Environmental Governance in Latin America [Paperback]

This book is open access under a CC-BY license.

The multiple purposes of nature  livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists  have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

This book is open access under a CC-BY license.

The contributors investigate a broad range of emerging socio-environmental challenges faced by contemporary Latin America. By using environmental governance as an overarching analytical concept, they cross territorial, sectorial, and institutional boundaries to address the nature/society nexus.

Introduction: Environment and Society in Contemporary Latin America; Fabio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom and Michiel Baud
PART I: SETTING THE STAGE
1. Origins and Perspectives of Latin American Environmentalism; Joan Martinez-Alier, Michiel Baud and H?ctor Sejenovich
2. Social Metabolism and Conflicts over Extractivism; Joan Martinez-Alier and Mariana Walter
3. Indigenous Knowledge lsÄ