No glory without sacrifice? : defending social & environmental justice : land grabbing, politics ‘from below’ & the transformative potential of resistance in the context of Nicaraqua’s interoceanic Gran Canal

N

O

G

LORY

WITHOUT

S

ACRIFICE

?

D

EFENDING

S

OCIAL

&

E

NVIRONMENTAL

J

USTICE

:

L

AND

G

RABBING

,

P

OLITICS

‘

FROM BELOW

’

&

THE

T

RANSFORMATIVE

P

OTENTIAL OF

R

ESISTANCE IN THE

C

ONTEXT OF

N

ICARAGUA

’

S

I

NTEROCEANIC

G

RAN

C

ANAL

Final Thesis

Elyne S. Doornbos

Research Master International Development Studies

University of Amsterdam

Student number: 10893210

Supervisor: Dr. Enrique Gomez-Llata Cazares

1

For the people of Nicaragua

‘El pueblo unido nunca será vencido’

2

A

The literature on the emergence of social movements in response to resource grabbing practices by powerful corporate and political actors has shown a strong focus on structure-agency interactions, but has often overlooked differentiations within social and environmental impacts and variations in resulting politics ‘from below’. In Nicaragua, the proposed Interoceanic Gran Canal (IGC) threatens to introduce restrictions on the access of riparian communities to the natural resources that constitute the primary assets of their livelihoods, thereby giving rise to various motives for mobilization. This Environmentalism of the Poor shows striking resemblances with notions of social and environmental justice, with variegated politics ‘from below’ demanding recognition, participatory justice, distributive justice and/or the protection of ecosystems. This research seeks to analyze the emergent actors in response to the IGC, their contentious politics, and the transformative power thereof within the arena in which struggles over natural resources take place. Their maneuvering space is determined by the extent to which actors enjoy instrumental freedoms such as civil liberties and transparency guarantees. The research’s social and institutional dimensions are merged through both actor-based and structural analyses, and which consists of: semi-structured interviews with protest leaders, academics, lawyers and directors of nongovernmental organizations; participant observations during village workshops, opposition meetings, conferences, and a national protest march; and interviews in villages within the IGC’s impact zone. Strategies range from the campesino movement’s direct resistance in the form of organized protests and the dissemination of public information about the IGC’s legal framework by an alliance of nongovernmental organizations, to independent impact assessments by academics, and, finally, the deployment of a human rights framework by the indigenous communities and afro-descendants of the Caribbean Coast. Their distinctive demands – from the derogation of Law 840 to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and complicity with land demarcation laws – share a common preoccupation with land expropriation, which is regarded as the IGC’s underlying rationale. The maneuvering space for resistance struggles is progressively limited by the Ortega Government through restrictions on the freedom of expression and other human rights, while the emergence of a critical mass is constrained by press censorship, political co-optation, and poverty prevalence. Meanwhile, the reactive framing of demands by contentious actors has induced an upgrading of the Environmentalism of the Poor, whereby coalitions are forged with other place-based struggles. This confluence creates hope for the transformative potential of heterogeneous social actors throughout the country who have emerged and revived as the vanguards of social and environmental justice.

Keywords: social movements; land grabbing; natural resources; environmentalism of the poor; politics from below; Nicaragua

3

T

C

Section 1 – Introduction………...4

Section 2: Theoretical Framework………...9

Section 3: Contextual Chapter………26

Section 4 – Methodological Chapter………..42

Section 5 – Empirical Chapter………...49

Section 6 – Discussion & Conclusion: High Hopes or Empty Dreams?...84

References………..87

Appendices Appendix 1: Incentives for Land Grabbing – An Exploration……….91

Appendix 2: IGC Project’s Non-Conformance with IFC Performance Standards………..95

Appendix 3: Nicaragua’s Revolutionary History………97

4

S

ECTION

1

–

I

NTRODUCTION

This section introduces the problem statement that has motivated this research by placing the Interoceanic Gran Canal (IGC) Project in the already problematic environmental context within Nicaragua. It briefly describes the IGC project and relates it to the concerns that have been raised in relation to its foreseen social and environmental impacts. It then proceeds to introduce the overarching research question and the sub-questions into which it falls apart, and offers a justification for the ways in which these questions have been framed. It also highlights the potential degree of positive change to which this research strives to contribute in accordance with the transformative paradigm to which it adheres. Finally, it outlines the structure of the thesis.

1.1. P

S

&

R

Q

After decades of civil strife, Nicaragua now faces increasing pressures on its two most vital natural resources: land and water. Low agricultural productivity and stagnating yields of the country’s central crops – maize and beans – have fueled the “aggressive expansion of the agricultural frontier” from the hot and thirsty Pacific Coast in the direction of the humid, rainier and largely pristine Atlantic Coast, as a result of which over a third of the country’s forests have been lost since 1980 (Gourdji et al. 2015: 271). After forest soils have been cleared through slash and burn practices, they can enable subsistence farming for a few years; however, soil fertility quickly declines after that, inducing further expansion of the agricultural frontier (Glomsrød et al. 1998: 20). Commercial and illegal logging practices are also exacerbating the rate of deforestation within the country.1 Furthermore, Lago Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua) is the largest freshwater reservoir in Central America, and vital for national food and water security; yet there remains a huge discrepancy between the country’s natural resource abundance and the availability of safe drinking water and water for sanitation.2 _{Water insecurities are further compounded by the noticeable}

effects of climate change, as a result of which Nicaragua is experiencing rising temperatures and “less frequent but more intense rainfall events (…) [whereby] daytime temperatures have been warming at a rate more than double the global average” along the cultivated frontiers in formerly forested areas (Gourdji et al. 2015: 280). In turn, these trends further reduce crop yields through increasing droughts as a result of reduced evaporations and declines in soil moisture (ibid: 271). These land and water stresses are now bound to be exacerbated by recent events: in June 2013, the Nicaraguan government granted Chinese business tycoon Wang Jing and his Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Group (HKND) a 50-year concession (extendable with another 50 years) to construct and operate a 278-kilometer artificial waterway that will connect the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean. Slated as “the largest civil earthmoving operation in human history”, the IGC

1 _{See for example: ‘Deforestación en la Reserva de la Biosfera Bosawas, Nicaragua’, Environmental Justice Atlas,}

https://ejatlas.org/conflict/deforestacion-en-la-reserva-bosawas

5

serves the primary objective of transit provision for ships too large for the extended Panama Canal. Proponents of this large-scale development project applaud the implications of the commercial waterway for global shipping as well as its potential to spur economic growth and job creation in the second-poorest country of the Western hemisphere. However, the magnitude of this project raises many social and environmental concerns while simultaneously being met by procedural critique. Scientists foresee “devastating impacts on Nicaragua’s water security, its forests and wildlife, and local people”.3 The disruption of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, the deforestation of some 400.000 acres of pristine forests, the invasion into autonomous indigenous lands, and the displacement of tens of thousands of people living within the impact zone are considered to be among the IGC’s impacts, whereby the irreversible consequences for Lago Cocibolca are perceived as the most worrisome risks. This unequal distribution of the pains and gains of ‘development’ raises important questions with regard to social and environmental justice and the ways in which riparian community members and other stakeholders respond to the foreseen impacts of the IGC Project. The perception and differentiation of impacts give rise to various motives for mobilization, with a range of emergent politics ‘from below’ demanding recognition, participatory justice, distributive justice, and/or the protection of ecosystems. The maneuvering space for these contentious actors is contingent upon (characteristics of) the current political regime and other contextual structures. In analyzing the emergent movements in response to the IGC and their strategies of resistance, this research aims to contribute to an understanding of the degree of variation within social actors exhibiting an ‘environmentalism of the poor’ in response to large-scale infrastructure projects and associated resource grabbing practices. In doing so, this thesis is dedicated to answering the following research question:

This question falls apart into four sub-questions, the sequence of which is represented in Figure 1.1.:

Sub-question 1: What are the foreseen social and environmental impacts of the Gran Canal project, and how are these impacts differentiated along lines of gender, generation, social class, ethnicity and/or geography?

Sub-question 2: What types of variegated politics ‘from below’ have emerged in response

to the perceived impacts of the Gran Canal project?

3 _{‘Scientific association calls on Nicaragua to scrap its Gran Canal’, Mongabay, 27-10-2014,}

http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1027-hance-atbc-gran-canal.html

How do the perceived impacts of Nicaragua’s Interoceanic Gran Canal give rise to variegated politics ‘from below’ in pursuit of social and environmental justice, and

6

Sub-question 3: How are these contentious politics seeking to promote social and environmental justice, and how dynamic are their demands?

Sub-question 4: What are the structures within Nicaragua that constitute the arena in which struggles over natural resources take place, and how do they enhance or impede the transformative potential of resistance?

Figure 1.1: Sequence of Research Questions

1.2. J

Although the ever-growing body of ‘land grabbing’ literature has emerged after the 2007-2008 food and oil price crises, “[t]he rush for land is broader than the purchase of land for food and fuel, and involves a large number of different actors who use the land for a wide variety of purposes (tourism, nature conservation, urban expansion, etc.)” (Zoomers, 2010: 442). Moreover, scholars such as Alden-Wily (2012) have pointed at the need to regard this phenomenon not as a contemporary one, but as a continuation of a historical process; the quest to control natural resources has long been a predominant feature of the global capitalist economy, and a breeding ground for conflict between humans. Access to resources such as land, water, and minerals is essential for development, yet simultaneously also a means for the accumulation of capital and

Motives Why?

Actors Who?

Strategies How?

Demands What for?

7

power (Harvey, 2003). As a result, the industrialized countries have appropriated most of the world’s wealth, while the countries of the Global South are left with the burdens of the North’s long-term unsustainable resource exploitations. Today, natural resource conflicts are accelerated on a global scale through resource grabbing practices by alliances between powerful political and corporate actors. In the form of large-scale investments for the economic sake of both the host and investing countries, the confiscation of land and water is justified through a scarcity narrative that advocates the sustainable and integrated management of the food, water and energy sectors. In the developing countries in which land is being redistributed to domestic and foreign investors, poor and marginalized people have come to equate ‘development’ with ‘dispossession’. Impact mitigation measures related to compensation and resettlement are often either insufficient or not in place, and social and environmental impacts assessments – the conduct of which is required before the launch of a project – are carried out halfheartedly or in fact, hardly at all. Distant, non-place-based actors profit at the expense of riparian communities who do not possess the financial or political power to defend their access to the natural resources which constitute the primary assets for their livelihoods. Consequently, social and environmental injustices are progressively becoming a salient feature of their lived realities.

As a result, the overarching research question is framed in accordance with Political Ecology, the Environmentalism of the Poor, and the academic literature in relation to ‘land grabbing’ in the following ways: (1) within the land grabbing literature, one of the identified knowledge gaps concerns so-called differentiated impacts and variegated politics ‘from below’; (2) Political Ecology and the Environmentalism of the Poor both focus on struggles over natural resources and structure-agency interactions, whereby the Environmentalism of the Poor acknowledges the fact that people resort to various strategies of resistance in defense of the natural resources that are vital to their subsistence; and (3) the Environmentalism of the Poor shares many notions with the social and environmental justice perspective. Henceforth, the research question directs attention toward ‘maneuvering space’ and ‘politics from below’. Particularly, the land grabbing literature urges the recognition of heterogeneity among contentious actors as well as within the emergence and/or absence of resistance itself – it is important to acknowledge that project-affected peoples do not make up a homogenous group of either active and empowered resisters or passive and disempowered recipients of injustices; communities are made up of people from distinct social backgrounds who each hold their own aspirations for the future. In addition, people may be differently impacted along lines of gender, generation, ethnicity and/or social class. Their perception of impacts thus plays an important role in the identification and framing of their demands. This research aims to step into this gap by shedding light on the degree of variation within the social actors that are actively opposing the IGC project.

8

1.3. P

D

C

As a transdisciplinary field, Political Ecology is transformative in nature, considering that its researchers are generally “concerned with social justice and linking research to action” (Cole, 2012: 1225). In line with that preoccupation, this research aims to contribute to change through (1) the furthering of awareness and understanding at the international, the national, and the local level. The dissemination of knowledge at the latter level can be linked up with the desire to (2) translate the research results into insights for the social actors in question, in order to potentially enhance the effectiveness of their strategies of resistance and/or expand their support base. Through exposing the societal and environmental effects of unjust practices by corporate and political elites, this research aspires to aid contentious actors to counteract these progressively advancing injustices ‘from below’.

