Suchergebnisse

Over the last two decades, natural resource governance has become an increasingly important element of South American regionalism as commodities became a central driver for regional development strategies. Yet, due to socio-environmental impacts and dissatisfaction with decision-making processes, it is also frequently contested. This article focuses on one particularly prominent contestation with transboundary and regional repercussions, the case of the pulp mill conflict which escalated between Argentina and Uruguay in the 2000s. Using the concepts of regionness and politics of scale, it examines in which ways the pulp mill conflict affected regional cohesion and seeks to understand why it evolved in this way. This shows that the way national governments address socio-environmental conflicts is an important additional obstacle to regional cohesion which has received little attention in studies of South American regionalism so far.

ABSTRACTBenefiting from the commodity boom, progressive governments across South America have sought to move away from the neoliberal policies adopted previously by strengthening the role of the state and using revenues from commodity exports to address social concerns. This approach, often called neo‐extractivism, has become the main development strategy over the past 15 years. Yet, the increasingly intensive and extensive natural resource exploitation underlying this development strategy has also led to multiple protests and contestations across South America. This article thus examines the relationship between neo‐extractivism as a development strategy and the quality of democracy under progressive governments in South America. On the one hand, neo‐extractivism has allowed states to become more inclusive by paying attention to social concerns which in turn has been an important element in the legitimacy of progressive governments. On the other hand, the reliance on neo‐extractivism as the main development strategy poses important constraints on the ability of post‐neoliberal states to build more substantive democracies which could take into account a variety of positions, give citizens a say in decisions directly affecting their livelihoods, and promote public debates on key questions confronting society.

Environmental Governance in Latin America, edited by Fábio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom, and Michiel Baud. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Environmental Politics in Latin America: Elite Dynamics, the Left Tide and Sustainable Development, edited by Benedicte Bull and Mariel Aguilar-Støen. Routledge, 2015.A Fragmented Continent: Latin America and the Global Politics of Climate Change, by Guy Edwards and J. Timmons Roberts. MIT Press, 2015.Ecuador's Environmental Revolutions: Ecoimperialists, Ecodependents, and Ecoresisters, by Tammy L. Lewis. MIT Press, 2016.

Benefitting from the commodity boom progressive governments across South America have sought to move away from the neoliberal policies adopted previously by strengthening the role of the state and using revenues from commodity exports to address social concerns. This approach, often called neo-extractivism, has become the main development strategy over the past 15 years. Yet, the increasingly intensive and extensive natural resource exploitation underlying this development strategy has also led to multiple protests and contestations across South America. This paper thus examines the relationship between neo-extractivism as a development strategy and the quality of democracy under progressive governments in South America. On the one hand, neo-extractivism has allowed states to become more inclusive by paying attention to social concerns which in turn has been an important element in the legitimacy of progressive governments. On the other hand, the reliance on neo-extractivism as the main development strategy poses important constraints on the ability of post-neoliberal states to build more substantive democracies which could take into account a variety of positions, give citizens a say in decisions directly affecting their livelihoods and promote public debates on key questions confronting society.

AbstractThe question of how various actors envision sustainability transitions and which visions are translated into policy agendas is an important aspect of the sustainability–democracy debate. Applying Jasanoff's concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, this paper examines how three alternative imaginaries of agricultural production—agroecology, organic production, and biodevelopment—have emerged in Argentina, as well as how they have established themselves economically and politically despite the dominance of the well-established soybean imaginary. Argentina's return to democracy in 1983 was crucial for the emergence of alternative imaginaries because it enabled a new kind of relationship between the state and civil society that opened participation channels for alternative visions. Reflecting patterns that are also relevant to other South American countries, our analysis of the Argentinean case draws attention to the role inequality plays at different levels and its importance as an area for further research on the democracy–sustainability nexus.

AbstractContributing a new South American case study, this paper seeks to advance the research agenda on processes of policy integration by developing a better understanding of how nascent subsystems become integrated into mature ones and the role that changing beliefs of advocacy coalitions play in fostering policy integration. The paper examines environmental policy integration in Uruguay's forestry sector since the 1990s and is based on an inductive qualitative analysis of policy documents, sector reports, parliament hearings and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. This demonstrates that environmental policy integration has increased continuously since the 1990s, accelerating particularly during the 2000s. We can derive three insights that specifically address this path of integration: a change in the policy beliefs of the dominant advocacy coalition, international salience of the minority coalition`s beliefs and participatory policy processes that foster interactions between opposing coalitions. Despite this, the two advocacy coalitions have crystallized with fundamentally different deep core beliefs about what a sustainable forestry sector should be. While one coalition argues that commercial tree plantations are sufficiently regulated in environmental terms, the other coalition maintains that the way that the pulp industry has developed in Uruguay is fundamentally unsustainable and therefore seeks to change the forestry sector as a whole.

The concept of bioeconomy is increasingly gaining attention in South America as a potential strategy to foster sustainability transitions. As bioeconomy development is intertwined with often contested questions of natural resource governance, it is important that the promotion of bioeconomy takes place in an inclusive manner. In three case studies from Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil we examine who takes up the concept, what interests are reflected in this and the implications for socio‐environmental concerns. This points to two interrelated aspects which demonstrate variations in inclusiveness: the constellation of actors who drive bioeconomy visions, and the scope of issues covered.