Labor and Environmental Implications in the Commodification of Natural Resources for Sustainably Branded Markets

The market for sustainably branded products is part of a massive and rapidly growing industry. In meeting the environmental sustainability demands of the consumer, companies rely on supply chains that may have mitigating labor and environmental implications at the point of origin. This project explores such a supply chain, asking whether consumer demand for products designed to improve sustainability at the point of sale adversely impact sustainability in the communities from which those products originate.

The project looks specifically at small-scale extractive contexts, and whether in the aggregate they have consequences for overall measures in environmental and economic sustainability. Data from the study will be disseminated to improve the public's understanding of science and the scientific method, and inform public policies related to mining and commercialization in new markets.

The project broadens the participation of groups underrepresented in science and advance scientific education by providing research opportunities for first-generation minority students at the researcher’s home institution, a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).

This study examines the labor-intensive extraction of products that service demands for environmentally sustainable products. It looks specifically at artisanal and small-scale mining contexts, which are major sources of employment in extractive contexts, and have intensified since 2000, but relatively understudied. Social scientists have mainly studied mass-scale industrial extraction of natural resources such as oil and gas while paying less attention to small-scale and more labor-intensive types of mining.

The study focuses on three areas: the labor arrangements and working conditions involved in small-scale extractive industries; the strategies used by companies to market those products; and the purposes for which consumers use them. The researcher integrates ethnographic methods including participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, and photo documentation, with quantitative data on mining volumes at extractive sites.

The study contributes scientific knowledge on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of natural resource extraction.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.