Why did the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) fail to generate accountability in Afghanistan, which was declared EITI-compliant in 2012 and suspended in 2019? This article treats Afghanistan's post-2001 extractive sector as an extreme case of resource governance under a contested political settlement and examines it through an embedded single-case design. Drawing on interviews with senior officials of the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, the national EITI secretariat, and civil society, together with interviews with miners, community members, and academics, focus groups, and documentary sources, it traces how neopatrimonial governance and elite capture undermined transparency. Three mechanisms emerge: the colonization of mining institutions by patronage networks; the exclusion of mining communities from participation and benefit-sharing, which sustains customary and insurgent revenue channels; and the invisibility of artisanal, armed-group-controlled extraction to payment-reconciliation mechanisms. The article's main contribution is a sequenced governance framework, derived abductively from the conditional-transparency literature and the case evidence, which holds that in deeply captured, conflict-affected sectors, security provision, elite incentive restructuring, and community empowerment are preconditions for, rather than consequences of, effective transparency. The article specifies the framework's scope conditions and the evidence that would count against it.
Coal mining remains among the most dangerous occupations in the world, yet mine safety has largely been treated as a technical and regulatory problem rather than a question of power. This article argues that occupational safety in mining is, in important part, a matter of epistemic power: of whose knowledge of hazard is recognized as legitimate and whose is excluded from the decisions that shape who is protected. Drawing on Haugaard's typology of power, Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice and a tri dimensional equity framework from environmental justice scholarship, the study conducts a documentary analysis of mine safety governance in Türkiye, which recorded the highest coal mining fatality rate among major producers in the period for which comparative data are available. It reconstructs the subject positions of three actor groups, the state-corporate, the engineering-professional and the workers' experiential and argues that they occupy a determinate hierarchy of epistemic authority. Across three disasters, at the Soma (2014) and Amasra (2022) coal mines and the Şirvan (2016) copper mine, a consistent configuration emerges: accurate knowledge of a specific hazard existed and was communicated, yet those who held it lacked the authority to interrupt production. Rather than displacing technical and organizational explanations, epistemic exclusion is proposed as the mechanism that binds them. Comparative evidence, drawn with due caution, indicates that mining mortality is responsive to governance rather than fixed by the character of coal. Recognizing worker knowledge and redistributing epistemic authority are therefore constitutive of just extractive governance.
Narratives play a central role in structuring political arenas surrounding artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in Indigenous Lands in Brazil. Drawing on qualitative evidence from field research conducted in the Brazilian Amazon with the Kayapó peoples—particularly the Mekragnotire and Metuktire subgroups—and the Munduruku people, this article provides an in-depth analysis of the narratives that influence alliances, mobilize actors, and guide decision-making processes within the arenas. The study relies on an extensive dataset collected between 2019 and 2020. This dataset comprises 93 semi-structured and unstructured interviews conducted primarily at local and regional levels, as well as direct observation, field notes, and documentary materials. The framework combines the concepts of political arenas and narratives as a theoretical and methodological lens with a focus on socio-environmental decision making processes. The findings identify four predominant narratives: (i) ASGM as a means of Indigenous integration or assimilation into national society; (ii) ASGM as a threat to ethnic continuity and environmental protection; (iii) ASGM as an activity amenable to regulation and sustainability; and (iv) ASGM as fundamentally incompatible with Indigenous territories. With respect to regulation, the analysis identifies intermediate positions. These positions indicate potential pathways for legitimation through the adoption of safeguards, including territorial governance, collective decision-making, and strengthened monitoring mechanisms. Based on narrative analysis, the article illustrates the coexistence of multiple interpretations of ASGM in indigenous lands, extending beyond the polarized positions in the debate.
The expansion of large-scale mining in Mexico since the 1990s has been accompanied by intensifying socio-environmental conflicts, particularly in rural and Indigenous territories. While existing literature has shown that extractive governance frequently combines coercive practices with strategies aimed at securing local legitimacy, this article argues that these mechanisms are mutually constitutive rather than simply simultaneous or complementary. It develops the concept of the dialectic of the carrot and the stick to explain how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and coercion recursively reshape the conditions under which one another operate over the life of an extractive project. The article examines the San José silver and gold mine in Oaxaca, Mexico, operated by Fortuna Silver Mines (FSM). Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024, including interviews, field observations, corporate publications, media reports, and civil society sources, it traces extractive governance over more than a decade of conflict. It shows that community programmes and relationships with local institutions produced differentiated and conditional forms of legitimacy, while repression, intimidation, and violence increased the costs of dissent and weakened resistance networks. Coercion thus transformed the terrain on which legitimacy was subsequently cultivated, while persistent limits to legitimacy generated renewed pressures to contain opposition. The dialectic therefore describes a recursive process through which coercion and consent reshape one another, enabling extraction to persist despite sustained opposition.
Offshore petroleum infrastructure decommissioning is usually framed as a technical and environmental process requiring technical expertise. Yet, offshore infrastructure decommissioning could have deleterious consequences on adjacent coastal communities and livelihoods. Drawing on qualitative data from 65 respondents from Ghanaian coastal communities of Saltpond and Kormantse, this paper investigates small-scale fishers’ experiences of offshore oil and gas infrastructure decommissioning. The paper frames decommissioning as a critical phase of energy transition and interrogates its outcomes through the dual lenses of just transitions and the “right to the sea.” The findings reveal that decommissioning produces socio-ecological and economic disruptions. These include the creation of offshore safety zones leading to spatial exclusion of fishing activities, the erosion of socio-ecological knowledge systems, material precarity through asset loss, and ecological uncertainty linked to perceptions of pollution. While these processes are officially justified on grounds of safety and environmental protection, they are experienced locally as forms of livelihood dispossession and governance exclusion. The study argues that decommissioning represents an unjust transition, in which the challenges associated with post-extractive restructuring are disproportionately shifted onto vulnerable coastal communities. At the same time, it is a struggle over the right to the sea, as regulatory and security mechanisms reconfigure access to marine space in ways that privilege state and industrial actors over fisherfolk. The paper concludes that achieving socially just and sustainable decommissioning outcomes requires moving beyond technical compliance toward inclusive governance frameworks that recognise local knowledge, ensure equitable access to marine resources, and address the livelihood impacts of transition.
