Miners of proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin tend to gravitate towards regions with cheap energy. We analyze risks associated with this geographical centralization by exploiting a local electricity supply shock. Compared to a control group consisting of an energy-efficient proof-of-stake cryptocurrency, the blockchainâs capacity for processing transactions decreases while transaction fees increase substantially. The increased settlement latency on the blockchain also reduces secondary market quality as seen in higher exchange rate volatility, lower liquidity, and larger price differences between exchanges. Overall, our results suggest that geographical centralization poses short-lived but potentially severe system-wide risks to proof-of-work networks.
Effective traceability management in mineral resource development faces persistent challenges including information asymmetry, data falsification, and verification difficulties across complex value chains. This paper proposes a comprehensive blockchain-enabled traceability evaluation framework integrating distributed ledger technology with systematic assessment methodologies. A four-layer architecture encompassing data acquisition, blockchain storage, analysis processing, and evaluation application is designed to ensure data integrity throughout the mineral lifecycle. A hierarchical indicator system spanning five dimensions-traceability breadth, depth, precision, timeliness, and data credibility-is constructed, with the Analytic Hierarchy Process employed for weight determination and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation applied for performance assessment. Empirical validation through case study analysis of Huaxin Mining Group demonstrates the framework's practical applicability, yielding a comprehensive traceability score of 81.2 (Good grade). Comparative analysis reveals that blockchain-based systems achieve 96.8% data accuracy versus 82.4% for traditional approaches, with trace-back efficiency improving from 127.3 min to 4.7 min. The blockchain technology contribution ratio reaches 47.3% toward maximum traceability improvement. These findings provide theoretical foundations and practical guidance for advancing transparent and accountable mineral resource governance.
Abstract The Congo Basin, comprising the worldâs second-largest tropical rainforest, presents both critical environmental challenges and unique opportunities for sustainable development. This chapter evaluates key pathways for environmentally sustainable development in the region, with an emphasis on extractive industries, renewable energy, agroforestry, biodiversity conservation, ecotourism, and climate and carbon finance. Using regional indicators such as the Fragile States Index (FSI), Human Development Index (HDI), and Environmental Performance Index (EPI), the authors highlight the structural barriersâincluding weak governance, institutional fragility, and extreme povertyâthat constrain the regionâs development trajectory. Despite these challenges, the Basinâs ecological wealth offers potential for transformative interventions. Strategies such as Reduced-Impact Logging for Climate (RIL-C), sustainable mining practices, decentralized renewable energy systems, and integrated agroforestry models are analyzed for their capacity to reduce emissions, protect biodiversity, and enhance local livelihoods. The chapter further explores the potential of REDD+ and emerging carbon market frameworks to finance conservation and climate mitigation efforts. Emphasizing the role of participatory governance, indigenous knowledge systems, and scientific innovation, the chapter underscores the necessity of context-specific, cross-sectoral approaches to operationalize sustainability in one of the planetâs most ecologically and geopolitically complex regions.
Open access
Mining and Resource Management
Economic Growth and Development
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Abdullah Ayub Khan, Abdulmajeed Alsufyani, Nawal Alsufyani, Mohamad Afendee Mohamed · 5 authors
Environmental deterioration can cause major issues like air pollution, water scarcity, land degradation, and socioeconomic disruptions in heavily mined places like Sindh, Pakistan's Thar coalfields. To overcome these obstacles, a novel strategy using contemporary monitoring and prediction technology is required. This study presents a novel framework for tracking and reducing the environmental effects of mining in poor nations by combining data from blockchain technology, Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs), and remote sensing. To ensure stakeholder confidence and accountability, the proposed architecture recodes environmental data using Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology (BDLT) in a secure, transparent, immutable, and secure manner. The primary potential is to periodically monitor key metrics like vegetation loss, water depletion, and air quality using the Remote Sensing (RS) approach. However, by examining temporal data, TCNs are able to predict trends in environmental degradation and take pre-emptive steps to prevent damage. With a prediction performance of up to 97.3%, metrics such as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Air Quality Index (AQI), and water table depth are assessed with great accuracy. In addition to offering politicians and regulators useful information, the proposed architecture uses chaincode to guarantee adherence to environmental regulations. Furthermore, this paper offers a scalable and adaptable solution to environmental limitations in resource-rich places. It supports international sustainability objectives and sets the standard for more ethical mining methods in underdeveloping countries.
