Beausoleil, Eva (2025) Core, Periphery, and the Green Frontier: A World-Systems Analysis of the EU's Critical Raw Materials Diplomacy with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bachelor thesis, Global Responsibility & Leadership (GRL).
|
PDF
BAS5039169EBeausoleil.pdf.pdf Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
This thesis examines how the European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) reproduces global inequality through its partnerships with the Democratic Republic of Congo, applying world-systems analysis and ecologically unequal exchange theory to understand these dynamics. The research question investigates how the CRMA perpetuates colonial-era extractive relationships while externalizing environmental and social costs to peripheral states like the DRC.Through analysis of EU-DRC cobalt relations, this study reveals that despite rhetoric of sustainable development and strategic partnerships, the CRMA institutionalizes core-periphery dynamics that concentrate technological and economic benefits in European nations while displacing ecological burdens to African communities. The framework demonstrates how formal equality in partnership agreements masks substantive hierarchy, with non-binding European commitments contrasting sharply with enforceable trade constraints on partner countries.The analysis challenges dominant narratives presenting EU raw materials diplomacy as mutually beneficial cooperation, instead revealing how ostensibly progressive environmental policies can reproduce colonial structures of domination.The thesis contributes to critical scholarship on the European Green Deal by demonstrating that without addressing fundamental power asymmetries in the capitalist world-system, sustainability efforts risk becoming new forms of "green" imperialism that perpetuate global environmental injustice.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
|---|---|
| Name supervisor: | Schulz, K.A. |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Jun 2025 10:23 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jun 2025 10:23 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/657 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |