vast extent of this literature, the review is limited to the academic research on resource access struggles and conflicts connected with the expansion of commodity frontiers and, in particular, those connected with extraction frontiers, which include, not only mining, oil and gas extraction, but also agro-industrial activities (Bebbington, 2012b, Muradian et al, 2012, Svampa, 2011. 9 Most of this literature dates from the last fifteen years.…”

“…However, we are facing a phase of capitalist expansion in the post-1990s in which the expansion of commodity frontiers is unfolding at an unprecedented rate and scale. This sets the likely scene for a proliferation of socio-environmental conflicts (Muradian et al, 2012). The expansion of commodity frontiers is the process of "production and distribution of specific commodities, and of primary products in particular, that ha[s] restructured geographic spaces in such a way as to require further expansion" (Moore, 2000: 410).…”

“…1 1 Moore's notion of commodity frontiers expansion is based on a study of the global development and expansion of sugar production and trade between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. By tracing the expansion of the sugar frontier over a long-term he demonstrates how commodity 2 Several studies indicate a marked increase in the intensity of both physical and biological resource extraction since the middle 1990s, especially in the Global South, (Muradian et al, 2012;Svampa, 2011). For example, the area devoted to industrial tree plantations has increased about fourfold in the Global South in the past two decades (Overbeek et al, 2012).…”

“…Several studies emphasise the interactions between global structural forces shaping the expansion of commodity frontier and local or 'glocal' strategies of resistance as expression of agency (or the lack of them) (Conde and Kallis, 2012;Gerber, 2011;Gerber et al, 2009;Martinez-Alier, 2009;Martinez-Alier et al, 2010;Muradian et al, 2012;Orta-Martínez and Finer, 2010). They do so by linking socioenvironmental conflicts with the global growth of material flows and commodity markets.…”

Challenges for Social-Ecological Transformations: Contributions from Social and Political Ecology

“…This approach, however, is increasingly criticised as being insufficient for coping with problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, food security or social inequalities. Consequently, the quest for a "societal transformations towards sustainability" [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] or even for a "Great Transformation" [14] emerged as a guiding theme.…”