Exploring the Political Economy of Resource Systems through Coltan, Fish, Food, and Timber

Faced with the option of wild-caught Chilean sea bass or farmed shrimp, which should you select if you are worried about how your consumption might impact ocean ecosystems? Are the minerals in the circuit board of your cell phone fueling war and violence? Framing their books with these kinds of questions, the authors contributing to Polity’s “Resources” series suggest that most consumers lack knowledge of the natural and human conditions that provide basic human needs and luxury goods.¹ Clapp argues that this gap arises because, while the components of “resource systems”—including resource production, exchange, consumption, and regulation—are increasingly complex and globalized, “the global political and economic dimensions of those systems are often left unpacked, are only partially examined, or are ignored altogether” (p. 5).

The objective of each book is to offer a descriptive overview of one resource system, summarizing (1) its present and projected resource-use trends and associated environmental and socioeconomic outcomes, (2) the processes and institutions that determine how the resource enters and circulates through local and global economies, and (3) options for reducing or mitigating harmful dimensions of the resource system. Overall, the authors steer away from conceptual and theoretical engagement in favor of offering a clear and accessible description of the constitution of the resource system. The outcome is a series that offers valuable pedagogical and investigative insights for the study of global environmental politics. Each book has been written to stand alone and thus can serve as introductory material for courses and early stage researchers. Since the books target familiar resources and are written in lay terms, they are likely to be of interest to nonacademic readers curious about the processes and politics behind the products that they use.

The value of the series for readers of Global Environmental Politics comes in what the books collectively reveal about resource systems and approaches to studying them. As environmental change, and related dynamics such as commodity price volatility and cyclical food crises, are increasingly visible in the world economy, critical appraisal of the structural factors that shape these trends is most welcome.² Furthermore, the data, claims, and descriptions in the collection aid in developing methods capable of encapsulating the complexity of global resource systems. As such, the books underscore the utility of a commodity studies approach to studying resource systems that is sensitive to political economy considerations. What then are central components of resource system studies that the collection reveals?

Resource-Use Trends and Associated Environmental and Socioeconomic Outcomes

The books reveal three common features of resource systems: growth, scarcity, and uneven access. All of the sectors trend towards increasing production volumes; for fish, food, and timber, production volumes have steadily increased since World War II, coinciding with the rise of consumption-based economies. More recently, coltan extraction volumes have increased, coinciding with growth in electronics sectors and the discovery of coltan’s conductive characteristics.

Resource systems face the threat of scarcity, though the form and significance is sector-specific. In fisheries, growing intensity of extraction has driven resource decline, in some cases leaving target species commercially extinct and dramatically altering marine food webs and ecosystems. Timber extraction has reduced forest cover the world over, eliminating habitat and reducing biodiversity in the process. Scarcity in food systems is related to the availability of fertile land and topsoil, and debates persist over whether food production will, or can, keep pace with population growth. Coltan is often described as “rare,” and price spikes for the mineral are directly related to imbalances in its supply and demand; however, presently, scarcity is not absolute, but related to mine closures associated with production conditions.

For resource systems organized according to the capitalist growth imperative, productive limits loom large. The books highlight the innovative ways that industries cope with, and seemingly overcome (perhaps temporarily), nature’s limits...