Works in favor of extraction: Labor in land-use competition

Despite their negative social and environmental consequences, claims to land for resource extraction are dominantly asserted under conditions of land-use competition. The 'success' of the extractive expansion relies on very specific labor arrangements. Through dispossession and unfulfilled promises of long-term employment, an overabundance of labor (or employment gap) is generated at extractive sites. Poverty is exploited in order to sustain business as usual: environmental degradation, low average wages and high wage inequality, and abysmal working conditions. In resolving global land-use competition for sustainability transformations, it is necessary to address labor arrangements as a mechanism through which the claim to land for resource extraction is asserted.