Conclusion: Attending to the Paradox: Public Governance and Inclusive International Platforms

Abstract

This study set out to explore the paradox of the enormity of difficulties indigenous peoples confront when faced with mega-resource extraction projects in spite of the plethora of international declarations and domestic legislation to protect their rights. The discrepancies between the rhetoric and reality of these charters and laws are a consequence of how power operates transnationally within states and international institutions and between the state, MNCs, and indigenous groups. In many ways, the neoliberal legislation of the 1990s and economic liberalization of key economic sectors around the globe have undermined the value and efficacy of these charters and legislation. By analysing this paradox as within, not outside, the workings of power and considering it as part of a broad-spectrum political project, this study examines how the state and an array of non-state entities engaged, albeit with different intensities and effects, to shape the conduct of resource extraction in different regions of the world. We employ the concept ‘transnational governmentality’ to capture the multiple vectors and movements of governance accompanying resource extraction in different parts of the globe. We seek to untangle the interconnections between strategies for conceiving and directing large-scale enterprise and the myriad of more or less calculated and systematic processes that endeavour to shape, regulate, and manage the behaviour of people associated with and influenced by mineral and hydrocarbon activity.