Extraktivismus: Die Kehrseite der Rohstoffwende

Lithium, Kobalt, Erdöl oder Kupfer - ohne sie wäre unser Alltag kaum denkbar. Doch woher kommen diese Rohstoffe eigentlich? Und wer trägt die ökologischen und sozialen Kosten ihres Abbaus?

In dieser Folge des C3-Radio werfen wir einen Blick hinter die Kulissen der globalen Rohstoffgewinnung. Gemeinsam mit der Politikwissenschafterin Thea Riofrancos, dem ugandischen Klimaaktivisten Nicholas Omonuk und der ÖFSE-Expertin Simela Papatheophilou sprechen wir über Extraktivismus, koloniale Kontinuitäten, die Energiewende und Europas Verantwortung. Wie viele Rohstoffe braucht eine grüne Zukunft? Profitieren die Menschen in den Abbaugebieten davon? Und wie kann eine gerechte Energiewende gelingen?

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Jakob Pallinger

Mein Name ist Jakob Pallinger und wir sprechen heute über jene Rohstoffe, ohne die unser Alltag kaum vorstellbar wäre: Erdöl, Erdgas, Lithium, Kupfer oder Kobalt. Genauer gesagt wollen wir über deren Abbau und Förderung sprechen, darüber, welche Folgen dieser für die Natur und Menschen vor Ort, aber auch für die globale Ungleichheit hat. Extraktivismus nennt sich der Begriff dazu. Aber was bedeutet das genau? Worin unterscheidet sich die Förderung fossiler Energien vom Abbau von Rohstoffen für die Energiewende? Wie gut steht die EU im Vergleich zu China und den USA da? Und wie geht es den Menschen in den Abbaugebieten? 

Dazu hören wir zuerst Thea Riofrancos. Sie ist Politikwissenschafterin, lehrt am Providence College in den USA und hat im vergangenen Jahr das Buch “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism” veröffentlicht. Riofrancos war vor kurzem zu Gast bei einer Veranstaltung im Bruno Kreisky Forum in Wien, wo sie mit meiner Kollegin Simela Papatheophilou über die Folgen des Extraktivismus gesprochen hat. Hören wir rein.

Thea Riofrancos

Extractivism says something specific.
 
 It's not any mining or all use of nature.
 
 It's not like a trans historic concept that is about anytime a human takes something from a forest.
 
 That's not what it is.
 
 What it is is more specific.
 
 The past five, 600 years where we have capitalism, this economic system of private property and we know what capitalism is and expansion and corporations.
 
 And so we have capitalism and then we have resource extraction, the appropriation of something from nature.
 
 And it's about how those combine initially in like a colonial setting, imperial setting, and then neocolonial, or we can just say unequal kind of world system.
 
 And so that's what extractivism is.
 
 It's a type of extraction with capitalist social relations that is planetary in scale and that originates from colonial conquests and kind of maintains that inequality.
 
 Almost everything I said applies today, right?
 
 Whether the extraction is lithium or whether it's copper, whether it's oil or whether it's cobalt, like whatever the resources and whatever it's being used for, those basic histories still shape extraction today.
 
 A lot of the attraction is happening in former colonies.
 
 And not to say they are still colonies, but those places are still very shaped by their colonial history and the inequalities.
 
 For example, who bears the burden of ecological harm related to mining.
 
 Long history shapes the present, but what's new?
 
 The rise of China as a major actor, as a consumer and importer of raw materials, as also an internal developer of them.
 
 So just to put it in numbers, China's like the fourth largest lithium mining country of their own lithium mines and the top lithium importer.
 
 So it produces its own lithium and it imports the most lithium in the world.
 
 And then we can ask like is China a new imperial power?
 
 Sometimes it can feel that way in the global south, or is it act differently?
 
 The answer to that is also somewhat yes.
 
 It's not exactly copying American hegemony or imperialism from Europe, but they are an actor that has developed these supply chains in ways that are world historically unprecedented.
 
 Just the amount of industrial activity in these supply chains, the sheer provision of new energy through the production of solar panels and Their export, the cheapening of that.
 
 And again, we can get into what makes it cheap and the exploitation of labor.
 
 And we could have that conversation.
 
