A/HRC/41/54 20. It is beyond the scope of the Special Rapporteur’s mandate, and not the objective of the present report, to condemn all forms of natural resource extraction as inherently unequal, unjust or discriminatory. In the report, the Special Rapporteur focuses on the contemporary, dominant modes of global extractivism and their historical antecedents, on which there is a scientific consensus that such modes are altogether environmentally unsustainable. 16 The Special Rapporteur treats the existential environmental threat embodied in the dominant logics and processes of the extractivism economy as a fundamental and urgent human rights concern. In other words, the Special Rapporteur focuses on equality and non-discrimination concerns, but does so against the backdrop of the reality that without fundamental reform, the global extractivism economy will one day make our planet unliveable for humans. 21. Finally, in the report, the Special Rapporteur does not treat the different facets of the extractivism economy with the depth that is warranted by the complexity of each. Producing a single report that fully elaborates each of these facets and their racially unequal or discriminatory dimensions would be impossible. Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur does not address the issues of racial justice raised by the extractivism economy, including as they intersect with a human rights analysis of reparations, economic racism and justice and related considerations. As a result, the present report should be seen as opening the door for further, much-needed analysis of how race, national origin, ethnicity and gender influence the winners and the losers in the extractivism economy. III. Colonial racial antecedents of the global extractivism economy 22. The contemporary political economy of global extractivism cannot properly be understood without reference to its colonial origins. This is especially the case as regards racial equality and discrimination. Some have noted, for example, that the history of Latin America “is inseparably linked to raw-materials extraction”.17 During each historical phase, specific forms of natural resource appropriation have been central to the distribution of political and economic power, and to structuring social and cultural relations. In the colonial phase between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, extractivism entailed European colonial and settler “forced appropriation of precious metals, especially gold and silver, and of land areas, and the establishment of a specific colonial system of domination”. 18 This process, which made Latin America one of the world’s leading suppliers of raw materials, also made the region essential to the colonial regime of accumulation and capitalism. 19 The other side of the coin for the peoples indigenous to these territories was their brutal decimation and dispossession. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples made an extremely relevant observation when she said that it was safe to say that the attitudes, doctrines and policies developed to justify the taking of lands from indigenous peoples had been and continued to be largely driven by the economic agendas of States (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2001/21, para. 23). 23. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Africa was the site of rapacious human extraction, which formed the core of the slave trade. Historians have described the period following the abolition of the slave trade as one of commercial transition in Africa, which – along with a commodity boom from 1835 to 1885 – paved the way for the full colonization of the continent.20 Through the framework agreed at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial States collectively affirmed the processes of colonialism that 16 17 18 19 20 6 https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/27517; and http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2016/09/OCI_the_skys_limit_2016_FINAL_2.pdf. Brand, Dietz and Lang, “Neo-extractivism in Latin America”, p. 136. Ibid., p. 137. Ibid. See Ewout Frankema, Jeffrey Williamson, and Pieter Woltjer, “An economic rationale for the West African scramble? The commercial transition and the commodity price boom of 1835–1885”, Journal of Economic History, vol. 78, No. 1.