AFF participates in a form of ecological imperialism which uses the “Global South” as “Cheap Nature” which can be exploited for “Great Power” resource accumulation

In this section, we unpack ecological imperialism, distilling its core dynamics and characteristics, to provide the theoretical framework for the kernel of our argument: mining FDI is not a force for development but rather the manifestation of ecological imperialism in Africa generally, and Ghana in particular (see Clark and Foster 2009). Ecological imperialism sheds light on the disastrous ecological implications of the exploitation of Ghana by global mining capital; an aspect of imperialism so often eclipsed by the materialist thrust of mainstream discourses of imperialism, new imperialism, and neocolonialism, espoused at various times by the likes of Vladimir Lenin, Kwame Nkrumah, Samir Amin, David Harvey, and Patrick Bond. Usually emphasized in the classical imperialism literature are economic exploitation and the inherently unfair terms of trade in the way that Africa is integrated into the capitalist global economy. To be added to these, however, are the commodification and pillage of the ecosystems of countries and communities endowed with high-value and much-sought-after natural resources such as gold, diamonds, bauxite, and cobalt. The extraction of these resources makes mining capital one of the ferocious ecological imperialist forces in Africa. Ecological imperialism is driven, shaped, and characterized by a number of interrelated, underlying dynamics. First, there is a single, expanding capitalist world/global economy that accumulates across the world and individual nation-states' boundaries. This economy is characterized by the international division of labor between the core, mainly consisting of advanced and industrialised economies producing and trading manufactured goods, and the periphery, with developing or less-developed, or relatively unindustrialised economies producing and trading in raw materials. 'The industrial economy', Martinez-Alier et al. (2016: 468) argue, "has a voracious appetite for fresh supplies; it goes to the commodity extraction frontiers to get new resources, in greater and greater quantities. And it deposits the waste anywhere it can (the atmosphere, the oceans, the rivers and soils...)" (See also Moore 2015: 158-160). The periphery is the "commodity extraction frontiers" (emphasis original). The core and periphery division may coincide with some geographical divisions, such as continents; but they do not necessarily equate to them, nor is the core/periphery division static and unchanging. Over time, this international division of labor has changed, with countries such as China, hitherto in the periphery, now in the core; producing and exporting manufactured goods to both the core and periphery. Analytically and ontologically, the core and periphery are better viewed as complementary parts of the world economy (see Hopkins and Wallerstein 1972; see also Biel 2012). Despite changes in the international division of labor, driven partly by neoliberal globalization, the core/periphery division is key to the conceptualization of ecological imperialism; especially with respect to Africa where the new international division of labor still leaves most of it in the periphery, consigned to the role of a quarry for drawing raw material to the core, with all the deleterious ecological effects. Second, and closely linked to the first, we live in a single world ecology in which we are part and parcel of, yet humans also make and remake the ecology through the processes and means by which we produce and reproduce ourselves materially and socially (Moore 2015). Karl Marx in his usual eruditeness and eloquence described the organic relationship between the re(production) of human beings and nature; Labor is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way, he simultaneously changes his own nature (Marx 1976: 283). Human beings across the world, as the work of human and anthropological ecologists illustrates (see Richardson et al. 1996; Johnson and Earle 2000), have throughout the millennia of their existence on earth appropriated the environment to produce and reproduce themselves. From simple foraging/hunting and gathering societies to more complex industrial societies, human beings have exploited the resources of the nonhuman environment in which they live for their survival. Ecological imperialism, as discussed below, is spawned by a specific mode of appropriating the ecology, not for survival, but for money. Third, the sustainability of the world ecology that we live in varies with the imperatives and modes of our production and reproduction; that is whether we appropriate the ecology, as we must do, to sustain livelihoods or as a commodity saleable for profit. The former is socialized appropriation, a necessity of life, the dynamics and characteristics of which are more ecologically sustainable than the latter, capitalist appropriation. This is an avaricious appropriation, the logics and mechanisms of which are inherently destructive to the ecology (Biel 2012; Moore 2015). Socialized appropriation, as observed above, is natural and engaged by humankind across time and space, capitalist appropriation is specific to the capitalist mode of production. Since its emergence in England in the eighteenth century, capitalism is inherently contradictory to the sustainable appropriation of the ecology by humankind. It is "largely indifferent to the complexity and continuity of ecological and social structures, and how they may be governed by different rhythms, seasons and social relations from those associated with the capitalist market system" (Gill 2018: 248). Capital sees nature not as a livelihood resource to be appropriated sustainably, but as something to be capitalized; namely, to be commodified and converted to more and more cash (Moore 2015: 160-161). It is not only in normal times that the accumulation imperative and mechanisms of capital are inherently damaging to the ecology. They are even worse during its inherent cyclical crises. In its effort to reinvent itself out of these crises, capital becomes more and more voracious in its "appetite for new frontiers of appropriation" (Moore 2015: 161; see also Biel 2012); thus, engineering ecological imperialism. The last point is that capital's indifference to the sustainability of the ecology – and the pillage of the ecology that accompanies it – neither distributes the benefits and losses of capitalist accumulation equally between the periphery and the core of the capitalist economy, nor does it do so between classes in both the core and the periphery. So, in addition to the exploitative economic terms by which some regions in the periphery are integrated into the global economy is the unequal ecological exchange between them and those in the core. Both in normal times of accumulation and during its cyclical crises, capital engenders disastrous ecological effects in the periphery: it extracts massive resources from the periphery to the core, and in the process wreaks havoc on the ecosystem through extractive mechanisms such as mining. In addition, the negative effects of its accumulation mechanisms in the core spreads to the periphery through natural forces, or are deliberately channelled there by the deliberate actions of the forces of capitalism, such as the dumping of waste, including e-waste in the periphery. "The Global South countries", Oulu (2016: 447) argues, "thus tend to serve as a source of raw materials and sink for waste products for industrialized countries… Such unequal material-ecological exchanges perpetuate global inequalities and uneven environmental impacts which disproportionately harm the people in developing countries but enhance the productive capacity of the developed." (See also Clark and Foster 2009: 311-312; Martinez-Alier et al. 2016: 468). All the preceding dynamics of the capitalist global economy interact to configure and drive ecological imperialism; the motor that has driven (and continues to drive) capitalist accumulation since its origins. Even though capitalism emerged in and engendered industrialization in the Western industrialized countries, these developments needed the appropriation of ecosystems outside their spatial confines. They needed land, labor, minerals (silver and gold), food, and other raw materials from Africa, the New World, and beyond. The exploitation of these natural resources, just as the exploitation of minerals and oil in Africa today, wrought implacable ecological destruction. From the onset, therefore, ecological imperialism was critical to capitalism and capitalist development in the core centers of the capitalist world system (Crosby 2004; Moore 2015; Pomeranz 2000). The extent to which capital's appropriation of the ecology of Africa and the New World influenced the development of the core capitalist countries is debatable, but the influence itself is not. As correctly noted by Pomeranz (2000), the pillaging of the ecology of Africa and the New World was not the sole motor of European development, but it provided some of the essential land-intensive resources that Europe lacked but needed to drive its industrial revolution. Britain, the cradle of the industrial revolution, took advantage of the core-periphery relationship of the capitalist world-system to gain "access to some of the landintensive products that all the major Eurasian cores were, by the late eighteenth century, finding it difficult to secure enough of (Pomeranz 2000: 185-86). Africa has served and continues to serve as part of the 'cheap Nature' that capital appropriates on a world scale for the accumulation of wealth and for reinventing itself out of its cyclical crises (Moore 2015). It seems, therefore, that ecological imperialism – in the way that it is central to capitalist accumulation – will be with Africa for a long time. Large-scale mining by foreign companies represents one of the ligaments of continuity through the history of ecological imperialism in Africa. It is this present-day ecological imperialism in Ghana that we turn to below.