1.4. T

O

This thesis proceeds as follows: chapter two shall outline the theoretical framework which has guided this research, places it in the broader literature on land grabbing, and concludes with the conceptual scheme. The third chapter sketches Nicaragua’s revolutionary history and introduces the IGC Project, together with its legal framework. The fourth chapter explicates the methodology of this research, after which the fifth chapter presents the empirical findings and argumentation. Finally, the discussion and conclusion section will relate the results to theory, provide recommendations for future research, and elaborate on how this research will have social relevance for the contentious actors that were at the heart of my fieldwork and whose struggle I have, at least partially, made my own.

9

S

ECTION

2

–

T

HEORETICAL

F

RAMEWORK

This section outlines the metatheory as well as the topic-specific and contextual theories overarching this research project. The way in which the theoretical framework progresses from the general to the specific is represented in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1. Theoretical Framework

In accordance with this schematic representation, this section proceeds as follows. First, it introduces Political Ecology as the overarching analytical framework by outlining its origins and main pillars. This is followed by a justification for the need to incorporate a social and environmental justice perspective as the main lens guiding this research. Secondly, the topic-specific theories are explained: (1) the Environmentalism of the Poor; (2) Approaches to Land Grabbing; and (3) Development as Freedom. In doing so, Land Grabbing is contextualized by Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement (DIDR), as the case study of this thesis pertains to a large-scale infrastructure project. By conjoining the theoretical framework with the research questions introduced in Section 1, this section finishes with the conceptual scheme that has guided this research.

2.1. P

E

The ways in which local people experience social and environmental change and associated struggles over natural resources are interconnected with global political and socio-economic

10

processes. This represents a localization of the global, in response to which adversely affected peoples engage in politics ‘from below’ – the globalization of the local – in defense of their immediate natural environment. The extent to which marginalized people can express their agency and resist the injustices done to them depends on the wider political, economic and social structures which constitute the arena in which struggles over control and access to natural resources take place (Martinez-Alier, 2002) – structures can be enabling, for instance through political liberties, or constraining, through for example regulations and reforms. These structure-agency interactions – whereby agency entails transformative power – are at the heart of Political Ecology analyses. As a transdisciplinary “field of theoretical inquiry and political action” (Leff, 2012: 5), Political Ecology remains fragmented and addresses a broad range of issues within the combined realm of political economy and cultural ecology. As an analytical framework, it has merit with regard to understanding how the interactions between political, economic and environmental forces, and their associated actions across scales and between a wide array of actors, bring about social and environmental change.

From a Political Ecology perspective, then, this research considers the linkages between foreseen local social and environmental change (i.e. direct and indirect impacts) induced by the IGC and the strategies of resistance that project-affected peoples (PACs) resort to. Such struggles can be regarded as an ‘Environmentalism of the Poor’, which refers to the ways in which local communities strive to defend their access to the resources that constitute the primary assets for their livelihoods, which become endangered by the social and environmental impacts of the IGC (Martinez-Alier, 2002). This access may be conversely affected through physical dispossession (in the form of development-induced displacement and resettlement or forced evictions) or through environmental degradation, which threatens the sustained functioning of people’s livelihoods (ibid). Conflicts over natural resources, as understood by Political Ecology, are thus not the necessary result of ecological scarcities, but rather of the unequitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of their use, the allocation of which is determined by unequal power relations between stakeholders. Henceforth, Political Ecology seeks to understand the dynamics of social and environmental change in light of the political, social and economic processes and factors that shape socio-environmental conditions through a web of persistent power differentials. Importantly, then, Political Ecology can be defined as “the study of power relations and political conflict over ecological distribution and the social struggles for the appropriation of nature” (Leff, 2012: 5). The nature of socio-environmental conflicts need not necessarily be conflicts of interest – they can also be conflicts of values, whereby the ways in which local people ‘construct’ (i.e. perceive) and utilize the environment are irreconcilable with capitalist modes of production which regard nature as something ‘outside’ of humans – something that can be appropriated and owned (Escobar, 2006). This disregard of local views and values is often an integral component of conflicts of interest. Taken together, these types of socio-environmental conflict can also be regarded as ecological distribution conflicts, whereby the unfair distribution of environmental benefits (e.g. access to ecosystem services) and burdens (e.g. enduring a disproportionately heavy amount of

11

pollution) leads to contestation (Martinez-Alier, 2002: 12). These conflicts can be “local, regional, national and global” and are “caused by economic growth and social inequalities” (ibid: 14). What emerges from these characteristics is a striking resemblance with the notions of social and environmental justice (forthcoming): value-conflicts relate to the dimension of recognition, distributive inequality is a concern to both perspectives, social inequality extends to people’s limited potential to participate in decision-making processes, and the ‘environmentalist’ actions of people to defend their biophysical environments can be linked to the need to protect and preserve the sustaining capabilities of ecosystems. Consequently, the Environmentalism of the Poor can be identified as poor people’s strategies of resistance in defense of social and environmental justice.

2.1.1.

P

E

A

F

:

O

Political Ecology arose from the intersection of political economy and cultural ecology in the 1970s and regards power relations as the source of environmental change, whereby issues such as unequal access to natural resources become prominent. It provides us with a critical framework for how certain trajectories of development and/or governance run counter to the ability of local populations to interact in a meaningful way with the immediate surroundings on which their livelihoods depend. The environmental crisis of the 1960s and 1970s demonstrated that in fact, our entire civilization is in crisis: “a crisis of the hegemonic modes of understanding the world, of scientific knowledge and of techno-economic reason that had been institutionalized in the globalized world, stripping away the conditions for the sustainability of life” (Leff, 2015). Political ecology – inspired by Marxism and dependencia theories – emerged as a critique to this crisis, most specifically to modernization and eco-scarcity accounts, which oversimplified the Third World status quo as the result of a negative correlation between population growth, poverty, and environmental degradation, thereby conveniently disregarding historical and societal processes which had shaped the post-colonial Third World economies in line with extractive natural resource sectors. Instead, in its first form, Political Ecology sought to address, through class-based analyses, the “structural political and economic inequalities at the heart of colonial and post-colonial capitalist relations” which extracted financial and natural resources from the developing countries at the periphery of the world system toward the industrialized countries at the core (Bryant, 2008: 6). By virtue of its very name, Political Ecology suggests to be a response to ‘apolitical ecologies’, thereby providing an alternative to apolitical explanations for social-ecological crises which raise inherently political questions. The modernization approach, for example, presumed that advanced technologies and efficient capitalist markets could “optimize production in the underdeveloped world, leading to conservation and environmental benefits” (Robbins, 2004: 10). However, modernization and markets demand far-reaching institutional transformations to facilitate the privatization of ‘collective’ goods such as water resources and forests, as well as the implementation of new technological modes of production. Additionally, the transition to a free and open market requires “deregulation of labor and environmental controls”. As a result, it would be fair to say that “[t]here is nothing apolitical about such a proposal” (ibid: 11).

