Rare earth and rate practice of 'integral ecology': a feminist post-colonial reading of 'Save Malaysia, stop Lynas' protests

This paper offers a feminist-postcolonial reading of the grassroots activism against rare earth mining and processing plants in Malaysia. The chapter first provides a background, essentially, a timeline of the Japanese-owned Asian Rare Earth (ARE) plant in Bukit Merah, Perak (a north-western state) and Australia-owned Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) in Gebeng, Pahang (the largest state in West Malaysia) and the corollary impact of grassroots activism. The second section of the chapter offers a feminist-postcolonial theologizing of these people-centred narratives of dissent that are pit against profit-oriented narratives of compliance and cooptation of the postcolonial nation’s resources. Realising ‘integral ecology’ as enshrined in the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si’ has been the hallmark of the green movement against ARE and LAMP. The fracturing of the inter-relationality of the earth and the human species, given the highly toxic (radioactive) processes of extracting rare earth elements, leaves literal tailing wastelands; infected (contaminated) and infertile soilscape. Interrogating the trope of the womb that courses through these processes and narratives fleshes out the violence of rare earth elements extraction and colonization of the earth and its resources. This in turn, gives rise to a revisiting of feminist-postcolonial theorizing and theologizing around gender, race and nation that is uncommon in the treatment of rare earth elements.