From local to global: networked activism against multinational extractivism

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes a locally networked resistance movement against the Phulbari Coal Project, an immense open-pit coal mine excavation project initiated by the multinational corporation Asia Energy (U.K.) in Bangladesh. The project was violently brought upon the rural and Indigenous peoples in 2006 but met with a formidable resistance that forced the company to halt the project and leave the country. The success of the protest was amplified by shows of solidarity from international environmental justice movements. We argue that the mobilization of movements and protests like this signify a global arcade of networked activism against transnational and geomorphic extractivism. Drawing from interviews and qualitative digital media content analysis, we identify common themes, similarities with global appeals and vocabularies, and the communicative architecture of the movements, including their digital turn. We pay attention to how local voices were picked up by national and transnational alliances. Although deeply situated in local cultures, the Phulbari movement shows that antiextractivism has become a digitally networked and globally circulated cause.

KEYWORDS:

• Phulbari
• environmental justice movement
• extractivism
• digital activism
• transnational networks

Acknowledgements

The authors assert equal labor and right in authoring and publishing this essay. The authors would like to thank the themed issue Guest Editors and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback for revising this essay. Thanks also to Nicole K. Stewart (Simon Fraser University), Drs. Adrienne Russell and Yuan Hsiao (University of Washington), Dayna N. Scott (York University), and Samina Luthfa (University of Dhaka) for sharing their expertise.

Notes

1 “Phulbari Coal Mine Project, Bangladesh,” Environmental Justice Atlas (EJ Atlas), January 24, 2017, https://ejatlas.org/conflict/protest-against-open-pit-coal-mine-project-in-phulbari-region.

2 M. Omar Faruque, “Mining and Subaltern Politics: Political Struggle against Neoliberal Development in Bangladesh,” Asian Journal of Political Science 26, no. 1 (2017): 67.

3 Anu Muhammad, Development or Destruction: Essays on Global Hegemony and Corporate Grabbing and Bangladesh (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shrabon Prokashoni, 2007).

4 EJ Atlas details various forms of mobilization used against the Phulbari project, including blockades, land occupations, strikes, threats to use arms, street protests, judicial activism, objections to the Environmental Impact Assessment, and shareholder/financial activism, among other activities (“Phulbari Coal Mine Project, Bangladesh”).

5 The Bangla words “Gherao Kormosuchi” are used in political movements in Bangladesh to mean encircling or surrounding of politicians or office buildings until the protesters’ demands are met.

6 According to government data, Bangladesh had 121.87 million internet subscribers in January 2022. See “Internet Subscriber,” Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, http://www.btrc.gov.bd/site/page/347df7fe-409f-451e-a415-65b109a207f5/.

7 “Number of Internet Users in Bangladesh from 2005 to 2016 (in Millions),” Statistica, https://www.statista.com/statistics/764155/number-of-internet-users-bangladesh/.

8 For a detailed discussion about the role of immigrant activities and its limitations, see Samina Luthfa, “Resisting a Coal Mine in Bangladesh and Immigrants in the United Kingdom: The New Agent/Actors in Transnational Environmental Politics,” in The Bangladesh Environmental Humanities Reader: Environmental Justice, Development Victimhood, and Resistance, ed. Samina Luthfa, Mohammad Tanzimuddin Khan, and Munasir Kamal (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming), 1–20.

9 Laurence L. Delina, “Coal Development and Its Discontents: Modes, Strategies, and Tactics of a Localized, yet Networked, Anti-Coal Mobilisation in Central Philippines,” The Extractive Industries and Society 9 (2022): Article 101043, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2022.101043.

10 Julian Agyeman, Robert D. Bullard, and Bob Evans, “Exploring the Nexus: Bringing Together Sustainability, Environmental Justice and Equity,” Space and Polity 6, no. 1 (2002): 77–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/13562570220137907.

11 Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, “The Diverse Worlds of Coal in India: Energising the Nation, Energising Livelihoods,” Energy Policy 99 (2016): 203–13; Laurence L. Delina, Joey Ocon, and Eugene Esparcia Jr., “What Makes Energy Systems in Climate-Vulnerable Islands Resilient? Insights from the Philippines and Thailand,” Energy Research & Social Science 69 (2020): Article 10703, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101703.

