Resource sovereignty and accumulation in the blue economy: the case of seabed mining in Namibia
Abstract
Following its global emergence, the blue economy agenda is now touted as a mechanism through which the Republic of Namibia can achieve long-term sustainable and equitable growth. In (re)defining the ocean, seabed mining has been central to these discussions. Drawing on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews undertaken with key actors in Namibia and South Africa, between 2016 and 2017, as well as recent policy debates and discourse surrounding the potential extraction of marine phosphate in Namibia this article critically examines the framing of the marine environment as an extractive space. The blue economy presents opportunities for new forms of capitalist accumulation and this has resulted in struggles over who can accumulate in the marine sphere. This article therefore analyses the emerging and competing claims to sovereignty over this "new" resource frontier, including by state and non-state actors, and identifies which actors have been included or excluded from the blue economy agenda. In discussing sovereignty over this frontier and resources therein, it undertakes a rigorous analysis of the complications created by the ocean as a three-dimensional, voluminous, "borderless" space.
Key Words: Namibia, seabed mining, sovereignty, frontier, blue economy, EEZ
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Adar, K. 1987. A note on the role of African states in committee I of UNCLOS III. Ocean Development and International Law 18(6): 665-681.
Agnew, J. 1994. The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory. Review of International Political Economy 1(1): 53–80.
Andreucci, D., M. García-Lamarca, J. Wedekind and E. Swyngedouw. 2017. "Value Grabbing": a political ecology of rent. Capitalism Nature Socialism 28(3): 28-47.
Bebbington, A.J. 2013. Natural resource extraction and the possibilities of inclusive development: politics across space and time. ESID Working Paper No. 21: 1-41.
Barney, K. 2009. Laos and the making of a 'relational' resource frontier. Re-thinking Frontiers in Southeast Asia 175(2): 146-159.
Beresford, A. 2015. Power, patronage, and gatekeeper politics in South Africa, African Affairs 114(455): 226-248.
Bridge, G. 2010. The Hole World: scales and spaces of extraction. New Geographies 2: 43-48.
Bridge, G. 2014. Resource geographies II. Progress in Human Geography 38(1): 118-130.
Bridge, G. 2015. The Hole World: scales and spaces of extraction. Scenario 05.
Campling, L. 2012. The Tuna "commodity frontier": business strategies and environment in the industrial tuna fisheries of the Western Indian Ocean. Journal of Agrarian Change 12(2-3): 252-278.
Campling, L and A. Colás. 2018. Capitalism and the sea: sovereignty, territory and appropriation in the global ocean. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36(4): 776–794.
Campling, L and E. Havice. 2014. The problem of property in industrial fisheries. Journal of Peasant Studies 41(5): 707-727.
Chalfin, B. 2018 in press. On-shore, off-shore Takoradi: terraqueous urbanism, logistics, and oil governance in Ghana. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818800720
Chatterjee, P. 1993. Nationalist thought and the colonial world: a derivative discourse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Chatterjee, P., T. Guha-Thakurta and K. Bodhisattva (eds.). 2014. New cultural histories of India: materiality and practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Childs, J. 2016. Geography and resource nationalism: a critical review and reframing. The Extractive Industries and Society 3(2): 539–546.
Childs, J. 2018 in press. Extraction in four dimensions: time, space and the emerging geo(-)politics of deep sea mining. Geopolitics https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1465041
Chiripanhura, B and M. Teweldemedhin. 2016. An analysis of the fishing industry in Namibia: the structure, performance, challenges, and prospects for growth and diversification. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute.
Capps, G. 2016. Tribal-landed property: the value of the chieftaincy in contemporary Africa. Journal of Agrarian Change 16(3): 452-477.
Collier, P. and A. Hoeffler. 2005. Resource rents, governance, and conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution 49(4): 625-633.
Corson, C. and K. MacDonald. 2012. Enclosing the global commons: the Convention on Biological Diversity and green grabbing. Journal of Peasant Studies 39: 263–283.
