Challenging global environmental injustice the Arica Victims KB v. Boliden Mineral AB case
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In September 2013, a coalition of American, Swedish and Chilean lawyers, acting on behalf of 796 people from Arica, the northernmost city of Chile, filed a claim in the Skellefteå District Court against the Swedish mining corporation Boliden Mineral, which they accused of causing health damages to the plaintiffs through the shipment of 20,000 tonnes of mining waste to that city. Although it could seem just another case in a wide list of examples in which transnational firms are sued in their home states for socioenvironmental harms caused in the global South, this legal action represents one of the few transnational claims that reached the trial phase. Accordingly, it offers a valuable instance to learn about the challenges involved in the use of foreign direct liability claims as a tool to fight the environmental injustices witnessed in the context of global capitalism. Based on interviews and an extensive review of legal documents and court records, I analyse the Arica Victims KB v. Boliden Mineral AB case, from the inception of the claim in the lawyers’ offices to the aftermath of the conflict both in Chile and Sweden. The complexities of the case, however, pushed me to address this conflict in a way that probably differs from what it might be possible to expect from a research project committed to an environmental justice perspective. Rather than rushing to embrace the plaintiffs’ arguments and say that Boliden lies, I try to understand how the issues at the core of the case were made and unmade by the parties during the trial. With this aim, I address the following questions: How did the plaintiffs turn the presence of 20,000 tonnes of mining waste in northern Chile into an environmental health crisis connected to Boliden’s headquarters in Sweden? How did Boliden manage to cut that connection and turn the mismanagement of its material into a matter unrelated to the corporation? How did the parties make and unmake connections in the courtroom? What position was accepted by the judges reviewing the case? How did this conflict resonate beyond the courtroom? By addressing these questions, I show that, at the core of this legal case, there was not only a financial dispute, but also a conflict between two opposite ways of worlding. Accordingly, I understand the Arica Victims v. Boliden Mineral case as an ontological conflict in which two opposite ways of enacting ‘what is there’ collide with each other.
Source: University of Warwick
Author: Patricio Flores Silva
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7220962785