Widerstand an den Rändern: Umweltgerechtigkeitskonflikte zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie

Abstract

Environmental justice conflicts emerge where capitalist appropriation of nature threatens livelihoods and affected groups politicize these inequalities. The article examines two contrasting cases embedded in global production networks: the North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania and the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin Brandenburg in Germany. Drawing on dependency theory and the global production networks approach, both conflicts are analyzed as expressions of a shared dynamic of capitalist nature appropriation that realizes profits transnationally while externalizing ecological and social costs locally. At the same time, the capacities of social movements differ significantly along the center-periphery axis. The article argues that local environmental justice conflicts are increasingly connected and networked transnationally along global production networks and that such networking may partially counteract existing power asymmetries between the center and the periphery by opening access to publics, legal arenas and support structures.