Debmarine Namibia. n.d. Our history [accessed May 2 2018]. https://debmarinenamibia.com/main/ourhistory
Dodds, K. 2012. Graduated and paternal sovereignty: Stephen Harper, Operation Nanook 10, and the Canadian Arctic. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30(6): 989-1010.
Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea. 1982. Submissions, through the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, pursuant to article 76, paragraph 8, of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982', United Nations, 7 March [accessed 16 May 2018], available from: http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/commission_submissions.htm.
Du Pisani, A. (ed.). 2010. State, society and democracy: a reader in Namibian politics. Macmillan Education.
Easterling, K. 2014. Extrastatecraft: the power of infrastructure space. London: Verso.
Edwards, M. 2004. Civil society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Egede, E. 2011. African states and the evolution of the regime of the area and the common heritage of mankind. In Egede, E. (ed.) Africa and the deep seabed regime: politics and international law of the common heritage of mankind. Berlin: Springer. Pp. 1-30.
Ellis, M.H. 2015. Over the borderline? Rethinking territoriality at the margins of empire and nation in the modern Middle East (part I). History Compass 13(8): 411–422.
Emel, J., M. Huber and H. Makenea. 2011. Extracting sovereignty: capital, territory, and gold mining in Tanzania. Political Geography 30(2): 70-79.
Erastus, A.N. 2002. The development of the Namibianisation policy in the hake subsector, 1994-1999. NEPRU Working Paper 82. Namibia: NEPRU.
Evans, G. 1990. Walvis Bay - South Africa, Namibia and the question of sovereignty. International Affairs 66(3): 559-568.
Ey, M. and M. Sherval. 2016. Exploring the minescape: engaging with the complexity of the extractive sector. Area 48(2): 176-182.
Felli, R. 2014. On climate rent. Historical Materialism 22 (3–4): 251–280.
Ferguson, J. 2005. Seeing like an oil company: space, security, and global capital in neoliberal Africa. American Anthropologist 107(3): 377-382.
Filippelli, G.M. 2011. Phosphate rock formation and marine phosphorus geochemistry: the deep time perspective. Chemosphere 84(6): 759-766.
Frayne, B. 2005. Eating away from home: rural productivity and urban survival in Namibia. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 23(1): 51–76.
Giresse, P. 2007. Tropical and sub-tropical West Africa - marine and continental changes during the Late Quaternary. Elsevier.
Grobler, J. 2014. Namibia slipping into endemic corruption. Al Jazeera [accessed May 22 2018]. www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/09/namibia-slipping-into-endemic-corruption-201492131519733850.html.
Gümplová, P. 2014. Restraining permanent sovereignty over natural resources. Enrahonar. Quaderns de Filosofia (53): 93-114.
Haas, P.M. 2012. The political economy of ecology: prospects for transforming the world economy at Rio + 20. Global Policy 3(1): 94-101.
Hannigan, J. 2016. The geopolitics of deep oceans. Cambridge: Polity.
Heller, C and L. Pezzani. 2011. The left-to-die boat. The deadly drift of a migrants' boat in the Central Mediterranean [accessed April 29 2018]. https://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/left-die-boat/ 26 March 2018.
IUCN. 2012. Sovereignty and sovereign rights [accessed April 20 2018].
https://www.iucn.org/content/sovereignty-and-sovereign-rights.
Jessop, B. 2004. Critical semiotic analysis and cultural political economy. Critical Discourse Studies 1(2): 159-174.
Jones, J.J. 2017. On desolate sands: beached shipwrecks in the Namibian coastal landscape. In Harris, L. (ed.). Sea ports and sea power. Springer. Pp. 89-100.
Keane, J. 1998. Civil society: old images, new visions. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Keulder, C. 2000. State, society, and democracy: a reader in Namibian politics. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan.
Kirchner, C. and A. Leiman. 2014. Resource rents and resource management policies in Namibia's post-Independence hake fishery. Maritime Studies 13(1): 1–23.
Le Billion, P. 2001. Angola's political economy of war: the role of oil and diamonds, 1975-2000. African Affairs 100(398): 55-80.
