The oxygenation of extraction and future global ecological democracy: the City of London, the alternative investment market and oil in frontiers in Africa

This article explores how the governance of the City of London Corporation perpetuates the oxygenation of extraction, with a focus on oil frontiers and ecological impacts in Africa. It shows how this extractive system limits environmental justice through a spider’s web of tax havens linked to the notoriously under-regulated Alternative Investment Market. The contemporary success of the City of London Corporation is supported by an archaic membership system drawn from financial services. This has also allowed it to support the establishment of the most successful network of secrecy jurisdictions of ‘tax havens’ on the planet, supporting flows for illicit business in commodity frontiers. As extractive operations are given life by the financial flows that circulate through the City and its offshore empire, and take control of land, the potential for local communities to utilise their local ecological knowledge is asphyxiated, limiting the protection of food systems and endangered species. The article explains how this system functions, and why it needs to be reformed to limit Earth’s sixth mass extinction. It does so through case studies of the City of London, the Niger Delta and Turkana Kenya, using ethnography and semi structured interviews. A new system of ecological direct democracy is proposed, limiting global corruption flows into the City’s tax havens, allowing instead for a flourishing globalisation of ecological democracy.