Slow Harms & Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation in Latin American Cities

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

This roundtable brings together subject experts to discuss a forthcoming book, Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities by Veronica Herrera. Slow moving environmental harms are typically ignored or accepted parts of everyday life, particularly in low resource settings in Global South cities. How do communities mobilize around habituated exposure to toxins and initiate policy change for a historically ignored policy problem? The book compares advocacy movements for river pollution remediation in the capital regions of Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. Citizen-led efforts undergirded policy shifts towards pollution remediation through networks that included impacted communities (bonding mobilization) and resourced allies (bridging mobilization). The book argues that bridging mobilization was strongest when bridges had material resources, common pasts, and a more resonant frame for understanding the historically ignored problem of river pollution. This occurred in settings with established human rights movements and center-left presidential administrations that were unaligned with mineral wealth extraction. Through bonding and bridging mobilization, citizen advocacy for slow harms activated the state’s regulatory capacity. Environmental movements co-create, share, and protect information about pollution from distortions, make it publicly available, and use community generated data and expertise to hold the state accountable. Citizen action included diverse claims making strategies such as protests, marches, rallies, participatory institutions, litigation, and media campaigns. By unpacking human rights movements as thoroughfares for environmental activism, these cases shed new light on the struggles for environmental justice in Latin America.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Chair

• Kathryn Hochstetler LSE

Presenters

• Veronica Herrera University of California, Los Angeles

• Kathryn Hochstetler LSE

• Kent Eaton University of California, Santa Cruz

• Rebecca Neaera Abers University of Brasilia

• Megan Mullin University of California, Los Angeles

• Isabella Alcaniz University of Maryland, College Park