POLITICAL SCIENTIST Thea Riofrancos has written extensively on the politics and economics of mining. “Extraction is a very old practice. We can say that it is as old as human history,” said Riofrancos in a Granta interview this year. With the rise of European empires in the 15th century, extraction led to conquest in search of valuable minerals. Conquest led to territorial occupation, consolidation of forced labor, and centralized foreign control over resources. And it is all still happening — now, on a planetary scale. This is why Pope Francis describes the Earth as the “new poor,” and thus as a locus of liberation.
The logics of extraction and occupation are entwined. Driven by economics, both view certain human lives, and any part of nature, as marketable and disposable by the cheapest means of violence and destruction. These logics thrive on the constant retraumatizing of the environment and of Black and brown bodies, to keep them compliant and prevent them from consolidating power. These are presented as necessary sacrifices for civilization to “advance.” Colonial laws remain in many post-colonial nations, and elite communities in those countries continue to benefit from resource control, perpetuating the violence and oppression of the colonial project.
In the age of climate collapse, these sinful logics come back to haunt us. For example, as the geographer Kenston Perry has highlighted, the Caribbean region has faced enormous losses from climate-induced natural disasters. This is a result of colonial systems that prioritized extractive plantation agriculture instead of protective ecosystems and disregarded Indigenous practices and knowledge of the environment. The fate of the poor, the marginalized, and those on the wrong side of western colonialism is inextricably tied up with the fate of the planet.
The environmental crises in Congo from mining and in Gaza from war provide two examples of how extraction and occupation are twin sins.
Between 1998 and 2007 in the first and second Congo Wars, there were up to 5.4 million civilian deaths (including all excess mortality, not just deaths directly resulting from combat) according to the International Rescue Committee. This was a massive humanitarian crisis. Now the land and bodies of the Congolese people face an additional threat from mining industries ravaging the land in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and consigning millions more to die.
The DRC sits on the largest reserve of cobalt in the world. This hard metal, often extracted as a by-product of nickel and copper mining, is a critical element for lithium-ion batteries, used in everything from weapon systems to smart phones. In the mid-2000s, the Chinese government bought up most copper-cobalt industrial mining sites in the DRC. Since 2010, the global demand for cobalt has tripled.
Mining operations have forcibly evicted hundreds of thousands of people. Furthermore, a 2023 report from Amnesty International found that the acidic dust produced from cobalt excavation blows off mining sites and settles on farming land, crops, and waterways. Over time, the land becomes infertile, crops are too toxic for consumption, and water too poisonous to drink. In March, the U.K.-based corporate watchdog Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), in partnership with DRC-based African Resources Watch, released one of the first in-depth studies of the environmental and human rights impacts in communities near large cobalt and copper mines. Preliminary results show that industrial pollution has compromised five major waterways. “The Katapula and the Kalenge rivers were classed as ‘hyper-acidic,’ while the Dipeta and Dilala rivers were ‘very acidic,’” RAID reported. These rivers can no longer sustain fish populations and the water is toxic for humans and animals.
RAID’s initial interviews with impacted communities also point to negative impacts on women’s health. “A staggering 56 percent of those interviewed reported that the pollution is affecting the gynaecological and reproductive health of women and girls, resulting in irregular menstruation, urogenital infections, more frequent miscarriages and, in some cases, birth defects,” the report indicated.
In addition, armed groups connected to governments (particularly the governments of Rwanda and Uganda) battle with international mining corporations over control of the mining zones. In Congo, the mining interests follow the old colonial patterns — particularly the United States, Belgium, and France — with China as the new leader. These countries are all complicit in what has been sold as the “clean green” revolution to fight climate change. The true cost of this violent occupation includes the displacement of millions, sexual violence, human slavery, youth with no future, and the death of the land itself.
What about Gaza? The Israeli military became an occupying force when they forcibly evicted Palestinians from their homes and land during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In October 2023, following a horrendous attack on Israel by Hamas militants, Israel launched a brutal assault on Gaza, which continues. At the time of this writing, Israeli military action has killed nearly 36,000 people in Gaza since October 7 — overwhelmingly women and children.
While many are aware of this humanitarian catastrophe, few understand the impact on the environment. Early reports from U.N. investigations show a major increase in pollution of land, soil, and water, as well as the release of hazardous materials into the air. Estimates show bombed water and sewage treatment plants are releasing at least 100,000 cubic meters of sewage and wastewater daily onto the land or into the Mediterranean Sea. Amnesty International has documented the use of white phosphorus shells by Israel in Gaza, which can acidify soil, destroying ecosystems. Israel’s airstrikes and bulldozers have systematically targeted orchards, olive groves, greenhouses, and other agricultural lands. An environmental crisis looms, not only from land destruction but also through contamination of groundwater by munitions and increased particulate matter in the air. In Gaza, the logic of militarized occupation has led not only to potential genocide, but also to the danger that the land of the Fertile Crescent will become infertile.
The fate of the poor and the fate of the land are inextricably linked. When Pope Francis delineates the Earth as the “new poor,” this is what he means.
How will this call Christians to ecological conversion? Do we understand ecological sinfulness in a manner that brings us to holy rage, the birthright of communities around the world in the wake of imperial domination? As a liberation theologian, for me this means not looking to institutions or nation-states as centers for growth and stability. Liberation theology takes its point of analysis from the poor, from the everyday, and looks from there to the institution. Asian liberationists focus on Christ as the poor monk who teaches in the villages and organizes the struggle against mammon, the system that fosters injustice. It is a model of church as social movement. So, we must think and act more cooperatively and strategically, celebrate collective action, and be guided by the social movements and complex narratives that Pope Francis says provoke “a multilateralism ‘from below.’”
These cries “from below” demand that Christians rouse ourselves to the work of transformative and radical justice, as Mary does in the Magnificat. Spoken by a Palestinian Jewish woman living in a situation of occupation, her Magnificat is a manifesto, proclaiming a social, political, and economic revolution: “[God] has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:53). Her canticle is rooted in God’ s promise of liberation for the poor. Here we must understand poverty multidimensionally as all Creation groaning under the brutality of extraction and occupation. Poverty is a condition in which a community, individual, being, or creation is purposely violated and extracted from — then systematically denied justice. Yet God does promise liberation. Liberation is not separate from salvation; it’s the actual meaning of biblical salvation. Mary stands in defiance of empire. So must we. With Mary, organized communities and workers must together look empires in the eyes and say: “God has brought down rulers from their thrones.”
Anupama Ranawana is a theologian and political economist working for Christian Aid. She is author of A Liberation for the Earth: Climate, Race and Cross.
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