Geography News - Dec 8th 2012

• China buys Canadian Oil company for 15 billion - Canada has approved a deal from China for an oil company called Nexen, for 15 billion pounds. This dea has been negotiated just after Canada approved a Malaysian firm that bought up another oil sand company. This is China's biggest energy investment ever recorded. 
• Canada is rich in natural resources unlike it's American neighbor. It has the Alberta tar sands, which are huge 
• Hence, natural resources from the land has great potential for economic profit. If it is controlled by private companies, the state has little power to actually control the actions of the multinationals. This is a form of geopolitics. 
• In a neoliberal world, where markets are open and there's a ROLL BACK ON STATE CONTROL and ROLL IN of privatisation. The issue is how to make these extraction of resources sustainable and not too damaging for the environment. The state can, at most, play a regulatory role and impose laws, sanctions and incentives. The application / society aspect though, is determined by the TNC's actions which often directly affect the local people. If TNCs are allowed unlimited access to resources, there will be conflict and increased INEQUALITIES due to privatisation of commodities. This can worsen conflict, although it is not a direct cause of conflict. 
• Economist Polanyi said land, labour and money are the building blocks of a capitalist system. Both "Green grabbing" and "buying up oil companies" constitute new ownership and transfer of ownership of land. The land's potentials are being extended, and one wonders whether China's buying up of the oil company in Canada constitutes a "land grab". After all China is buying up Canada's resources and using it for it's own benefit - what is the difference between this and "land grabbing" where the buyer extracts nature from the sellers? 
• One criticism I have of the article about Green Grabs are that they don't focus on countries in the Global North. Canada is part of the Global North - and here, isn't China "grabbing" Canada's natural resources through buying a company ? It is an NIC that is doing the grabbing this time! We should examine other similar instances. 

• Nelson Mandela hospitalized for tests - Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, Nobel Peace Prize winner and the leader who fought to lead South Africa out of the apartheid is in hospital for health reasons. 
• The reason this news is important is because of Nelson Mandela's link with the history of South Africa, one of the richest countries in Africa. The apartheid is important in Geography because it was a legalised form of racism starting from the 1940s, whereby laws were implemented to separate blacks and whites SPATIALLY and geographically.  
• Privatisation of commodities often create more inequalities, and privatisation of resources like water can create an ECONOMIC APARTEID. This continues on the segregation and inequalities created by law in the past, as rich whites control and own the water, whilst poor blacks cannot afford it and are impoverished.