---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: The Corner House - new postings <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 12:17 AM Subject: NEW book from The Corner House To: [email protected]
--APOLOGIES for cross-postings-- --Please circulate to your networks, thank you-- July 2016 NEW book Licensed Larceny: Infrastructure, Financial Extraction and the global South by Nicholas Hildyard http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/licensed-larceny This new 144-page book, just published by Manchester University Press, argues that the current push worldwide for Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) is not about building infrastructure -- roads, bridges, hospitals, ports and railways -- for the benefit of society but about constructing new subsidies to benefit the already wealthy. It is less about financing development than developing finance. Understanding and exposing these processes is essential to challenge growing inequality. But equally important is critical reflection on how the wealthy are getting away with it. What does the wealth gap suggest about the need for new forms of organizing by those who would resist elite power? What oppositional strategies unsettle elite power instead of making it stronger? Chapter 1 summarises 'the injustices of wealth', inequality and wealth extraction. The case study in Chapter 2 traces the flows of money into and out of a PPP project in one of the world's poorest countries, Lesotho's national referral hospital, highlighting who benefits from them in an entirely lawful process. Chapter 3 describes the ways in which 'finance' views infrastructure: a road, hospital or oil pipeline is not 'infrastructure' unless it provides a stable, contracted cash flow for the long-term. For investors, 'infrastructure' has become an 'asset class', as Chapter 4 explores further. What started off with investments in economic infrastructure (utilities, roads, ports, airports) now include investments in resource/commodity infrastructure (oil and gas facilities, mining, forests), social infrastructure (hospitals, public housing, schools, prisons, law courts, military bases), information infrastructure (big data harvesting) and, still in its infancy, natural infrastructure (payments for so-called environmental services). The trajectory is profoundly undemocratic, elitist and unstable -- infrastructure-as-asset class is a bubble set to burst. Chapter 5 takes a global tour of massive infrastructure corridors planned to enable further economies of scale in the extraction, transportation and production of resources and consumer goods by compressing space by time. Chapter 6 raises questions about how resistance might more effectively challenge the trajectory of contemporary infrastructure finance – and the inequalities and injustices to which it gives rise. It is likely to be more fruitful when part of wider efforts to foster and support commons-focused resistance to accumulation. Copies of 'Licensed Larceny' can be ordered from Manchester University Press: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784994273/ ------ Other recent posts on The Corner House website 1) 'Nigger' and 'Nature': Expanding the Concept of Environmental Racism by Larry Lohmann, 6 May 2016 http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/nigger-and-nature Environmental racism is usually defined in terms of the racialised distribution of pollution. But it's also about the ways people, ethnic groups, nature and pollution are co-defined in the first place. This aspect of environmental racism is perhaps even more visible in forests than elsewhere. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/nigger-and-nature 2) What is the 'Green' in 'Green Growth'? by Larry Lohmann, April 2016 http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/what-green-green-growth 'Green growth' promises to: --respond to economic crisis by developing new environmental assets that can become profitable investments; --address ecological crises – climate change, water shortages, biodiversity depletion, deforestation – without imposing constraints; and --relieve the state of the increasing expense of environmental protection. Can this implausible triple promise ever be fulfilled? There are reasons for scepticism. This book chapter asserts that green growth is not about solving ecological crises but reinterpreting them, creating new opportunities that business can take advantage of while diffusing responsibility for them. It is full of contradictions and resistances to it are inevitable. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/what-green-green-growth 3) 'Energy and Climate as Labour Issues' by Nicholas Hildyard, April 2016 http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-and-climate-labour-issues Recognising that energy is a labour issue is critical if the shift away from fossil fuels is to do more than just help elites find new, greener tools for exploiting the majority world. This presentation at a seminar held at the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour asserted that coping with and resisting capitalist exploitation of labour means questioning just what ‘energy’ is: energy as the abstract 'stuff' that keeps factories working, consumers consuming, trains and cars running, the economy rolling and capital accumulating is very different from the actual energies that are part of living well. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-and-climate-labour-issues 4) 'Energy Transitions: Some Questions from the Netherworld' by Nicholas Hildyard, April 2016 http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-transitions The term 'energy transition' usually signifies a shift away from fossil fuels and the technologies that require them. The question that then follows is: how is this shift to be paid for? But there are pitfalls in looking at climate and energy like this. This public lecture raises questions about the direction of mainstream discussions on energy, technology, finance, accumulation, and organising. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-transitions 5) Mausam 6 by India Climate Justice Collective http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/mausam-6 The sixth issue of the new Mausam, a magazine connecting climate debates to local struggles over land, livelihood and food rights, highlights the acidification of the oceans caused by high emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; analyses the December 2015 Paris climate agreement; and reports on a WTO judgment against India’s solar power plans. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/mausam-6 We hope you find these posts interesting and useful, and welcome any comments you may have. best wishes from all at The Corner House. _______________________________________________ The Corner House notification mailing list http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk To edit subscription details or unsubscribe, visit http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/notification-l To unsubscribe from this list via email, send a blank email to: [email protected] with the word unsubscribe in the message subject line. 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