 But regardless, they've made solar panels so cheap that now, like households in Pakistan can just afford to buy them themselves and put them on their roof and get out of the really insecure energy grid in Pakistan, just as one example.
 
 So China is on the table.
 
 It has shaped and created these supply chains in many ways.
 
 So I view it as tragic, though I can understand why objectively.
 
 But I still see it as unfortunate that the European Union and much more so the United States has taken up position of antagonism towards that fact, almost of personal offense.
 
 Like, how is a country that was supposed to be down there a poor country, also a country that is communist, therefore not supposed to be successful economically?
 
 How did they start to threaten us at the most cutting edge technological frontiers of the 21st century global economy?
 
 Because there is the opportunity.
 
 And German automakers are doing this in Hungary with Chinese battery plants.
 
 I mean, and not to glorify anything happening there, which is a site of a lot of problems and authoritarianism, but just to say it is economically and diplomatically feasible to collaborate.
 
 And I think with these technologies, they're changing so rapidly, the chemistry, the batteries, the engineering that if you don't have cooperation between scientists like you quickly are really behind, many steps behind.

Simela Papatheophilou
 
There is increasingly also this use of the argument that the countries in the Global south struggle to regulate the mining sector.
 
And we here have very good regulations concerning social standards, concerning environmental standards, human rights rights and so on.
 
So it'd be much better to bring mining here.
 
What do you make of that argument?

Thea Riofrancos
 
It's very interesting because it sort of ignores, well, why is there such weak regulatory capacity in the Global South?
 
Like, might it have anything to do with like the long history of colonialism and states that were made in certain ways and not change very much after independence.
 
And then also the lobbying activity, which you can get quite a bit of data on the lobbying activity of multinational mining companies in the host countries.
 
We first have to ask why does regulatory weakness exist in the first place?
 
Because it's not that the only solution is to move mining elsewhere.
 
We can also think about what are processes, political, diplomatic, multilateral, that could shore up more regulatory capacity in the Global south since there will be mining there.
 
It's not a sufficient answer to say, well, we'll have a few mines in Europe, because the vast majority mining, you know, even under whatever forecast will still happen in the Global south.
 
Is it more just to mine in the global north, closer to where a lot of the consumption takes place, so that we can also understand the environmental impacts and not like put them in other people or kind of like outsource them elsewhere.
 
And I think there's a logic to this.
 
I don't think it's stupid or wrong.
 
And there are environmentalists that support this idea that we should have more regional supply chains for a variety of reasons, including that we will see the ecological harms and manage them because they affect us more directly.
 
So I think it's worth thinking about.
 
There are a couple of just small problems with this argument that need to be addressed if Europe, the companies and the governments want to really like use this discourse.
 
One is that it turns out that in Europe there isn't very good mining regulation.
 
It's starting to be developed.
 
But actually Europe has a very small mining sector outside of like coal in Eastern Europe, let's say, which is also maybe not the best example of a perfect mining sector.
 
But that aside, like when you don't have mining in a place, you don't have up to date legal codes for it.
 
You know, Europe is not one person, let alone one country, let alone one social class.
 
There are many Europes within Europe, just like in the United States, we have class divisions, racial divisions, etc.
 
Hierarchies.
 
Who is being affected by this mining specifically?
 
Where is it happening?
 
What type of communities?
 
And is that really very different always than it being further away?
 
Because some of the communities are also quite marginalize where mining is being proposed for sure in the United States.
 
And so I think it doesn't solve the ethical issue fully to move mining closer to home.
 
It partly might, but not entirely.

Simela Papatheophilou
 
Regardless of where the mining takes place, the discourse always is that it takes place for the energy transition.
 
So my slightly provocative question is, are we having an energy transition or are we having an energy expansion?

Thea Riofrancos
 
Yes, is the answer to your question.
 
I want to address the first part too though, because that's very smart.
 
Always said the reason that we this lithium or cobalt is so necessary is the energy transition also that gives it like a green hue, like it's going to a good purpose.
 
Even if, okay, mining's not the prettiest sector, if it's entering into a positive green technology, then it absolves the whole sector.
 
But then, you know, you look at specific supply chains and that can often be very misleading.
 