Bitcoin minesâmassive computing clusters generating cryptocurrency tokensâconsume vast amounts of electricity. The amount of fine particle (PM2.5) air pollution created because of their electricity consumption and its effect on environmental health is pending. In this study, we located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricityâ33% more than Los Angelesâ85% of which came from fossil fuels. We estimated that 1.9 million Americans were exposed to â„0.1 ÎŒg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the communities they affected. Americans living in four regionsâincluding New York City and near Houstonâwere exposed to the highest Bitcoin mine-attributable PM2.5 concentrations (â„0.5 ÎŒg/m3) with the greatest health risks. The paper maps air pollution from power plants supplying electricity to US Bitcoin mines. It finds that 1.9 million people in 2022-2023 breathed toxic amounts of Bitcoin mine attributable pollution, particularly around New York City and Houston.
Iraq is a compelling example of a state highly dependent on a singular source of rent, namely oil revenue. Since 2003, Iraq has also been characterized by a fractured, rivalrous elite without central control over organized violence. This formula represents a ârentier political marketplaceâ in which state funds for salaries and contracts are the essential lubricant of the political system. During 2014â2021, successive shocks to national oil revenues represented a partial and temporary, but traumatic, decarbonization of Iraqâs government and political finance. In turn, this triggered a series of governance and political reconfigurations including a nominal decentralization process and fracturing of sectarian power, followed by a nationwide civic movement demanding transformational change. This paper traces these changes and the abrupt return to business as usual when oil prices rebounded. In doing so, the paper further investigates the nexus between oil and democracy in Iraq and addresses the unanswered question of how Iraq can decarbonize and democratize in the future.
Antulio Rosales, Heather Millar, Andrew Richardson
Cheap and abundant energy is an important incentive for the proliferation of cryptocurrency mining farms. With China's crackdown on bitcoin mining, investors have moved to the United States, Scandinavian countries, and Canada. From the perspective of business, these jurisdictions provide cheap, reliable electricity within a stable institutional context. At the same time, cryptocurrency mining has the potential to generate instability, not only through material demands on the capacity of the electricity grid, but also in jeopardizing governmentsâ climate goals. This article examines some strategies used by the industry to seek out favorable regulatory environments and take advantage of energy sources and infrastructures, through the case of HIVE blockchain technology, a mining company in Atlantic Canada. The article explains how in contrast with negative reports of marginal employment opportunities and drains on domestic energy supplies, bitcoin miners are developing new narratives to make cryptocurrency mining investment attractive to governments and the public. We find that HIVE has leveraged intra-provincial regulatory differences to expand operations and is currently using a âreverse batteryâ narrative to improve regulatory and public acceptance of cryptocurrency mining.
