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C.2.d. Campaigns Against Mining and Pollution

Volume Two -> C. Green Campaigns and Protests -> C.2. Campaigns on Specific Issues -> C.2.d. Campaigns Against Mining and Pollution

Some major campaigns against mining or drilling for oil and its polluting effects (for example in the Niger Delta and on the west coast of Ireland) are covered in resistance to multinational corporations under A.4.a. and b. For brief articles on the impact of gold mining , see New Internationalist (Sept. 2014, issue 475) ‘Gold The Big Story’, esp. Olivera, Roxana, ‘Churning up the Cloud Forest’, p. 17, and Boyd, Stephanie, 'The Myth of Ethical Gold', pp. 18-19. People living in large cities also often face various forms of pollution from industrial development and refineries. One example of sustained popular resistance to various threats is the South Durban Community Environment Alliance (SDCEA) founded in 1996: http://www.sdcea.co.za. For an account of one of their campaigns, see: ‘South African Environmental Justice Struggles against “Toxic” Petrochemical Industries in South Durban: The Enger Refinery Case’: http://www.umich.edu

Beynon, Huw ; Cox, Andrew ; Hudson, Ray, Digging Up Trouble: The Environment, Protest and Opencast Mining, London, Rivers Oram, 1999, pp. 288

General analysis of impact of opencast (strip) mining which spread in Britain in the 1980s. Chapter 7 ‘Changing Patterns of Protest’ (pp. 167-206) looks at the collaboration between the National Union of Miners’ Support Groups and environmental groups to oppose mines creating pollution, and examines the turn from conventional protest to direct action.
Broadbent, Jeffrey, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 418

Examines dilemma of growth versus environmentalism, and how Japan has resolved it, with focus on how anti-pollution protests 1960s-1973 changed government policy , using the movement in one prefecture as a case study.
Dunlop, Tessa, Rosia Montana and Romania’s Decade Long “Gold War”, BBC News, 03/09/2012,

See also: Earthworks ‘No Dirty Gold: Rosia Montana’: http://nodirtygold.earthworksaction.org; Solly, Richard ‘Festival of Resistance to Romanian Gold Mine’, London Mining Network, 18 Aug . 2014: http://londonminingnetwork.org
Sources for 15 year long local resistance in Romania to open-pit gold mine (which would use cyanide), proposed by Toronto-based Gabriel Resources, and for the evolution of government policy and legal challenges. The mine became a focus of national resistance in September 2013. The local opponents propose that the site should become a UNESCO heritage area (the open cast mine would destroy the original Roman gold mine) and a centre for farming.
McKean, Margaret A., Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics, Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1981, pp. 291

Study of ‘Citizens’ movements’ against industrial pollution.
Strangio, Paul, No Toxic Dump: A Triumph for Grassroots Democracy and Environmental Justice, Sydney NSW, Pluto Press, 2001, pp. 217

An Australian case study.
Szasz, Andrew, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice, Minneapolis MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp. 216

Traces how a movement developed in the US out of official debate and television coverage into the formation of thousands of neighbourhood groups, and over a decade the establishment of strong civic organizations tackling different toxic threats.

See also:

Damian Grenfell, Environmentalism, State Power and “National Interests, (B.2.a. In West), on Jabiluka
Paul Dekar, The Australian No Uranium Mining Campaign, (B.2.a. In West), The important Jabiluka campaign, which brought together aboriginal and environmental activists, is also referenced under B.2.a.
Subhankar Banerjee, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point, (B.2.a. In West), on resistance in Arctic Alaska