12

2.1.2.

P

E

:

O

T

The shared concerns underpinning the analytical framework of Political Ecology are power relations, representation, and the creation of lived environments. This common ground of questioning organizes political ecological research around four overarching themes: (1) degradation and marginalization; (2) conservation and control; (3) environmental conflict; and (4) environmental identity and social movement (Robbins, 2004: xix). In addition, Political Ecology explores “social and environmental changes with a normative understanding that there are very likely better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things” (ibid: 12). Based on an extensive literature review, Robbins identified, in line with the four general themes, the issues these categories generally seek to explain (p.14):

Thesis What is explained? Relevance

Degradation and marginalization

Environmental change: why and how?

Land degradation, long blamed on marginal people, is

put in its larger political and economic context

Environmental conflict Environmental access: who and why?

Environmental conflicts are shown to be part of larger gendered, classes, and raced

struggles and vice versa

Conservation and control

Conservation failures and political/economic exclusion:

why and how?

Usually viewed as benign, efforts at environmental conservation are shown to have pernicious effects, and

sometimes fail as a result Environmental identity and

social movement

Social upheaval: who, where, and how?

Political and social struggles are shown to be linked to basic issues of livelihood and

environmental protection

Table 2.1. Political Ecology: Themes

There is a close coupling between three of the four themes in the context of Nicaragua. Firstly, environmental degradation is part of the foreseen impacts of the IGC, in the form of biodiversity loss, the pollution of water resources, and deforestation. Secondly, environmental conflicts can be accelerated by “[i[ncreasing scarcities produced through resource enclosure or appropriation by state authorities, private firms, or social elites” (Robbins, 2004: 14), which in this case study primarily pertains to land expropriation. Finally, transformations in the biophysical conditions of the environment and/or alterations in natural resource management provide incentives and opportunities for local communities to organize themselves and seek political representation. In

13

doing so, these movements oftentimes “represent a new form of political action, since their ecological strands connect disparate groups across class, ethnicity, and gender” (ibid). In the context of the construction of the IGC, this final thesis corresponds with the strategies of resistance deployed by riparian communities in defense of their livelihoods and against the social and environmental injustices induced by the Project.

2.1.3.

P

E

:

P

At the analytical and conceptual level, Political Ecology rests upon four pillars. The first one relates to the conceptual understanding of such conflicts, which identifies resource access struggles as people’s endeavors to protect their livelihoods, whereby these struggles have three dimensions: (1) economic – in response to the unequal distribution of productive assets and wealth; (2) cultural – resulting from differing perceptions and utilizations of nature among communities across the globe; and (3) ecological – or the transformations in the biophysical status quo of the environments that affects resource access, such as environmental degradation as a result of capitalist production and extraction (Escobar, 2006: 8-9). In the latter case, PACs mobilize themselves “for the defense of the environment as a source of livelihood” (ibid: 9), which echoes the Environmentalism of the Poor. All three dimensions correspond with notions of social and environmental justice (forthcoming).

The second pillar of Political Ecology is comprised by the political mediation of resource access. The arena in which socio-environmental struggles take place is characterized by asymmetrical relations of power, in which large-scale capital accumulation enables powerful players to dispossess the poor and/or to regulate and restrict access to natural resources and their associated benefits of use. Differentiations in the power, knowledge and agency of actors are thus important to take into account (Cole, 2012: 1225).

Thirdly, Political Ecology recognizes the agency of marginalized people, who deploy a wide range of resistance strategies (Martinez-Alier, 2002) in an effort to exercise their transformative power. Finally, Political Ecology places local struggles over access and control of natural resources in a wider structural context, whereby it regards the larger and multiscalar political, economic and social processes as shaping features of current conditions. This implies that the interactions between different levels (from local to global and from global to local) as well as between agency and structures are important for Political Ecology analyses.

These four conceptual and analytical pillars of political ecology shall guide this research. Firstly, it understands ecological distribution conflicts or socio-environmental conflicts – the two terms are used interchangeably – as struggles over the access and control of natural resources, including the allocation of the benefits and burdens of their use. Secondly, these conflicts play out in an arena of power asymmetries between various stakeholders across multiple scales. Thirdly, riparian

14

community members deploy politics ‘from below’ in defense of their livelihoods. Fourthly, this research takes into consideration the political, historical, and economic structures that influence people’s agency and the transformative potential of resistance.

2.1.4.

T

N

N

S

E

J

:

A

J

As a normative project, Political Ecology is interested in how the interactions between various stakeholders – with differing degrees of power, knowledge, and agency – across multiple scales can produce and sustain locally lived environments in ways that are less coercive, less destructive, and less unjust. As such, it provides a framework for advocacy research that seeks the realization of ‘good change’ within natural resource management and the rights enjoyed by people. Within this framework, both actor-based and structural analyses are crucial for comprehending not only structural inequalities, but also the interplay between actors and the forms of resistance, conflict and cooperation that it produces. At the heart of the matter are ecological distribution struggles, whereby the focus lies on the ways in which “power and resources are distributed and contested to reveal the underlying interests, incentives and institutions that enable or frustrate change” (Cole, 2012: 1226). These concerns for environmental governance, power inequalities, justice, and the political mediation of natural resource access draw attention to issues of distributive justice, procedural justice, and the recognition of local views and needs.