Jawad Abbas, Joanna KurowskaâPysz, Ćerife Zihni EyĂŒpoÄlu, Wei Liu
Geological JournalVolume 58, Issue 9 p. 3247-3249 SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE Nexus of geoenvironment, resource management and regional sustainable development: Introduction Jawad Abbas, Corresponding Author Jawad Abbas [email protected] Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan Correspondence Jawad Abbas, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Central Punjab, Pakistan. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorJoanna Kurowska-Pysz, Joanna Kurowska-Pysz Department of Management, WSB University, DÄ browa GĂłrnicza, PolandSearch for more papers by this authorSerife Zihni Eyupoglu, Serife Zihni Eyupoglu Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Near East University, Nicosia, TRNC, TurkeySearch for more papers by this authorWei Liu, Wei Liu College of Business Administration, Qingdao University, Qingdao, ChinaSearch for more papers by this author Jawad Abbas, Corresponding Author Jawad Abbas [email protected] Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan Correspondence Jawad Abbas, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Central Punjab, Pakistan. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorJoanna Kurowska-Pysz, Joanna Kurowska-Pysz Department of Management, WSB University, DÄ browa GĂłrnicza, PolandSearch for more papers by this authorSerife Zihni Eyupoglu, Serife Zihni Eyupoglu Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Near East University, Nicosia, TRNC, TurkeySearch for more papers by this authorWei Liu, Wei Liu College of Business Administration, Qingdao University, Qingdao, ChinaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 September 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/gj.4852 Handling Editor: Ian Somerville Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. REFERENCES An, L., Jiang, X., Liu, Z., & Li, Q. (2023). Socio-economic impact of natural resource management: How environmental degradation affects the quality of life. Geological Journal, 58(9), 3310â3325. https://doi.org/10.1002/gj.4787 Belgacem, S. B., Adam, N. A., Khatoon, G., & Pawar, P. S. (2023). Do green finance, low-carbon energy transition, and economic growth help in environmental investment?: Empirical evidence from emerging economies in Asia. Geological Journal, 58(9), 3259â3267. https://doi.org/10.1002/gj.4712 Chakrabortty, R., & Pal, S. C. (2023). Systematic review on gully erosion measurement, modelling and management: Mitigation alternatives and policy recommendations. Geological Journal, 58(9), 3544â3576. https://doi.org/10.1002/gj.4709 Chowdhuri, I., Pal, S. C., Roy, P., Chakrabortty, R., Saha, A., & Shit, M. (2023). 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Nexus of financial decentralization and institutional resource consumption efficiency for a carbon neutral society: Policy implication of China. Geological Journal, 58(9), 3326â3338. https://doi.org/10.1002/gj.4782 Volume58, Issue9Special Issue: Nexus of Geoenvironment, Resource Management, and Regional Sustainable DevelopmentSeptember 2023Pages 3247-3249 ReferencesRelatedInformation
Cryptoasset miners verify and record transactions, maintaining the integrity and security of the blockchain network. The Department of Finance ("Finance") has recently proposed new Excise Tax Act (ETA) provisions regarding the goods and services tax (GST)/harmonized sales tax (HST) treatment of crypto mining. Under these proposed provisions, crypto mining activities provided to anonymous recipients will not be subject to GST/HST, but the crypto miners performing these activities will also not be eligible to recover any GST/HST paid on their business inputs (and thus will be forced to bear the brunt of the tax themselves). We believe that Finance's decision to tax what it can identifyâthe business inputs of Canadian crypto minersâis a roughly balanced but reasonable approach. Although Finance might be legitimately criticized as departing from Canada's decision to eliminate the cascading of tax found in the former origin-based federal sales tax, it seems impossible to administer a destination-based transactional tax such as the GST/HST when faced with "anonymous" recipients (the users of the crypto miner's services). Finance appears to have minimized the cascading of tax by including a carve-out for identifiable recipients of a crypto miner's services, allowing the regular zero-rating rules in the ETA to apply in limited circumstances. In the face of utter uncertainty, Finance's reactive approach is likely the best that it can do. Given the rapid evolution and inherent decentralization of the crypto space, a more broadly based proactive approach would seem imprudent at this time.
Rucitarahma Ristiawan, Edward H. Huijbens, Karin Peters
Research on governance of tourism development predominantly focuses on sustainable management of a tourism destination, pinning hopes on the market and individual entrepreneurs. In Indonesia, this mission has been codified in post-reformation era (1998â2014) policies of land-use change promoting tourism and environmental conservation. One of these is the introduction of the UNESCO Geopark charter as a tool to realize the image of a modern state and âmodernizingâ regional economies. In this, a particular patrimonial governance arrangement appears to govern land use distribution to accrue the potential value of land from different use. This particular clientelist order will be analyzed in this article, namely by examining how finance, state power, and informal interactions between the national and regional structures of governance mesh in arranging land-use conversions for tourism purposes. Based on 4 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 32 interviews with various stakeholders in the Gunungsewu and Ciletuh UNESCO Geoparks, the paper will show how Indonesian post-reformation decentralization policies induced regional clientelism in the production of tourism destinations. This includes hierarchical relations between the local elite, private business owners, and governments representing asymmetric loyalty relations, negotiated subordination, and dominance. The more recent re-centralization attempts from the national government under Joko Widodoâs regime seem only to encourage this clientelism as a form of resistance to the state. This evidences that the Indonesian patrimonial governance and the production of tourism destinations in geoparks run counter to the ideals in governance as promoted for destination development.