With lithium, that's the case most lithium goes to electric vehicle batteries.
 
That's true.
 
However, let's go to nickel in Indonesia, a major producer, the world's largest single licked nickel producer.
 
I think it's 20% of Indonesian nickel goes to batteries.
 
The energy transition might only be a small part and then the industry uses it to justify the whole thing.
 
So that's one thing to keep in mind, but the other is energy addition, energy expansion, all of the above is more what's happening with the energy kind of matrix than a clear unilinear kind of directional transition.
 
For sure we have more fossil fuels than ever before.
 
I mean it's crazy to say this, but it's just true.
 
Like more emissions from fossil fuels than every, every year is a record.
 
We also have had record breaking profit years in 20, 22, 23 and this year.
 
Every time there's an oil crisis, it's like the best time for the oil industry.
 
So they're extremely profitable, they're extremely entrenched in the, you know, the trillions of dollars of global finance is linked to fossil fuel companies.
 
So it's a very big industry that shows no signs of diminishing in its size, which then becomes very problematic.
 
I think even climate activists, and I include myself here, we have to talk more about the fossil fuel industry as like a major culprit, both in producing all this dirty energy, but also restraining our political systems from actually dealing with the real climate action.

Jakob Pallinger

Wie sehr sind lokale Bevölkerungsgruppen im Globalen Süden von der Förderung von Öl, Gas und anderen Rohstoffen betroffen? Nicholas Omonuk hat die Auswirkungen des Extraktivismus hautnah erlebt. In seinem Heimatland Uganda arbeitet die Regierung gemeinsam mit dem französischen Energieunternehmen TotalEnergies an der East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), die Erdöl über mehr als 1400 Kilometer von Uganda bis nach Tansania transportieren soll. Im Gespräch erzählt Omonuk, welche Probleme mit dem Projekt verbunden sind und was er mit seiner Bewegung “End Fossil Occupy Uganda” dagegen tun will.
 
 You grew up in eastern Uganda.
 
 How has fossil fuel extraction or climate change affected, you know, your childhood or maybe your adulthood there?

Nicholas Omonuk

It has affected me in many ways.
 
 So when I was around 15 years old, I had to work together with my other siblings to support in livestock keeping.
 
 And during those times we had to work hard to be able to get financial means to go to school from our parents.
 
 But around 2015, like it was so difficult to access water because the nearby boreholes that we had underwater wells that were there were not there anymore because they are dried up.
 
 So we had to walk longer distances.
 
 So initially we had to just go like 5 minutes walk or 10 minutes walk to the water source.
 
 But this time we had to take almost the whole day because we had to walk more than 5km now away.
 
 And where we would get the water sources, you would find everyone, like many people from the community are gathered there.
 
 And then most of the times the livestock would not be able to get enough water and access enough water.
 
 So the livestock were not healthy.
 
 Some of them were malnutritioned.
 
 So my dad could not really sell them to get enough income.
 
 Instead of studying the holiday, I had to work harder to support the family.
 
 But there are also many communities within my region in Palisa who did not have alternatives.
 
 So most of them just had to sell everything.
 
 And then by that time, like a family that would have like maybe 100 livestock, that's sheep, goats and cows, would now have about 10.
 
 So it kept getting worse and worse.
 
 You then started to protest also against fossil fuel extraction.
 
 How did that whole activism start?
 
 When I reached university, I was among kind of the students that were selected to do the scholarship because I performed quite well during that time.
 
 When I was at the university, I realized the privilege that I had because most of the students around who I was studying with, they could not relate to what I went through.
 
 They could not relate to what many communities from my region go through.
 
 I felt like my region is underrepresented and I have to start to speak up for them.
 
 And then starting on campaigning against fossil fuels, I started campaigning more for reparations.
 
 But then I realized that we cannot campaign for reparations without addressing the root causes.
 
 And the root causes were linked, of course, mostly to fossil fuel extraction, to the patterns of extractivism and many other things which I got to find out along the way.
 
 And realizing that the EACOP pipeline was located in also a marginalized community.

Jakob Pallinger

For the government in Uganda, this is a project that should bring economic development, new infrastructure, new jobs.
 
 What are the problems you see with that project?

