Resource Extraction Cost-benefit Debates in South Africa: Contesting the Environmental Economics of Offshore Gas Extraction.

Can cost-benefit analyses change the terms of debate over resource utilisation - in political and civil society and the state, among environmentalists, in the courts, and especially with respect to community, grassroots-feminist, labour and youth activists opposed to extractive industries and in particular, fossil fuels? Since late 2021, hundreds of protests against gas exploration along the coastline of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Northern Cape, which is the site of debate in this paper, have helped society better consider fossil fuel costs and benefits. There are revealing controversies regarding the application of natural capital accounting (especially the Gaborone Declaration), overdue reforms to Gross Domestic Product national accounts, the 'Social Cost of Carbon' (and related carbon taxation and liability accounting), and intergenerational sustainable development calculations (such as the Hartwick Rule). In some cases, Environmental Impact Assessments allow for such narratives, but more important was a court case in 2022, Sustaining the Wild Coast et al. versus Shell et al., initially won by community critics of offshore gas (although subsequently being considered on appeal). On all these terrains, dangers of technicism and legalism abound, but if conceptualised with care, the merits of a broader, multi-scale environmental-economic consideration of the extractive industries could ultimately be foundational in resistance narratives and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]