ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of resource sectors over the past two decades has seen many policies seeking to address the harmful effects of extractive activities on environments and communities. Environmental impact assessments, corporate social responsibility programs, sustainability principles, and the consultation of affected communities have become part of governance tools making land “investable” for extraction. Extractive violence has three main dimensions. First is the violence of dispossession , often “compensated” with cash payments, temporary jobs, and “alternative” livelihoods marked by their unfairness, their uneven allocation, and the false “equivalences” they seek to create between incomparable entities across incommensurable ontological and epistemic differences. Indigenous peoples are social groups self-identifying as distinct from the settler population and who, “irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions”. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a debate on prior consultation is emerging, but experiences are scarce.