The field of natural resource management is consistently updated with new policy paradigms which seek to address unsustainable policies and practices through for example a holistic approach to food, water and energy security that transcends sectoral silo approaches in order to minimize cross-sectoral trade-offs and promote beneficial synergies. This so-called Food, Water and Energy Security Nexus is often equated with the Green Economy Initiative, which acknowledges the interconnectedness of natural resource systems and the underlying ecosystems that enable and sustain their functioning, and which presumes that “[t]he key to working with ecosystem services in the water, energy and food security nexus is to be able to quantify them and estimate their economic value” (Bach et al. 2012: 9-10). Henceforth, at the heart of contemporary Nexus-inspired policy recommendations are technological innovations and market-based solutions, whereby ecosystem services ought to be awarded economic value. However, such global processes of commodification and privatization of natural resources, in tandem with large-scale capital accumulation, are a significant cause of local people’s unequitable access to natural resources that constitute their primary assets. Resulting practices of resource grabbing facilitate the concentration of vital resources in the hands of new and existing powerful corporate players while subjecting the vulnerable groups of society to greater resource scarcity. Such contemporary exclusionary processes render a Political Ecology approach valid because of its ability to analyze the driving forces and dynamics of social and environmental change as well as the ability of actors to either foster or impede such change. In line with its normative primacy – to explore the potential for

15

‘good change’ within human-environment interactions – Political Ecology derives its most meaningful potential from the incorporation of notions of social and environmental justice, which constitute crucial components for natural resource management within a global economy that deploys narratives of security, scarcity, and sustainability. The present policy-framings at the global level around ecological scarcities, resource securities, and a sustainable development approach that does not question the survival of the economy but instead advocates a neoliberally inspired ‘green economy’, all drive “proposed solutions towards a paradigm of control (i.e. stability and durability solutions)” (Allouche et al. 2015: 621). Such a paradigm favors the commodification and privatization of natural resources and associated ecosystem services for the sake of sustainability, yet these solutions exacerbate social and environmental injustices at the local level, because they change the distribution of resource rights and consequently frustrate the resource access and control of local communities. Neoliberal reforms that result from the global quest to control, such as the formalization of land tenure, manifest themselves as unequitable processes that allocate formerly informal access rights and corresponding benefits of use to powerful private sector actors (Franco et al. 2013: 1652). These changing patterns of natural resource management and the ways in which they restrict the access of local communities to the natural resources that constitute invaluable livelihood assets are the embodiment of social and environmental injustices which are illustrative of a lived reality wherein, as Michael M. Cernea said, “some people enjoy the gains of development, while others bear its pains”.

2.2. A

C

A

S

E

J

Inspired by the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, the field of environmental justice has recently witnessed the emergence of a capabilities approach to justice. In addition to distributive justice, their work facilitated a view on the capabilities that enable people to lead fully functioning and meaningful lives. For Sen, commodities do not simply have merit of their own but should be regarded in light of the freedoms brought forth by them – he believes that means (of living) are not to be confused with ends, and that it is important to not regard “incomes and opulence as important in themselves” and instead value them “for what they help people to achieve, including good and worthwhile lives” (Sen, 2009: 247). For Nussbaum, justice relates that what people can do and be and thus looks beyond resources at the ways in which they contribute to people’s ability to function (Nussbaum, 2000 in Schlosberg, 2011: 15). It follows that a capabilities approach to social and environmental justice is primarily concerned with the extent to which people have access to the wide range of capabilities essential for human functioning. To this end, recognition and participation are fundamental: for their well-being, people require social foundations that facilitate self-respect and prevent humiliation (recognition), and “the political opportunity to determine the capabilities necessary for our own functioning” require political liberties in the form of participation and deliberation (Schlosberg, 2011: 16). A capabilities approach to justice thus

16

encapsulates “a range of basic needs, social recognition, and economic and political rights” that are essential for the “functioning of individuals and communities” (Schlosberg, 2013: 40). Furthermore, it facilitates the incorporation of “the impacts on ecosystems – both in themselves and as they provide for human needs” (Schlosberg, 2011: 26). Where the first three dimensions are shared by both social justice and environmental justice conceptions, it is the last dimension that directs increased attention towards the need to protect and preserve our ecosystems, not only because of their sustaining capabilities for our existence, but also because they are inherently invaluable – something many people in the Third World have long known.

2.3. L

G

&

E

P

Following a lengthy and place-based historical trajectory which can be traced back to the colonial era, the dispossession of land for the sake of resource enclosures has manifested itself as a defining feature of capitalism, rather than as a contemporary phenomenon, as one may be inclined to believe in light of relatively recent media attention centered around the ‘global land rush’. Capitalism carries within itself the potential to create a crisis of overaccumulation, whereby capital surpluses – sometimes in tandem with labour surpluses – remain unutilized in the absence of profitable outlets. The solution to this crisis was embodied in the process of what Marx called ‘primitive accumulation’: acquiring an additional catalogue of assets at next to no cost enabled overaccumulated capital to transform them into profit-generating usage through investments, upgrading, and speculation. This process focused upon the creation of land enclosures, whereby land was taken from its original residents and the expulsion of this population turned them into a ‘landless proletariat’, after which the confiscated land was released “into the privatized mainstream of capital accumulation” (Harvey, 2003: 149). According to Marx, a number of processes lay at the heart of ‘primitive accumulation’, including land commodification and privatization; forced evictions of rural populations; the subordination of diverse property rights (e.g. state, common, or collective) to private property rights; asset appropriation (including natural resources); and the denial of indigenous and other alternative modes of production and consumption (ibid: 145). Because of “the continuous role and persistence of the predatory practices of ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ accumulation within the long historical geography of capitalist accumulation”, Harvey (2003: 144) replaced Marx’s notion with the notion of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. However, as he argues in favor of a more nuanced account of this process, the creation of a homogenous proletariat never materialized because of the existence of pre-capitalist structures which differed remarkably across cultures and regions. The appropriation and co-optation of such traditional and society-specific skills, beliefs, and social and gender relations enabled the formation of a working class on the basis of consensus rather than solely coercion. Pre-existing social and cultural conditions “of struggle and of working-class formation vary widely”, as a result of which the process of primitive accumulation entails both a confrontational and a consensual component (Harvey, 2003: 146).

17

Where capitalism’s tendencies of accumulation by dispossession have materialized in response to its self-perceived threat of overaccumulation brought about by expanded reproduction, it has not managed to prevent the emergence of multiple crises around the trespassing of planetary boundaries, soaring food prices, financial system collapses, and climate change. Particularly, “[t]he escalating depletion of the global environmental commons (land, air, water) and proliferating habitat degradations that preclude anything but capital-intensive modes of agricultural production have likewise resulted from the wholesale commodification of nature in all its forms” (Harvey, 2003: 148). Subsequently, the ‘global land grab’, which became a world-famous alarming trend after the 2007-2008 food and oil price crises, is most accurately seen as the result of the convergence of these aforementioned crises: the trespassing of ecological limits and associated limitations to the supply of food, water and energy combined with the financial crisis and global climate change have cumulatively fueled a global narrative of scarcity, security and sustainability that legitimizes natural resource appropriations for the securitization of their supply in light of a growing global population, large-scale urbanization, sustained economic growth, and rising living standards and associated consumption patterns (Hoff, 2011). It is projected that by 2050, “the planet could have 2–3 billion additional people to feed with virtually no new cropland and no new sources of water” (Olsson, 2013: 791). As such, contemporary problems related to food and fuel production, stalled investment funds, and emission mandates all “find material resolution in the land grab, accompanied by an ideology of enclosure in the name of humanity (food) and the environment (green fuel)” (McMichael, 2011: 2). As a phenomenon, then, ‘land grabbing’ refers to the purchase or, more commonly, long-term lease of arable land in developing countries for agro-industries, biofuel production, renewable energy infrastructures, carbon sequestration, and investment speculation, but it can also be for tourism development, nature conservation, or urban expansion (Zoomers, 2010: 442) – yet all these rushes for land oftentimes come at the expense of local livelihoods, ecosystems and national food security within the host country.

When riparian communities are threatened by land grabbing practices, they may resort to resistance strategies in order to defend the natural environment on which their subsistence practices rely, thereby exhibiting an Environmentalism of the Poor (Martínez-Alier, 2002). This phenomenon represents a specific manifestation of the global Environmental Justice movement. It does not put forward a conviction that poor people are inherently environmentalist and always believe and act as such; it recognizes that many of them maintain “an abusive relationship with the environment” (Anguelovski & Martínez-Alier, 2014: 169), whereby slash and burn practices come to mind as an example. However, research into rural conflicts has demonstrated that “because the poor rely directly on the land and its natural resources and services, they often have a strong motivation to be careful managers of the environment” (ibid). And so, the long-held belief that poverty causes environmental degradation through unsustainable subsistence practices by the global poor is no longer the dominant perspective on human-environmental interactions; instead, marginalized people mobilize to actively defend the resources on which their livelihoods depend. Because resource grabbing may impact people differently depending on their position within

18

society and their personal identities, the array of contentious strategies that emerges tends to be anything but homogeneous – (potentially) affected communities are made up of people with strikingly different identities, interests, and aspirations for their futures (Borras Jr. & Franco, 2013). In addition, the social differentiations within local communities shape people’s political agency, and thus their transformative power – which is further either enabled or restricted by the wider not only social but also economic and political structures that constitute the arena for natural resource struggles (Martínez-Alier, 2002). The body of academic literature related to land grabbing thus puts forward the need to acknowledge variegated politics ‘from below’ – for example, perceptions of the ‘peasantry’ have traditionally conceptualized this social class as either active and empowered or as passive and disempowered (Moyo & Yeros, 2005: 293). This position was reflected in early reporting and research on land grabbing, whereby the underlying assumption was that “land deals expel people from the land and that those expelled – typically referred to as ‘local people’ or ‘local communities’ – engage in ‘resistance’” (Hall et al. 2015: 468). More recently, however, research has indicated that the ways in which land deals play out in practice do not neatly follow this binary between active ‘resisters’ and passive ‘receivers’ – instead, land deals interact on the ground with subordinated social groups “that are differentiated along lines of class, gender, generation, ethnicity and nationality, and that have historically specific expectations, aspirations and traditions of struggle” (ibid). As a result, the major component of their political life “is to be found neither in the overt collective defiance of powerholders nor in complete hegemonic compliance, but in the vast territory between these two polar opposites” (Scott, 1985: 136). Contemporary scholarship has shown that these differentiated impacts and resulting variegated politics ‘from below’ have remained two often ignored dimensions of land grabbing cases. For a more elaborate introduction to the incentives for land grabbing, please see Appendix 1. At this point, due attention need to be paid to large-scale ‘development’ projects for the economic sake of the nation, which can also induce dispossession and displacement of riparian community members. Oftentimes regarded as an unfortunate yet necessary evil, such projects justify the negative social and environmental impacts for the few in light of the economic gains for the many (De Wet, 2001). They refer to the realization of modern infrastructure and megaprojects for the acceleration of economic growth, job creation, and – ultimately – poverty alleviation. The following definition distinguishes four types of megaprojects, which generally occur in combination: “(i) infrastructure (e.g. ports, railroads, urban water and sewer systems); (ii) extraction (e.g. minerals, oil, and gas); (iii) production (e.g. industrial tree plantations, export processing zones, and manufacturing parks); and (iv) consumption (e.g. massive tourist installations, malls, theme parks, and real estate developments)” (Gellert & Lynch, 2003: 16). There is no denying that people are being displaced for the sake of these projects: a total of some 200 million people in the two decades prior to the new millennium – and this number has increased from an annual 10 million people to 15 million people each year during the first decade of the 21st century (Hoshour & Kalafut, 2010: 2). Regarded from a public interest perspective as expedient for national development, involuntary relocation is thus considered a negative externality cost – which raises the question as to what extent these megaprojects are justifiable in light of the

19

sacrifices they demand. Such is now bound to become the case in Nicaragua, where the proposed construction of the IGC threatens to displace tens of thousands of people, and to bring about not only a social but also an environmental catastrophe. Proponents of the IGC applaud its potential for economic growth and job creation, yet most Nicaraguans within the impact zone recognize what is also pointed out by the 2015-16 Human Development Report: that there exists a significant discrepancy between the quality of public education and the requirements of the job market. “The only jobs we will get, if any, will be as cooks and cleaners in the tourist hotels”, is a much-heard perspective. Furthermore, the livelihoods of most riparian community members are land-based, not labor-based: they are fishing folk, subsistence farmers, and forest dwellers, living off the wealth of resources provided to them by nature.

In conclusion, and considering the progressively unequal allocation of the environment’s benefits and burdens, resource grabbing exhibits itself as an exclusionary process that ignores customary property rights and awards many pains, but very few gains, of development to the segments of society that are economically and socially vulnerable. The social and environmental injustices that these global resource grabs bring about call attention to the pending normative dilemma of the ways in and purposes for which natural resources ought to be sustainably utilized. The global pursuit for the securitization of resource supplies warrants enclosures of specific resources and concurrently disguises certain resource inequalities, thereby “creating new scarcities and insecurities as people are dispossessed of energy, food, water, land and other necessities of life” (Allouche et al. 2015: 621).

2.3.1.

T

T

D

&

I

G

C

:

C

L

G

?

The 2011 Tirana Declaration defines land grabbing as “acquisitions or concessions that are one of the following: (1) in violation of human rights, particularly the equal rights of women; (2) not based on free, prior and informed consent of the affected land-users; (3) not based on a thorough assessment, or are in disregard of social, economic and environmental impacts, including the way they are gendered; (4) not based on transparent contracts that specify clear and binding commitments about activities, employment and benefits sharing; and (5) not based on effective democratic oversight and meaningful participation” (International Land Coalition, 2011). In the case of Nicaragua, people’s human rights are progressively limited by the Ortega government through the criminalization of social protests, acts of aggression and repression towards protesters, and restrictions on the freedom of expression. In addition, the IGC will deny to many people the human right to food (De Schutter, 2011) by depriving people of their subsistence practices. Secondly, there were never any community-wide public consultation sessions for villagers living within the project’s impact zone – invitations for information meetings organized by the HKND were only extended to local FSLN leaders and other people of importance. Moreover, the native communities of the autonomous regions have never given their Free, Prior and Informed Consent

20

(FPIC) to the project. Instead, they claim that they are now being pressured by government officials into signing a document with which they give their consent for the implementation of the project.4 Thirdly, the project was approved two years prior to the approval of an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), and the ESIA that was eventually completed and approved is considered unscientific and superficial by the wider scientific community. Fourthly, although the HKND states that half of the 50.000 jobs that will be generated during the construction phase of the IGC will be for Nicaraguans, this is not legally specified anywhere, which effectively means that it is not a binding commitment. In addition, the entire project is heavily criticized for a complete lack of transparency. Finally, as riparian community members have never been informed nor asked about anything related to the Project, it appears that meaningful participation was never a part of the planning process, nor was any other form of inclusiveness.

2.4.

I

G

P

S

D

-I

D

&

R

:

IFC

P

S

&

E

P

The case of Nicaragua reflects the ways in which local livelihoods and ecosystems are jeopardized for the larger sake of the nation in line with the belief that there can be no glory without sacrifice. Substantial ‘development’ projects such as mines, hydropower dams and infrastructure endeavors threaten riparian community members, particularly indigenous peoples, with “the large-scale alienation from their land (…) all in the name of national development and national interest” (Escobar et al. 2002: 35). Subsequently, when resistance arises, it manifests itself as “a struggle against development policies that have privileged the needs of industries and urban centres over those of the local communities” (ibid). Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement (DIDR) emerged as a body of literature in response to this unequitable allocation of the benefits and burdens of ‘modernization’. While infrastructure projects and the sacrifices they demand are far from a new phenomenon, the rate of dispossession and displacement for the sake of ‘development’ has accelerated in recent years as a result of sizeable land acquisitions and concessions. The social and environmental impacts of these corporate and political undertakings are managed through voluntary guidelines, the first of which were introduced by the World Bank in 1980. Originally, the emphasis was on financial compensation for the restoration of initial living standards, but the more recent recognition of “the social, health, and livelihood costs of displacement” has been incorporated into new policies which seek to avoid or minimize development-induced displacement and which adopt “a ‘resettlement with development’

4 _{‘Gobierno presiona a ramas para firmar acuerdo sobre el Gran Canal’, La Prensa, 10-01-2016,}

http://www.laprensa.com.ni/2016/01/10/nacionales/1966964-gobierno-presiona-ramas-firmar-acuerdo-gran-canal

21

approach” (Neef & Singer, 2015: 604). Because megaprojects oftentimes continue to lead to noteworthy human rights violations – primarily forced evictions – and environmental destruction, they have become highly controversial, and the target of global ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Growing concerns over “reputational damage associated with large-scale infrastructure” led to investor banks and companies establishing their own voluntary ‘risk management framework’ to offset the adverse effects of large-scale infrastructure projects, which finds its embodiment in the Equator Principles (EPs) (Goetz, 2013: 199-200). Since their initiation in 2003, the EP have been updated twice, in 2006 and 2012, as a result of which the third set of EP (EP III) has been in effect since June 2013. Meanwhile, the financial institutions participating in the EPs – the ‘Equator Principles Financial Institutions’ (EPFIs) – have grown from an original group of 4 to currently 83 institutions in 36 countries.5 Regarded as an important instrument for private governance, the EP draws on the Performance Standards of the International Finance Corporation (IFC PS), which is a subsidiary of the World Bank. The EPs self-acclaimed success lies in the fostering of “attention and focus on social/community standards and responsibility, including robust standards for indigenous peoples, labour standards, and consultation with locally affected communities within the Project Finance market”.6 _{Comprised of a total of 10 principles, the EPs demand that EPFIs comply with}

‘international good practice’ standards ranging from ESIAs and impact mitigation action plans to stakeholder consultation, compliance with host country laws, and the realization of grievance mechanisms. However, although the EP establishes principles and criteria that are basic in nature, “their operationalization, implementation, and oversight is governed and managed by each EPFI individually” (Goetz, 2013: 200).

The IFC’s Performance Standards are intended to provide clients with guidance on the ways in which risks and impacts can be properly identified. Furthermore, they are “designed to help avoid, mitigate, and manage risks and impacts as a way of doing business in a sustainable way” (IFC, 2012: i). As such, they provide projects with a benchmark – a bare minimum which the project needs to conform to in relation to the management of its social and environmental risks. In total, eight Performance Standards are identified: (1) assessment and management of environmental and social risks and impacts; (2) labor and working conditions; (3) resource efficiency and pollution prevention; (4) community health, safety, and security; (5) land acquisition and involuntary resettlement; (6) biodiversity conservation and sustainable management of living natural resources; (7) indigenous peoples; and (8) cultural heritage (ibid). Specifically, central to both the IFC PS and the EP is the notion of ‘stakeholder engagement’, so as to ensure the involvement of affected communities throughout the project cycle. This engagement comes in the form of Informed Consultation and Participation (ICP) or Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), the latter of which applies to indigenous peoples who enjoy special rights under international law.