Le Meur, P., N. Arndt, P. Christmann and V. Geronimi. 2016. Deep-sea mining prospects in French Polynesia: governance and the politics of time. Marine Policy 95: 380-387.
M'Gonigle, M. and J. Dempsey. 2003. Ecological innovation in an age of bureaucratic closure: the case of the global forest. Studies in Political Economy 70: 97-124.
Malkki, L. 1995. Purity and exile: violence, memory and national cosmology among Hutu refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Melber, H. 2003. From controlled change to changed control: the case of Namibia. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 21(2): 267–284.
Melber, H. 2007. Transitions in Namibia: which changes for whom? Stockholm: Nordiska Afrika-institutet.
Melber, H. 2014. Understanding Namibia: the trials of independence. London: C. Hurst & Co.
Melber, H. 2015. Post-liberation democratic authoritarianism: the case of Namibia. Politikon 42(1): 45-66.
Miller, C. 2005. The design and management of international scientific assessments: lessons from the climate regime in A.E. Farrell and J. Jäger (eds.). Assessments of regional and global environmental risks: designing processes for the effective use of science in decision-making. London: Routledge. Pp. 187-205.
MME. 2006. Namibia Mining Cadastre Portal [accessed May 10 2018] https://maps.landfolio.com/Namibia/.
Moisio, S. and A. Paasi. 2013. Beyond state-centricity: geopolitics of changing state spaces. Geopolitics 18(2): 255-266.
Moore, J.W. 2010. "Amsterdam is standing on Norway" Part II: the global North Atlantic in the ecological revolution of the long seventeenth century. Journal of Agrarian Change 10 (2): 188–227.
Neimark, B. 2016. Biofuel imaginaries: the emerging politics surrounding 'inclusive' private sector development in Madagascar. Journal of Rural Studies 45: 146-156.
Nii Botchway, F. 1998. Land ownership and responsibility for the mining environment in Ghana. Natural Resources Journal 38(4): 509–536.
NMP (n.d) Namibian Marine Phosphate FAQs [accessed March 26 2018].
http://www.namphos.com/home/faqs/item/98-namibian-marine-phosphate-faqs.html.
Nyaungwa, N. and A. Winning. 2018. UPDATE 1-Namibia drops into recession as construction, retail slump [accessed March 29 2018]. https://www.reuters.com/article/namibia-gdp/update-1-namibia-drops-into-recession-as-construction-retail-slump-idUSL8N1RB2FO.
Oelofsen, B.W. 1999. Fisheries management: the Namibian approach. ICES Journal of Marine Science 56: 999–1004.
OLA. 2015. Submissions, through the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Article 76: paragraph 8. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Ong, A. 2000. Graduated sovereignty in South-East Asia. Theory, Culture & Society 17(4): 55-75.
Pallet, J. 1995. The Sperrgebiet, Namibia's least known wilderness. Windhoek: Desert Research Foundation of Namibia and Namdeb.
Paterson, B., C. Kirchner and R.E. Ommer. 2013. A short history of the Namibian hake fishery—a social-ecological analysis. Ecology and Society 18(4): 66.
Peluso, N. and M.J. Watts (eds.). 2001. Violent environments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Phillips, J., E. Hailwood and A. Brooks.2015. Sovereignty, the 'resource curse' and the limits of good governance: a political economy of oil in Ghana. Review of African Political Economy 43(147): 1-17.
Polus, A., D. Kopinski and W. Tycholiz. 2015. Ready or not: Namibia as a potentially successful oil producer. Africa Spectrum 50(2): 31-55.
Ramirez-Llodra. E., A. Brandt, R. Danovaro, B. De Mol, E. Escobar, C.R. German and M. Vecchione. 2010. Deep, diverse and definitely different: unique attributes of the world's largest ecosystem. Biogeosciences 7(9): 2851-2899.
Republic of Namibia. 2017. Namibia's 5th National Development Plan. Namibia [accessed May 29 2018]. http://www.gov.na/documents/10181/14226/NDP+5/5a0620ab-4f8f-4606-a449-ea0c810898cc?version=1.0.