Nicholas Omonuk

I'm scared about so many problems which include the oil spills, the fact that this pipeline is heated.
 
 It's a heated pipeline that is running 1433km to Tanga port in Tanzania.
 
 It is a big risk given the fact that there's one.
 
 There's a rising climate, disasters, rising temperatures that are also coming up.
 
 And then other thing is also the fact that when an oil spill happens, it's going to affect many communities around and many water bodies.
 
 So when you look at Lake Albert, it holds one of the oil wells, which is kingfisher.
 
 So when you look at Lake Albert itself, it is home to many biodiversity, I would say, like fish, like also communities that live around there.
 
 They survive on fishing.
 
 And ever since the project started, there was restrictions to fishing.
 
 What happened is that many communities were looked at as spying against the project.
 
 So they kind of stopped them.
 
 And besides, that is also the displacement which has already happened.
 
 More than 13,000 people were displaced because of the project.
 
 And more than 100,000 people will be affected.
 
 They are going to be affected in different ways.
 
 So they will not be allowed to, for example, fish on the lake, which is already happening.
 
 Other communities will not be allowed to access freely their land if they are grazing.
 
 Communities who are grazing, they will not be allowed to graze around the land.
 
 And then coming to the other economic impact that is going to come is also coming from the fact that majority of the shares from the project itself is not owned by Uganda.
 
 So generally the oil is there and everything is there, but it's not owned by Uganda itself.
 
 It's owned by foreign companies mostly who own the big shares.
 
 Then going to the other future impacts that are going to happen is it will increase the dependency on fossil fuels which is going to accelerate extreme weather events.
 
 We this goes back to who is affected.
 
 It's more people who are majority people who are less privileged, people who kind of have no choice.
 
 So more you see how it affects still marginalized communities in many ways economically.
 
 When you look at also the environmental effect, the climate effect, it's just a destructive source of energy that we are relying on on a finite planet.
 
 It's also not about the fossil fuel companies, also about the companies that are linked to the extraction of, for example, materials used to make renewable sources of energy.
 
 It's also the same kind of companies that are supporting it.
 
 And at the same time it is also repeating the pattern of extractivism, a pattern of exploitation.
 
 If you are part of a developed economy, you really have to understand that to some extent you could be part of the problem and you could be part of it not knowing.
 
 And the fact is that it's always better to try and put an effort to understand where you invest your money, where you store your money, and how this money links to any form of injustice.

Jakob Pallinger

You also fight, you know, for a just transition away from fossil fuels.
 
 How could that actually look like in Uganda, for example?

Nicholas Omonuk

The concept about just transition is to kind of leapfrog so to allow communities in the Global south to not go through the same mistakes that, let me say the developed nations made in terms of like the industrial revolution coming to the other revolutions that came came about later on.
 
 It's more that the countries in the Global south have to go straight to transition to renewable energy.
 
 And this transition has to make sure that it benefits the communities.
 
 So a just transition is about the communities having the value addition industries.
 
 For example, if the lithium is extracted from the community, let it be made to make batteries from the communities to kind of also help the economies grow.
 
 It's about economic growth, it's about jobs creating jobs.
 
 When a lithium plant is built or a solar plant is built in the area, it's not just going to benefit companies that invest there.
 
 It's also going to benefit the communities who are going to get jobs to work there.
 
 It's going to boost their economy and it's going to ensure that there is good trade, like fair trade, that okay, we have something and we are trading something with also the other countries and there's equal benefit, I would say.
 
 Jakob Pallinger

Auch die EU will ihren Zugang zu kritischen Rohstoffen verbessern, die wir für die Energiewende brauchen. Ein Mittel dafür sind sogenannte Strategische Partnerschaften mit ressourcenreichen Drittstaaten. Wie sinnvoll oder problematisch sind diese Partnerschaften? Darüber sprechen wir mit Simela Papatheophilou. Sie forscht an der ÖFSE zu juristischen Aspekten bei globalen Lieferketten und hat im vergangenen Jahr eine Studie zum Thema mitveröffentlicht.

In der Öffentlichkeit ist ja immer wieder die Rede von kritischen Rohstoffen, die wir für die Energiewende brauchen.
 