Abstract This paper analyzes the interactions between the separate components of the emerging transnational timber legality regime, both public and private. It examines how far, and through what institutional mechanisms, these interactions are producing a joinedâup transnational regime, based on a shared normative commitment to combat illegal logging and cooperative efforts to implement and enforce it. The paper argues that the experimentalist architecture of the EU FLEGT initiative has fostered productive, mutually reinforcing interactions both with public timber legality regulation in other consumer countries and with private certification schemes. But this emerging regime remains highly polyarchic, with broad scope for autonomous initiatives by NGOs and private service providers, along with national governments, international organizations, and multiâdonor partnerships. Hence horizontal integration and coordination within it depend on a series of institutional mechanisms, some of which are distinctively experimentalist, while others can also be found in more conventional regimes. These mechanisms include crossâreferencing and reciprocal endorsement of rules and standards; recursive learning through information pooling and peer review of implementation experience; public oversight and joint assessment of private certification and legality verification schemes; and the âpenalty defaultâ effect of public legality regulation in consumer countries, which have pushed both exporting countries and transnational firms to comply with the norms and procedures of the emerging transnational regime. The paper's findings thus provide robust new evidence for the claim advanced in previous work that a joinedâup transnational regime can be assembled piece by piece under polyarchic conditions through coordinated learning from decentralized experimentation, without a hegemonic power to impose common global rules.
Abstract Externalised service provision is now an embedded feature of Australia's service delivery architecture. However, the lessons drawn from two decades of contracted service delivery suggest that âcompetitionâ is an imperfect platform for the delivery of public services, especially where issues of trust in government come into play. Could the concept of a âsocial license to operateâ (SLO), which has been in use in the natural resources sector for over two decades, help to facilitate the conferral of greater trust, credibility and legitimacy upon governments, and externalised service providers in social policy spaces?
This chapter attempts a broad analytical compass for surveying the main actors, institutions and instruments governing our world. Despite its seeming ubiquity, governance is a relatively new expression in this context suggestive both of new modes of exercising power, and an enhanced focus on ordering a world undergoing rapid change. Speaking generally governance may be understood as the exercise of power organized around multiple dispersed sites operating through transnational networks of actors, public as well as private, and national, regional as well as local. The turn to governance is often held to be coeval if not conjoined to profound changes in the meaning and nature of government associated with the ascendancy of âneo-liberalâ ideas and precepts. This has had significant implications for how governance tends to be understood. Critics associate it directly with the changing role of states in the economic and social sphere. Transnational governance, in particular, is criticized for foregrounding the priorities of corporate investors often to the detriment of social or environmental goals, subordinating principles of âcomparativeâ or âcooperativeâ advantage to âcompetitiveâ advantage, and promoting microregulatory forms of regulation over strategic or structurally-focused interventions (such as industrial policy). Associated shifts trace statesâ powers, otherwise a touchstone of sovereignty, being increasingly negotiated with transnational private actors and international financial institutions (IFIs), and placed under external jurisdictions. The turn to governance tends also to framed, whether directly or directly, justifiably or otherwise, alongside cuts in the public provisioning of health, education, housing, and social expenditures wherever they may have taken place, a parallel proliferation of managerial controls, and to governments contracting out public services to private and quasi-private agencies, or relinquishing them to the voluntary sector. At the risk of oversimplifying its criticsâ views, if modern governments describe rule by/of citizens, governance describes rule over subjects. This chapter maps a rather more fluid and differentiated landscape of governance across the five areas it surveys, i.e. finance, investment, trade, labor and environment. In finance, while regulation may appear to have become more transnational and to an extent even voluntary, deregulatory outcomes have reconfigured the nature of risk and the cognitive and policy frameworks for dealing with it. At the same time a growing risk of states having to foot the ultimate bill may still become a point of departure for more differentiated regulatory approaches. On the other hand, not only are environmental agreements continued to be implemented and enforced at national and sub-national scales, the ascendency of market interventions and transnational institutions here has taken place in parallel withâand sometimes through mutual cooptation ofâother kinds of interventions including those for promoting decentralization and community control over resources. Trends in labor regulation may also reflect individual state choices more than direct transnational pressures, or run contrary to the preferences of specialized international organizations in the domain. Even in the controversial sphere of investment treaties, there is considerable ongoing fluidity with regard to norms, jurisdiction, and actors within and between national and international arenas. Thus, upon closer inspection and with the benefit of a more domain-specific approach, we may not necessarily observe a sweeping or uniform shift, but more a mosaic of regulatory frameworks, quite disparate trends with regard to their negotiation, implementation and impact, and a future rife with possibilities.