5 _{Equator Principles: http://www.equator-principles.com/index.php/about-ep/about-ep} 6 _Ibid.

22

The Nicaragua Government has expressed in its Terms of Reference for the IGC Project that it requires the project to adhere to international good practice standards as embodied in the EP and the IFC PSs. The HKND has also indicated that it is determined to construct and operate the IGC Project in compliance with international good practices (HKND & ERM, 2015: 73). The HKND contracted Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a British consultancy group, to carry out the ESIA, after which ERM concluded that in the current project design certain Performance Standards of the IFC are not complied with. This includes IFC PS 5, which charges private sector developers with specific requirements in contexts in which the host country’s government is the responsible party for land acquisition and involuntary resettlement. In these cases, the developers shall cooperate with the responsible government agency to achieve the outcomes required by IFC PC 5: compensation at ‘full replacement cost’, provisions for the compensation of tenants and those without property title or other recognizable rights, and ongoing communication with project affected household before, during, and after resettlement (HKND & ERM, 2015: 52). ERM explicitly states that “[t]he land expropriation and involuntary resettlement process to date has not met international standards. The Project risks losing its social license to operate and may jeopardize the viability of the Project by not following international standards. Law 840 is not consistent with international standards in respect to compensation and by limiting the rights of property owners to contest many aspects of the expropriation process”. As such, ERM issued a number of recommendations with relate to inter alia (1) the need to engage and share information with project affected peoples in a transparent and open manner; and (2) the need to compensate both property owners and tenants at fair market values (ibid). ERM has compiled a list of the areas in which the IGC project demonstrates non-conformance with the IFC’s Performance Standards, which can be found in Appendix 2.

2.5. C

S

Uniting the aforementioned theories while simultaneously being mindful of the knowledge gaps identified in the literature, this section discusses the central concepts of this research, the interrelations of which are represented by a conceptual scheme. It also addresses the dimensions which guide the ways in which these concepts can be measured, thereby providing a stepping stone to the operationalization in Section 4.

2.5.1. V

P

‘

’

Conflicts over access to environmental resources can be conflicts of interest or conflicts of values (Martínez-Alier, 2002). This latter category refers to situations in which “there is incommensurability between economic and ecological processes to the extent that communities value the environment for reasons other than economic, for example, when they consider nature to be sacred and uncommodifiable” (Escobar, 2006: 8). In such situations, capitalist production

23

processes cause the abrogation of ecological integrity. As a result, the idea of ecological distribution conflicts has been introduced to encompass both value-conflicts and interest-conflicts in relation to human-environmental interaction (ibid). In the context of such conflicts, “poor communities mobilize for the defense of the environment as a source of livelihood” – a manifestation which has been described as ‘environmentalism of the poor’ (Escobar, 2006: 9; Martinez-Alier, 2002). The resistance strategies that PACs resort to can include inter alia the “[s]ubaltern strategies of localization by communities, and particularly, social movements” (Escobar, 2001: 161). Here, the actors engage in politics of scale, either through “place-based strategies that rely on the attachment to territory and culture” or “glocal strategies through meshworks that enable social movements to engage in the production of locality by enacting a politics of scale from below”. Such politics of scale can take the form of (1) engagement with other organizations to create a network in support of the local claim in question, and (2) coalition-building in relation to other place-based struggles (ibid). As we shall see in Section 6, this coalition building induces a confluence of social movements and actors and an ‘upgrading’ of the Environmentalism of the Poor.

Because strategies of resistance can take a myriad of forms, this exploratory research does not provide an operationalization of politics ‘from below’ – instead, and in tandem with sub-question 2 presented in Section 1, the identification of these politics is one of the main topics of investigation and comprises the social dimension of the research question; it will therefore be specified in the empirical chapter.

2.5.2.

S

J

This notion relates to the quest for a more just society, through three dimensions: distributive justice, procedural justice, and the recognition of local viewpoints and needs. The first dimension demands equity within the distribution of costs and benefits among all societal segments, while the second dimension relates to the ability of people to participate in decision-making processes of which the outcomes directly affect them. Social justice is believed to be fostered by participatory modes of decision making, which enable the involvement of all stakeholders and their differing views and needs (Suhardiman et al. 2014: 6). However, local perspectives are frequently subordinated to the national lens of economic growth, and target communities often unsuccessfully struggle to influence decision making processes because they do not have sufficient procedural knowledge and an appropriate bargaining position. As will become clear in Section 5, civil society organizations (CSOs) play an important role in strengthening the position of PACs.

24

2.5.3.

E

J

The notion of environmental justice has evolved from an “environmental manifestation of social injustice” (Schlosberg, 2013: 46) which focused solely on the (un)equal distribution of environmental benefits and particularly burdens (Bullard, 2004) into “an understanding that justice itself depends on a stable and predictable set of environmental conditions” (Schlosberg, 2013: 48). In other words, environmental justice has come to encapsulate justice vis-à-vis the ecosystem services that underpin our very existence – the functioning of individuals and communities as well as their basic human needs depend on these environmental conditions, and as such, ecological instability is directly associated with social disadvantage. Through the lens of a capabilities approach, then, environmental conditions constitute essential sustaining capabilities for individuals and communities: they provide for basic needs and enable the functioning of society (ibid). In other words, “environmental justice moved from being simply a reflection of social injustice generally to being a statement about the crucial nature of the relationship between environment and the provision of justice itself” (ibid: 51). Struggles for environmental justice, particularly by indigenous peoples, have revealed “a broad, integrated, and pluralistic discourse of justice – one that can incorporate a range of demands for equity, recognition, participation, and other capabilities into a concern for the basic functioning of nature, culture, and communities” (Schlosberg & Carruthers, 2010: 12-13; Schlosberg, 2013). Consequently, four dimensions of environmental justice can be identified: (1) distributive justice/equity; (2) procedural justice/participation; (3) recognition of local values and views; and (4) ecosystem capabilities.

2.5.4.

C

S

Following the theoretical framework provided by Political Ecology and the Environmentalism of the Poor, the maneuvering space for agents of change and their contentious politics is determined by the country’s political, economic and social structures. In the case of Nicaragua, historical structures turned out to be more influential than social structures in relation to the emergence and absence of resistance. Therefore, these three structures will be the institutional dimensions of the concept of ‘maneuvering space’.

25