 Um diesen Bedarf jetzt an diesen kritischen Rohstoffen zu decken, hat die EU strategische Partnerschaften mit einigen Ländern wie zum Beispiel Chile oder Ruanda.
 
 Um was geht es denn in diesen Partnerschaften genau?

Simela Papatheophilou

Es sind derzeit 14 solche strategischen Partnerschaften, wo es konkret um Rohstoffe geht.
 
 Bei den Rohstoffpartnerschaften ist es So, dass diese 14 Partnerländer sehr, sehr unterschiedlich sind, aber trotzdem der Aufbau der strategischen Partnerschaften immer gleich ist.
 
 Das heißt, es geht immer um den Aufbau gemeinsamer Wertschöpfungsketten, Kooperation in Forschung und Entwicklung, Unterstützung bei den ESG Standards, also Standards zur Umwelt, Sozialstandards und Governance Standards und Förderung von Finanz und Investitionsinstrumenten.
 
 Was man grundsätzlich sagen muss zu den strategischen Partnerschaften ist, das sind reine politische Absichtserklärungen, die hier die EU auf der einen Seite und ein anderer Staat auf der anderen Seite abschließen.
 
 Das heißt, das sind nicht so wie Handelsabkommen verbindliche Verträge.
 
 Das heißt, die kann man nicht einklagen.
 
 Das ist in vielen Fällen leider wirklich nur geduldiges Papier.
 
 Ein Grund, wieso man die jetzt vermehrt abschließt, ist, dass die Kommission das in anderen Politikbereichen, nämlich im Migrationsbereich, gemerkt hat.
 
 Die kann man viel leichter abschließen als Verträge, weil man sich nicht an die ganzen Regeln für den Abschluss von Verträgen halten muss.
 
 Das heißt, man braucht nicht die Unterschrift des Rats, man braucht nicht die Zustimmung des Parlaments.

Jakob Pallinger

Um welche Rohstoffe geht es denn da jetzt genau?

Simela Papatheophilou

Es gibt leichte Unterschiede.
 
 Bei zwei von den Rohstoffpartnerschaften wird zum Beispiel Wasserstoff explizit erwähnt.
 
 Eins dieser Partner ist Namibia.
 
 Da gibt es ja auch konkrete Projekte mit Wasserstoff.
 
 Meistens werden einfach nur Rohstoffe generell genannt oder es wird eine etwas nicht sagende Formulierung von Sustainable Raw Materials, also nachhaltigen Rohstoffen verwendet, womit einfach nur klargestellt werden soll, es soll jetzt nicht um Öl und Gas gehen.

Jakob Pallinger

Die EU bzw. die Europäische Kommission betont ja immer wieder, dass auch die Partnerländer von diesen Partnerschaften profitieren sollen.
 
 Inwiefern genau? 

Simela Papatheophilou

Das klingt vielleicht.etwas zynisch, aber bisher profitieren beide Partner eher davon, dass sie sich halt beide beim Abschluss dieser Memoranda of Understanding profilieren können, im Sinne von, dass sie sich darstellen.
 
 Die EU stellt sich dann dar und schaut wir sind noch nicht ganz weg vom Fenster.
 
 Wir spielen immer noch mit bei Rohstoffen.
 
 Es geht nicht nur um China und das Partnerland.
 
 Je nachdem, was für ein Land das ist, stellt sich halt dann da.
 
 Und entweder wir kooperieren auch aktiv mit anderen, nicht nur mit China, oder es schaut mal her, wir haben ganz tolle schlummernde Bodenschätze, wo sich Investitionen lohnen würden.
 
 Viele dieser Partnerländer sind Länder, die sehr stark versuchen, Investitionen im Rohstoffbereich anzulocken.

Jakob Pallinger

Wir haben jetzt viel über Extraktivismus gesprochen.
 
 Wie sehr besteht da die Gefahr, dass auch die EU so diese alten extraktiven Muster wiederholt?

Simela Papatheophilou

Derzeit hat die EU im Bereich des Rohstoffabbaus tatsächlich eine eher marginale Rolle.
 
 Das heißt aber nicht, dass die EU mit Extraktivismus nichts am Hut hat, sondern das heißt nur, man hat diese Wirtschaftszweige einfach outgesourct.
 
