Results & Publications

Abstract: Looking at the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) case ‘Gabriel Resources vs Romania’, this paper documents the intangible losses, the chronic stress, and the damaged dignity of communities having to defend their livelihoods in the long-term ongoing conflicts over mineral resources. We expand the concept of environmental injustice as an ‘insidious’ form of toxicity ‘poisoning’ bodies even before chemical contamination, where the threat of ISDS is one of the many tools used by corporate power to reinforce itself. This paper answers scholarly calls for more empirical studies on the ISDS to expose the politics behind incommensurable valuation conflicts and justice as recognition. We analyse the ISDS case as part and parcel of the hegemonic extractivist logic of colonial power, capitalist accumulation by dispossession, and ontological occupation, which have left deep scars in the collective spaces of people imagining possible alternative futures.

Abstract: Around the world, local communities supported by national and transnational advocacy networks are fighting to defend or preserve their homes and livelihoods from extractivist projects that threaten their environments. In this chapter, we look at Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) as a form of prospective environmental (in)justice (PEJ). ISDS provides for multinational corporations to sue states when they have a grievance over the state’s treatment of their investment. We argue that ISDS continues the structural violence of extractive projects and the pre-project harms resulting from foreign investor-welcoming climates. The chapter draws on empirical research on the Roșia Montană case in Romania to extend the theory of PEJ to scenarios where communities have succeeded in stopping a mining project, but the investor brings arbitration against the state, thus prolonging the “soft” extractive violence. We analyse how grassroots movements formed coalitions with national and foreign NGOs, succeeded in stopping a Canadian mining project based on cyanide extraction, and inscribed Roșia Montană as a UNESCO World Heritage site. In response, the Canadian mining company instigated investment arbitration proceedings against Romania. The case illustrates that, despite the legal victory of the Romanian state, international investment arbitration potentially allows “green crime”, rendering it awfully lawful.

Abstract: The 2023-2025 farmers’ protests in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which were sparked by the influx of Ukrainian grain following the re-routing of Ukrainian grain shipments after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, attracted considerable political and social attention at both national and EU level. Most interpretations of these protests can be narrowed down to three somewhat competing assumptions: (i) the farmers’ protests were economically unfounded, as Ukrainian agricultural exports did not damage the CEE markets; (ii) the farmers’ protests were aligned with, or orchestrated by, a specific political force; (iii) these protests jeopardised the EU’s solidarity and support for Ukraine. This article analyses farmers’ protests in Poland, Romania and Hungary in light of the aforementioned assumptions. It reveals the complex socio-economic and political problems faced by farmers in CEE. It concludes that the farmers’ protests are indicative of a systemic crisis of the dominant agri-food regime in which the influx of Ukrainian grain was a trigger rather than a root cause of the crisis.