12 Benjamin Brown and Samuel J. Spiegel, “Resisting Coal: Hydrocarbon Politics and Assemblages of Protest in the UK and Indonesia,” Geoforum 85 (2017): 101–11, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.07.015.

13 Joan Martínez-Alier, “Mapping Ecological Distribution Conflicts: The EJAtlas,” The Extractive Industries and Society 8, no. 4 (2021): Article 100883, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2021.02.003; Arnim Scheidel, Leah Temper, Fredrico Demaria, and Joan Martínez-Alier, “Ecological Distribution Conflicts as Forces for Sustainability: An Overview and Conceptual Frame-work,” Sustainability Science 13, no. 3 (2018): 585–98, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0519-0.

14 Iris Marian Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

15 Iris Marian Young, “Justice and Hazardous Waste,” Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy 5 (1983): 171–83; David Schlosberg, “The Justice of Environmental Justice: Reconciling Equity, Recognition, and Participation in a Political Movement,” in Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice, ed. Andrew Light and Avner de-Shalit (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 77–106.

16 Martínez-Alier, “Mapping Ecological Distribution Conflicts”; Scheidel, Temper, Demaria, and Martínez-Alier, “Ecological Distribution Conflicts as Forces for Sustainability.”

17 David Szablowski, Transnational Law and Local Struggles: Mining, Communities and the World Bank (Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2007), 28.

18 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.

19 Melissa Toffolon-Weiss and Timmons Roberts, “Who Wins, Who Loses? Understanding Outcomes of Environmental Injustice Struggles,” in Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement, ed. David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 77–90.

20 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin, eds., “New Perspectives on Transnational Activism,” in Transnational Activism in Asia: Problems of Power and Democracy (London: Routledge, 2003), 19–43.

21 Sanjeeb Khagram and Sarah Alvord, “The Rise of Civic Transnationalism,” in Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction, ed. Srilatha Batliwala and L. David Brown (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2006), 61–81.

22 Samina Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity: Resisting Mining in Bangladesh with Transnational Coalition,” Sociology 51, no. 1 (2017): 128, https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516668132.

23 Anastasia Kavada and Doug Specht, “Environmental Movements and Digital Media,” in Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements, ed. Maria Grasso and Marco Giugni (London: Routledge, 2022), 538–51.

24 Thomas Poell, “Social Media, Temporality, and the Legitimacy of Protest,” Social Movement Studies 19, nos. 5–6 (2020): 609–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2019.1605287; Kisun Kim and Saif Shahin, “Ideological Parallelism: Toward a Transnational Understanding of the Protest Paradigm,” Social Movement Studies 19, no. 4 (2020): 391–407, https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2019.1681956.

25 Giuliana Sorce and Delia Dumitrica, “#fighteverycrisis: Pandemic Shifts in Fridays for Future’s Protest Communication Frames,” Environmental Communication (2021): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1948435.

26 W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, “The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics,” Information, Communication & Society 15, no. 5 (2012): 739–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661.

27 Ibid.

28 Faheem Hussain and Mashiat Mostafa, “Digital Contradictions in Bangladesh: Encouragement and Deterrence of Citizen Engagement via ICTs,” Information Technologies & International Development 12, no. 2 (2016): 47.

29 Shudipta Sharma, “Environmental Movements and Social Networking Sites in Bangladesh,” International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development 8, no. 4 (2014): 380–93.

30 Ratan Kumar Roy, “Online Activism, Social Movements and Mediated Politics in Contemporary Bangladesh,” Society and Culture in South Asia 5, no. 2 (2019): 193–215, https://doi.org/10.1177/2393861719836296.

31 Punny Kabir, “Civic Engagement in Exile: Exploring Social Media Presence of Dissidents from Bangladesh,” The International Journal of Press/Politics (2021): https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211047200.

32 Leane Betasmosake Simpson, “Constellations of Coresistance,” in As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 211–31. Also see, this important work done by a Native American researcher and activist: Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019).

33 Dorothy Kidd, “Mobilizing with Video in the Extractive Zone,” in InsUrgent Media from the Front: A Media Activism Reader, ed. Chris Robé and Stephen Charbonneau (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 151–73.

34 Ibid., 153.

35 Mohan J. Dutta and Ngā Hau, “Voice Infrastructures and Alternative Imaginaries: Indigenous Social Movements against Neocolonial Extraction,” in The Rhetoric of Social Movements: Networks, Power, and New Media, ed. Nathan Crick (London: Routledge, 2020), 254.