Republic of Namibia. 2009. Continental Shelf Submission of Namibia. Executive Summary [accessed May 29 2018]. http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/submission_nam_50_2009.htm.
Richardson, T. and G. Weszkalnys. 2014. Introduction: resource materialities. Anthropological Quarterly 87(1): 5-30.
Saunders, C. 2016. South Africa and Namibia: aspects of a relationship, historical and contemporary. South African Journal of International Affairs 23(3): 347-364.
Scott, J. 1998. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Silver, J., N. Gray, L. Campbell, L. Fairbanks and R. Gruby. 2015. Blue economy and competing discourses in international oceans governance. The Journal of Environment and Development 24(2): 135-160.
Silvester, J. 2015. Forging the Fifth Province. Journal of Southern African Studies 41(3): 505-518.
Sjöstedt, M. and A. Sundström. 2015. Coping with illegal fishing: an institutional account of success and failure in Namibia and South Africa. Biological Conservation 189: 78-85.
Snyder, R. and R. Bhavnani. 2005. Diamonds, blood, and taxes. Journal of Conflict Resolution 49(4): 563-597.
Steinberg, P. 1999. Navigating to multiple horizons: toward a geography of ocean-space. Professional Geographer 51(3): 366-375.
Steinberg, P. 2001. The social construction of the ocean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg P. 2013. Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime regions. Atlantic Studies 10(2): 156-169.
Steinberg, P. and K. Peters. 2015. Wet ontologies, fluid spaces: giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 33(2): 247-264.
Suárez-de Vivero, J.L. 2012. The extended continental shelf: a geographical perspective of article 76 of the implementation of article 76 of UNCLOS. Ocean and Coastal Management 73: 113–126.
SWAPO. 1976. The Constitution and the Political Program. Political Program of the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) of Namibia. Adapted by the Meeting of the Central Committee. SWAPO Department for Publicity & Information. Lusaka: Zambia.
Tetreault, D. 2017. Three forms of political ecology. Ethics and the Environment 22(2): 1-23.
The Republic of Namibia.1998. The Namibian Constitution. Article 95. Promotion of the Welfare of the People: 46.
The Namibian. 2016. Four file case against phosphate licence [accessed April 2 2018]. https://www.namibian.com.na/157681/archive-read/Four-file-case-against-phosphate-licence.
Tsing, A. 2003. Natural resources and capitalist frontiers. Economic and Political Weekly 38(48): 5100-5106.
UNECA. 2015. Africa's blue economy: a policy handbook. Ethiopia: Economic Commission for Africa.
Vandergeest, P. and N.L. Peluso. 1995. Territorialization and state power in Thailand. Theory and Society 35: 385–426.
Wallace, M. 2011. A history of Namibia: from the beginning to 1990. London: C Hurst & Co.
Wapner, P. 1998. Reorienting state sovereignty: rights and responsibilities in the environmental age. In K. Liftin (ed.). The greening of sovereignty in world politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 275-297.
Watts, M.J. 2003. Economies of violence. more oil, more blood. Economic and Political Weekly 38(48): 5089-5099.
Weylandt, M. 2017. The Namibian anti-corruption strategy 2016-2019: an overview and analysis. Namibia: Institute for Public Policy Research.
Winder, G. and R. Le Heron. 2017. Assembling a blue economy moment? Geographic engagement with globalizing biological-economic relations in multi-use marine environments. Dialogues in Human Geography 7(1): 3-26.
Winterfeldt, V. 2002. Tradiationalism – social reality of a myth. In Winterfeldt, V., T. Fox, and P. Mufune (eds.). Namibia, society, sociology. Windhoek: University of Namibia Press.
World Bank. 2017a. What is the Blue Economy? [accessed August 30 2018]. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2017/06/06/blue-economy.
World Bank. 2017b. Namibia Data Bank [accessed April 10 2018]. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/namibia.
World Trade Organisation. 2010. World Trade Report. Trade in natural resources. Switzerland: WTO Publications.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2458/v26i1.23025
