ABSTRACT
The introduction explores the interconnectedness among global extractivism dynamics, climate change and resource grabbing. By showing how extractivism relates to the current global resource rush and by underlining the emerging enforcement of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, this chapter gives a sense of how resource grabbing is currently unfolding under environmental discourses that may go beyond green grabbing patterns. The chapter introduces the main findings of the book by putting forward the initial inputs regarding the emergence of ‘green extractivism’ and also makes advances on the exploration of ‘variations of extractivism’, a typology that constitutes the kickstart of the understanding of different manifestations of extractivism and the differentiated injustices it reproduces. This typology resulted from the analysis of four study sites that are described in the current chapter, namely: (1) South African company Sasol and natural gas extraction in Southern Mozambique; (2) Portucel Moçambique and its eucalyptus tree plantation project; (3) Gilé National Reserve and a combination of REDD+ and Climate-Smart Agriculture and (4) Massingir District, which includes a big conservation project, rehabilitation of a dam and an agro-extractivist biofuel production investment. The last section of the chapter offers a synthesis of methods and methodology.