36 Sadid A. Nuremowla, “Resistance, Rootedness and Mining Protest in Phulbari” (Ph.D. diss., University of Sussex, 2012); Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity”; Faruque, “Mining and Subaltern Politics.”

37 Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity,” 130.

38 Samina Luthfa, “Showcasing Environmental Justice Movements from the South: Comparing the Role of Media in Bangladesh,” Society and Culture in South Asia 5, no. 2 (2019): 290–328, https://doi.org/10.1177/2393861719845168.

39 Interview with a regional NCBD leader, (requested anonymity), April 1, 2016; Biplab Das, Phulbari Coalmine and the Broken Dreams of a Corporation (Dhaka, Bangaldesh: Jatiyo Sahitya Prokashoni, 2015).

40 Interview with a regional NCBD leader (requested anonymity), March 14, 2016.

41 Interview with a regional NCBD leader (requested anonymity), April 1, 2016.

42 Interview with a national Indigenous leader (requested anonymity), April 11, 2016; Das, Phulbari Coalmine and the Broken Dreams of a Corporation, 66.

43 Interview with Cherobin Helmbrom, April 5, 2016.

44 Samina Luthfa, “Everything Changed after the 26th: Repression and Resilience against Proposed Phulbari Coal Mine in Bangladesh” (Working Paper, QEH Working Paper Series, Department of International Development: University of Oxford, 2011).

45 Ibid.

46 The documentary Phulbari Debo Na was supported and circulated by U.S.-based International Accountability Project (IAP).

47 Interview with a central NCBD leader (requested anonymity), April 8, 2016.

48 Interview with Akhter Sobhan Khan Masroor, Member Secretary, NCBD-UK Branch, October 10, 2021, via Zoom.

49 Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity,” 133.

50 London had become the minerals capital of the world, providing a critical proportion of global mine capital investment and playing a pivotal role in the fixing of world metals prices. Two of the world’s four most influential mining companies’ headquarters are in London. This is why we also focus on Bangladeshi diasporic resistance networks located in London and their alliance with TEJOs in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere.

51 BEN is a network group of emigrant Bangladeshi professors and other professionals in different countries who campaign against environmental wrongdoings.

52 Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity,” 132–33.

53 Ibid.

54 Interview with an environmentalist (requested anonymity), April 12, 2016.

55 Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity,” 136.

56 Ibid., 133.

57 Nuremowla, “Resistance, Rootedness and Mining Protest in Phulbari,” 8.

58 Kishan Khoday and Usha Natarajan, “Fairness and International Environmental Law from Below: Social Movements and Legal Transformation in India,” Leiden Journal of International Law 25, no. 2 (2012): 418, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156512000118.

59 Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity,” 140.

60 Interview with a national Indigenous leader (requested anonymity), April 11, 2016.

61 Luthfa, “Transnational Ties and Reciprocal Tenacity,” 134.

62 Interview with Akhter Sobhan Khan Masroor.

63 Ibid.

64 Climate Justice Collective, “Phulbari Solidarity Demo: Protest against GCM Resources,” Facebook, December 20, 2012, http://www.facebook.com/events/497313553622956/. This was an event to boycott Asia Energy, in front of the Asia Energy office in London.

65 Foil Vedanta, Facebook, December 28, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/FoilVedanta/posts/2214351748626440.

66 “Bangladesh: Phulbari Coal Project,” NGO Forum on ADB, n.d., https://www.forum-adb.org/adbphulbaricoalproject.

67 John Ahni Schertow, “Development Bank Pulls away from Phulbari,” Intercontinental Cry, April 22, 2008, https://intercontinentalcry.org/development-bank-pulls-away-from-phulbari/.

68 Interview with Akhter Sobhan Khan Masroor.

69 Martínez-Alier, “Mapping Ecological Distribution Conflicts.”

70 Interview with Akhter Sobhan Khan Masroor.

71 Luthfa, “Resisting a Coal Mine in Bangladesh and Immigrants in the United Kingdom.”

72 ExtinctionR, Twitter, December 28, 2018, https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR/status/1078678146055106561 (accessed March 23, 2022).

73 “Current Campaigns,” Phulbari Solidarity Group, https://phulbarisolidaritygroup.org/current-campaigns/ (accessed October 27, 2021).