Introduction The counterculture that arose during the 1960s and 1970s left lasting social and political reverberations in developed nations. This was a time of increasing affluence and liberalisation which opened up remarkable political opportunities for social change. Within this context, an array of new social movements were a vital ingredient of the ferment that saw existing norms challenged and the establishment of new rights for many oppressed groups. An expanding arena of concerns included the environmental damage caused by 200 years of industrial capitalism. This article examines one aspect of a current environment movement in Australia, the anti-Coal Seam Gas (CSG) movement, and the part played by participants. In particular, the focus is upon one action that emerged during the recent Bentley Blockade, which was a regional mobilisation against proposed unconventional gas mining (UGM) near Lismore, NSW. Over the course of the blockade, the conventional ritual of waving at passers-by was transformed into a mechanism for garnering broad community support. Arguably, this was a crucial factor in the eventual outcome. In this case, we contend that the wave, rather than a countercultural artefact being appropriated by the mainstream, represents an everyday behaviour that builds social solidarity, which is subverted to become an effective part of the repertoire of the movement. At a more general level, this article examines how counterculture and mainstream interact via the subversion of âordinaryâ citizens and the role of certain cultural understandings for that purpose. We will begin by examining the nature of the counterculture and its relationship to social movements before discussing the character of the anti-CSG movement in general and the Bentley Blockade in particular, using the personal experience of one of the writers. We will then be able to explore our thesis in detail and make some concluding remarks. The Counterculture and Social Movements In this article, we follow Coxâs understanding of the counterculture as a kind of meta-movement within which specific social movements are situated. For Cox (105), the counterculture that flourished during the 1960s and 1970s was an overarching movement in which existing social relationsâin particular the familyâwere rejected by a younger generation, who succeeded in effectively fusing previously separate political and cultural spheres of dissent into one. Cox (103-04) points out that the precondition for such a phenomenon is âfree spaceââconditions under which counter-hegemonic activity can occurâfor example, being liberated from the constraints of working to subsist, something which the unprecedented prosperity of the post WWII years allowed. Hence, in the 1960s and 1970s, as the counterculture emerged, a wave of activism arose in the western world which later came to be referred to as new social movements. These included the civil rights movement, womenâs liberation, pacifism and the anti-nuclear and environment movements. The new movements rejected established power and organisational structures and tended, some scholars argued, to cross class lines, basing their claims on non-material issues. Della Porta and Diani claim this wave of movements is characterised by: a critical ideology in relation to modernism and progress; decentralized and participatory organizational structures; defense of interpersonal solidarity against the great bureaucracies; and the reclamation of autonomous spaces, rather than material advantages. (9) This depiction clearly announces the countercultural nature of the new social movements. As Carter (91) avers, these movements attempted to bypass the state and instead mobilise civil society, employing a range of innovative tactics and strategiesâthe repertoire of actionâwhich may involve breaking laws. It should be noted that over time, some of these movements did shift towards accommodation of existing power structures and became more reformist in nature, to the point of forming political parties in the case of the Greens. However, inasmuch as the counterculture represented a merging of distinctively non-mainstream ways of life with the practice of actively challenging social arrangements at a political level (Cox 18â19; Grossberg 15â18;), the tactic of mobilising civil society to join social movements demonstrates in fact a reverse direction: large numbers of people are transfigured in radical ways by their involvement in social movements. One important principle underlying much of the repertoire of action of these new movements was non-violence. Again, this signals countercultural norms of the period. As Sharp (583â86) wrote at the time, non-violence is crucial in that it denies the aggressor their rationale for violent repression. This principle is founded on the liberal notion, whose legacy goes back to Locke, that the legitimacy of the government rests upon the consent of the governedâthat is, the people can withdraw