Catalina Mendoza Leal – Communities and Nature – CMP

QARQ week 4: Dimensions of environmental justice in anti-gold mining movements in Latin

America – Urkidi and Walter.

Quote:
“(…) EJM are always situated in contingent, multi-scalar and often quite different political, social
and economic contexts. The Latin American interpretation of EJ is a hybrid fusion of imported
notions and local, indigenous experiences. (…) The combination of human rights and social justice
tradition, environmental concerns, and the experiences of mobilized communities contributed to
the development of a (more or less explicit) EJ framework in Chile and Argentina.” (Urkidi and
Walter 2011:686)

Argument:
As the former quote is expressing it, Urkidi and Walter focus is on Environmental Justice
Movements (EJM) framed by the specific context of Latin America. Analyzing two gold-mining
conflicts: Pascua Lama (Chile) and Esquel (Argentina) the authors explore the travel through time
and scales of the Environmental Justice (EJ) discourse. About the theoretical framework of EJ,
Urkidi and Walter argue that is necessary to avoid the reductionist distribution perspective.
Instead, they go for a broader approach that takes into account the heterogeneous forms and
discourses that EJM can claim. Doing this, they adopt Schlosberg (2007 cited in Urkidi and Walter
2011) dimensions of EJ: distribution, recognition, and participation. The distributional dimension
refers to the allocation of resources and wealth, looking particularly into power relations.
Recognition is the dimension that talks about the right to self and collective recognition of a
certain identity, especially important for indigenous groups. And finally, the dimension of
participation is focused on the ongoing processes that should be fair for those who are affected by
the conflicts. As the quote that I chose is explaining Latin American EJM are intertwined with
human rights claims and indigenous and social movement’s demands for social justice. In this vein,
the movements that emerged with the conflicts in the north of Chile and in the south of Argentina
made claims that are in perfect line with the three dimensions of EJ, but each of them was
changing through time. Despite this shared framework, their demands were focused on different
things. The anti-Pascua Lama movement was more focus on the recognition issues pleaded by the
Diaguitas, a key feature in the issue. From one side was a way to approach the conflict from a
different angle that is due to the systematic exclusion and violation of indigenous rights by the
Chilean state. From the other side, time this isolated action of the Diaguitas from the local
movement against the mining project is a result of the weakened of Chilean social fabric led by the
military dictatorship. Regarding the situation in Esquel, the recent crisis of 2001 in Argentina
worked as a counteraction that strengthened the democracy and participatory claims of civil
society, the movements anti mining project were well articulated with other actors and
experiences with mining activities which gives them a major success in their campaigns for a more
participatory process.
Catalina Mendoza Leal – Communities and Nature – CMP

Relation:
As has been shown by Urkidi and Walter (2011:693) EJM has a particular meaning in the Latin
American context which as they say “framing the mining debate in sacking, anti-dispossession and
anti-colonialist terms appeals to Latin American social justice sensibilities”. In this matter, in my
opinion, Hannas et. al. (2014) argument about the necessity for a more participatory process
regarding licensing procedures is insufficient. Of course, more participation is extremely important
for indigenous groups but is also important to have the right to reject from the very beginning a
certain project. Therefore, this should be possible not only for not contacted and isolated
indigenous peoples, should be possible for everyone. In this vein, as the authors say the
indigenous participation in EIA has not been sufficient an effective due mainly about the
asymmetry of power that surrounds this kind of situations where there are so many institutions
and interest involved. By contrast, as Koning (2014) concludes in her study in Bolivia and Ecuador
the forestry governance outcomes are unpredictable, which could make us think about a study of
institutional bricolage to see why the poor outcomes in more participatory EIAs are being
recurrent. In the same line, this inclusion and exclusion process has been shown also by Castro
(2013) in his research, where for a long time diverse actors where working together to establish a
PAE in the Amazon floodplain. His results are only reinforcing the idea that is tremendously
important the study of politics, interest, and games of power related to these different actors
working on different scales that through bargaining and conflictive behavior gave shape to the
different outcomes of sustainable and conservation projects.

Question:
Considering that EJ framework is focused on the unequal distribution of resources and the
asymmetrical relation of power –including recognition and participative arena. How do EJM can
achieve their claims where there is an aggressive difference of power between actors? In that
sense, how the jumping of scales could be a key tool for EJM to in order to succeed? And, when
we talk about this jumping of scales, political participation and democratization is a basic feature
for deploy these actions. How can countries like Chile fight against these kinds of projects when
there is a historical factor of demobilization?

References:
Castro, Fabio. (2013). Between Cooperation and Conflict: The Implementation of Agro-
Extractive Settlements in the Lower Amazon Floodplain. In E. Brondizio and E. Moran (eds.)
Human-Environment Interactions: Current and Future Directions. Dordrecht: Springer. Pp. 213-34.
Hanna, P., Vanclay, F., Langdon, E.J. and Arts, J. (2014). Improving the effectiveness of
impact assessment pertaining to Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian environmental licensing
procedure. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 46:58-67.
Koning, J. (2014). Unpredictable outcomes in forestry: Governance institutions in practice.
Society and Natural Resources 27(4):1-14.
Urkidi, L. and Walter, M. (2011). Dimensions of environmental justice in anti-gold mining
movements in Latin America. Geoforum 42(6):683-95.