NI 470 - March, 2014

Commodities - the pitfalls of resource wealth

A note from the editor

Cycles of history, chains of dependency

Who’s heard of Harold Adams Innis? Put up your hand! Not many, I see. Well, no surprise there. The Canadian academic died in 1952 and his most influential work (on the fur trade and the cod fishery, two prosaic strands of his country’s economic history) was published in the 1920s and 1930s. Eventually, this research became the core of his ‘staples theory’, an analysis of how reliance on raw material exports can shape a country’s economy and its culture.

Dry stuff, I admit. But Innis’s relevance has not faded. Today it just has a different name. The phrase used is ‘resource curse’ and it’s a major source of political conflict, environmental destruction and social dysfunction. In this issue, we try to figure out what it means for those countries and communities caught in the ‘staples trap’.

Elsewhere in the magazine photojournalist Isabella Moore travels to Russia, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, where she talks to that country’s gay citizens about the fear of living in an increasingly repressive state.

Repression, of course, takes many forms in an era of economic austerity and globe-straddling digital surveillance. (Thank you, Edward Snowden.) What’s a self-respecting government to do without the latest in anti-riot gear and non-lethal ‘crowd control’ solutions? Anna Feigenbaum expounds on the profits to be made in policing dissent.

To paraphrase Aldous Huxley: we don’t learn very much from the lessons of history and that may be the most important lesson of all. Ah, brave new world.

Wayne Ellwood for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

Demonstrators jostle in the streets of Rangoon, Burma, to protest the expansion of the Chinese-backed Latpadaung copper mine in the country’s northwest province. Thousands of hectares of farmland have been expropriated by the company and hundreds of villagers forced from their homes.

Photo: EPA/Alamy

NI 470 - March, 2014

Commodities - the pitfalls of resource wealth

A note from the editor

Cycles of history, chains of dependency

The big story

Natural resource wealth isn't always a blessing. As Wayne Ellwood discovers, sometimes it can be just the opposite.

Features

The facts and figures of commodities and our dependence on them.

Canada has put all its eggs into one big basket full of tar sands. That’s a major mistake, argues Andrew Nikiforuk – for the country and the planet.

Kara Moses reports on plans to dig bitumen in Madagascar.

Demand for genetically modified soy is changing the face of Argentina. And not for the better, says Eilís O’Neill.

As reserves dwindle and demand balloons, resource companies are pushing into more remote regions and onto indigenous land. Jen Wilton tours seven hotspots where native people are demanding the right to decide what happens on their ancestral territory.

Alex Scrivener guides us through the coal-ravaged landscape of East Kalimantan.

Shereen El Feki uncovers a surprising truth about life in the Middle East.

There’s money to be made in crowd ‘control’, as Anna Feigenbaum discovers.

Isabella Moore photographs those bearing the brunt of the latest crackdown on LGBTI rights.

Opinion

Porn performer and lecturer Kitty Stryker and feminist writer and activist Louise Pennington go head to head.

Agenda

Regulars

The facts, figures and images of Iran.

Cartoon by P J Polyp

Cartoon by Marc Roberts.

Cartoon by Simon Kneebone

Violence is only part of the country’s story, as Ruby Diamonde would like to remind Western journalists.

Film, Book & Music Reviews

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