their consent (Locke in Ball & Dagger 92). Ghandi also relied upon this idea when formulating his non-violent approach to conflict, satyagraha (Sharp 83â84). Thus an idea that upholds the modern state is adopted by the counterculture in order to undermine it (the state), again demonstrating an instance of counterflow from the mainstream. Non-violence does not mean non-resistance. In fact, it usually involves non-compliance with a government or other authority and when practised in large numbers, can be very effective, as Ghandi and those in the civil rights movement showed. The result will be either that the government enters into negotiation with the protestors, or they can engage in violence to suppress them, which generally alienates the wider population, leading to a loss of support (Finley & Soifer 104â105). Tarrow (88) makes the important point that the less threatening an action, the harder it is to repress. As a result, democratic states have generally modified their response towards the âstrategic weapon of nonviolent protest and even moved towards accommodation and recognition of this tactic as legitimateâ (Tarrow 172). Nevertheless, the potential for state violence remains, and the freedom to protest is proscribed by various laws. One of the key figures to emerge from the new social movements that formed an integral part of the counterculture was Bill Moyer, who, in conjunction with colleagues produced a seminal text for theorising and organising social movements (Moyer et al.). Many contemporary social movements have been significantly influenced by Moyerâs Movement Action Plan (MAP), which describes not only key theoretical concepts but is also a practical guide to movement building and achieving aims. Moyerâs model was utilised in training the Northern Rivers community in the anti-CSG movement in conjunction with the non-violent direct action (NVDA) model developed by the North-East Forest Alliance (NEFA) that resisted logging in the forests of north-eastern NSW during the late 1980s and 1990s (Ricketts 138â40). Indeed, the Northern Rivers region of NSWâdubbed the Rainbow Regionâis celebrated, as a ââmeeting placeâ of countercultures and for the articulation of social and environmental ideals that challenge mainstream practiceâ (Ward and van Vuuren 63). As Bible (6â7) outlines, the Northern Riversâ place in countercultural history is cemented by the holding of the Aquarius Festival in Nimbin in 1973 and the consequent decision of many attendees to stay on and settle in the region. They formed new kinds of communities based on an alternative ethics that eschewed a consumerist, individualist agenda in favour of modes of existence that emphasised living in harmony with the environment. The Terania Creek campaign of the late 1970s made the region famous for its environmental activism, when the new settlers resisted the logging of Nightcap National Park using nonviolent methods (Bible 5). It was also instrumental in developing an array of ingenious actions that were used in subsequent campaigns such as the Franklin Dam blockade in Tasmania in the early 1980s (Kelly 116). Indeed, many of these earlier activists were key figures in the anti-CSG movement that has developed in the Rainbow Region over the last few years. The Anti-CSG Movement Despite opposition to other forms of UGM, such as tight sands and shale oil extraction techniques, the term anti-CSG is used here, as it still seems to attract wide recognition. Unconventional gas extraction usually involves a process called fracking, which is the injection at high pressure of water, sand and a number of highly toxic chemicals underground to release the gas that is trapped in rock formations. Among the risks attributed to fracking are contamination of aquifers, air pollution from fugitive emissions and exposure to radioactive particles with resultant threats to human and animal health, as well as an increased risk of earthquakes (Ellsworth; Hand 13; Sovacool 254â260). Additionally, the vast amount of water that is extracted in the fracking process is saline and may contain residues of the fracking chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive matter. This produced water must either be stored or treated (Howarth 273â73; Sovacool 255). Further, there is potential for accidents and incidents and there are many reportsâparticularly in the United States where the practice is well establishedâof adverse events such as compressors exploding, leaks and spills, and water from taps catching fire (Sovacool 255â257). Despite an abundance of anecdotal evidence, until recently authorities and academics believed there was not enough ârigorous evidenceâ to make a definitive judgment of harm to animal and human health as a result of fracking (Mitka 2135). For example, in Australia, the Queensland Government was unable to find a clear link between fracking and health complaints in the Tara gasfield (Thompson 56), even though it is known t