 Man hat das China überlassen, weil das ist schmutzig, das möchte man nicht machen.
 
 Man hat sich damit zufrieden gegeben und die Vorteile darin gesehen, Produkte schon in einem sehr späten Stadium in der Lieferkette aus China zuzukaufen.
 
 Erst in den letzten Jahren mit Überlegungen der strategischen Autonomie etc.
 
 Ist das mehr als Problem aufgefasst worden.
 
 Das heißt, Europa versucht jetzt schon wieder Extraktivismus in Drittstaaten, auch in Afrika, zu intensivieren und das sozusagen wieder selber in die Hand zu nehmen.
 
 Was ich sehe bei den strategischen Partnerschaften ist nicht so sehr ein Risiko, dass es direkt zu mehr Extraktivismus führt, sondern mehr, dass diese Partnerschaften eben nur geduldiges Papier sind und tatsächlichem Extraktivismus nicht viel entgegensetzen können.
 
 Es ist nämlich so, dass die strategischen Partnerschaften nicht das einzige Instrument sind, auf das die EU setzt in ihrer Rohstoffdiplomatie, sondern es gibt daneben noch viele Freihandelsabkommen, die teilweise auch eigene Rohstoffkapitel haben, wo Partnerländern vorgeschrieben wird, was sie alles nicht dürfen, um ihre Rohstoffe besser verwerten zu können, bevor sie sie exportieren.
 
 Und das ist ein wirklich extraktives Problem.
 
 Und wie müsste denn die Zusammenarbeit ausschauen, damit beide Länder auch die Partnerländer profitieren?
 
 Konkret wird wirklich helfen, wenn man Bedingungen lokaler Wertschöpfung an Finanzierungszusagen knüpft.
 
 Da geht es um Local Content requirements, da geht es um viele Dinge, die die EU jahrzehntelang negiert hat gesagt das wollen wir nicht.
 
 Das ist nicht vereinbar mit der liberalen Welthandelsordnung, die die EU aber in den letzten Jahren auch innerhalb von Europa stark pusht, zum Beispiel im Industrial Accelerator Act.
 
 Und gleichzeitig geht es nicht nur darum zu sagen, wie kann man diese strategischen Partnerschaften besser ausgestalten, sondern die sind, wie gesagt, nicht einklagbar, sondern es geht ganz viel darum zu sagen, was sollte man sonst unterlassen.
 
 Man sollte zum Beispiel ganz stark unterlassen, ständig darauf zu pochen, dass diese Länder ja keine Ausfuhrsteuern auf unverarbeitete Rohstoffe zum Beispiel implementieren dürfen.

Jakob Pallinger

 Jetzt haben wir schon sehr viel über den Abbau, eben die Beschaffung von solchen Rohstoffen gesprochen.
 
 Ein anderes Thema, um überhaupt weniger Rohstoffe zu brauchen, ist Recycling und Kreislaufwirtschaft.
 
 Wie wichtig ist das denn Europa und was kann die EU dafür noch tun?

Simela Papatheophilou
 
Hier schließt sich in gewisser Weise wieder der Kreis zurück zu Theorie of Francos, die das immer wieder betont.
 
Ja, wir brauchen Rohstoffe für die Energiewende, aber wie viel mehr Rohstoffe wir brauchen, hängt davon ab, was für eine Energiewende wir machen.
 
Ganz vereinfacht gesagt, ich brauche einfach viel mehr Lithium, wenn ich jedes Auto einzeln elektrifizieren möchte, als wenn ich sage, ich elektrifiziere einen Bus.
 
Und Kreislaufwirtschaft ist ein total wichtiges Thema, aber auch ein total unterbeleuchtetes Thema.
 
Und ich würde wirklich dafür plädieren, das in einem sehr weiten Sinn zu sehen.
 
Recycling ist ein Teil davon, ein wichtiger Teil davon, aber ein genauso wichtiger Teil ist, dass von Anfang an mitgedacht wird, die Suffizienz, wie viele Produkte brauche ich eigentlich wirklich?
 
Wie muss ein Produkt ausgestaltet sein, damit es lange hält, damit es recycelt werden kann, damit möglichst viele von einem Produkt profitieren können.