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

可持续品牌产品的市场是一个庞大而快速增长的行业的一部分。为了满足消费者对环境可持续性的要求，公司依赖于可能在原产地减轻劳动力和环境影响的供应链。本项目探讨了这样一个供应链，询问消费者对旨在提高销售点可持续性的产品的需求是否会对这些产品所来自的社区的可持续性产生不利影响。该项目特别关注小规模采掘环境，以及它们是否对环境和经济可持续性的总体措施产生影响。将传播这项研究的数据，以增进公众对科学和科学方法的了解，并为有关采矿和新市场商业化的公共政策提供信息。该项目通过为研究人员所在的西班牙裔服务机构（HSI）的第一代少数民族学生提供研究机会，扩大了在科学领域代表性不足的群体的参与，并推进了科学教育。本研究考察了劳动密集型产品的提取，服务需求的环境可持续的产品。它特别关注手工和小规模采矿环境，这是采掘环境中的主要就业来源，自2000年以来有所加强，但研究相对不足。社会科学家主要研究石油和天然气等自然资源的大规模工业开采，而较少关注小规模和劳动密集型的采矿类型。这项研究集中于三个领域：小型采掘业的劳动安排和工作条件；公司营销这些产品的策略；以及消费者使用它们的目的。研究人员将人种学方法，包括参与者观察、半结构化访谈和照片记录，与采掘地点的采矿量定量数据相结合。该研究为自然资源开采对经济、社会和环境的影响提供了科学知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.