Driving ecologically unequal exchange: A global analysis of multinational corporations’ role in environmental conflicts

Multinational corporations are being confronted by activists and scholars over their involvement in environmental conflicts and human rights violations. In response, many multinational corporations engage in human rights and ESG voluntary initiatives to mitigate their impacts and publicly bolster their contribution to society. These actions relate to disputed economic development theories which assert that foreign direct investment allows multinational companies to contribute to economic growth, human rights, and environmental well-being in so-called developing countries. To test these arguments, this article presents the largest statistical analysis on the role of multinational corporations in environmental conflicts based on data from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice including more than 3,300 environmental conflicts and 5,500 companies. The results show how multinational corporations, overwhelmingly domiciled in the Global North, are involved in environmental conflicts in the Global South. Environmental conflicts with the presence of foreign companies disproportionately involve commodities with biophysical properties ideally suited to facilitate ecologically unequal exchange and show more socioeconomic impacts and worse outcomes than cases without foreign companies. These results cast doubt on the validity of corporate sustainability assessments based entirely on company self-reported data, and call for scholars and practitioners to centre the lived realities of those resisting corporate extractivism to evaluate the socio-ecological performance of firms.