Скачать или смотреть Cobalt: A Digital Enclosure in the DRC

Argues that the global green transition is a form of neocolonialism.
Key claims:
The pursuit of clean cobalt for EVs and AI by the Global North systematically dispossesses artisanal miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Mechanisms of this green enclosure:
1. Financial Moat: The DRC's 2025 cobalt quota system, with its 10% royalty prepayment, financially excludes ~2 million small-scale miners.
2. Digital Redlining: Traceability requirements (e.g. blockchain) are technologically and financially prohibitive for artisanal miners, consolidating multinational corporate control.
Consequences:
Unequal Exchange: A 245% cobalt price surge resulted in no local wage increase, subsidizing the Global North.
Necropolitics: This system criminalizes the survival of local populations, exposing them to slow death and rendering them disposable for a clean supply chain.

Claims that the global green transition, particularly the demand for cobalt for EVs and AI, is replicating historical colonial patterns through advanced digital and financial mechanisms, a process termed green colonialism. The main claim is that the pursuit of a clean and stable mineral supply chain by the Global North is achieved through the systemic dispossession and erasure of artisanal miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making the green transition a sophisticated enclosure movement. The logic is that the DRC's 2025 cobalt quota system, which mandates a massive 10% royalty prepayment, acts as an impenetrable financial moat that legally and financially excludes approximately two million small-scale miners. This dispossession is further enforced by digital redlining, where ethical sourcing and traceability requirements (like blockchain verification) are technologically and financially prohibitive for artisanal miners but easily absorbed by multinational corporations, thus consolidating control over the resource. This system maintains a grotesque arithmetic of unequal exchange, where a 245% surge in cobalt prices yields almost no change in local wages, effectively subsidizing the Global North's clean energy and AI industries. The video uses the framework of necropolitics to argue that the decree is not just a regulatory measure but an act of power that criminalizes the survival of the local population, exposing them to a state of slow death and transforming them into disposable obstacles for the clean supply chain.