Event

PhD Oral Defense: Mining, environments and people: Depicting environmental, socio-economic and political understandings of mining conflicts in Cajamarca, Peru and Cordillera del Condor, Ecuador

Friday, November 18, 2016 09:15
Raymond Building R3-045, 21111 Lakeshore Road, St Anne de Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, CA

 

PhD Oral Defense of Diana Vela Almeida, Department of Natural Resource Sciences

This thesis intervenes in an effort to contribute to the literature on extractivism in Latin America. Two case studies were selected, the Yanacocha mine in Peru and the Cordillera del Condor region in Ecuador. The aim from these studies is to illustrate the dynamic change in social and environmental struggles over the evolution of mining projects according to the development stage of the mine.

The first analysis of this thesis details a conceptual framework derived from the work of physicist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen is used to understand mining as an economic productive process with entropic consequences. This analysis identifies the possibility to define ‘biophysical limits to mining extraction’ understood as the threshold to which ore extraction, resource use and waste generation are socially permitted. As decision-making regarding mining is not straightforward, the role of deliberative participation is emphasized in order to clearly define tradeoffs between biophysical requirements, environmental constraints and social conditions.

...The second half of this research focuses attention on the Cordillera del Condor, Southern Amazon of Ecuador, where three large-scale mining projects are located. Two studies analyze the socio-political definitions and interests that determine the institutional and territorial changes accommodating political mining interests.


Everyone in the McGill community is welcome to attend a PhD oral defense. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our PhD candidates.

 

 

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