Structure, Institutions, and Conflict: The Politics of Environmental Licensing in Latin America’s Extractive Industries

• In Event: Mecanismos de participación en la gobernanza ambiental: Parte I: Consulta Previa

Abstract

Communities in resource-rich zones often face a tension between (a) opposing new projects due to their social and environmental costs, and (b) welcoming royalties and direct company investments that come with extraction. Why in some cases do groups mobilize against project design and sometimes extraction altogether, whereas in other cases conflict is limited, with communities focusing more on compensation that on adverse social and environmental effects of extraction? Why when there is mobilization to alter projects, do some communities stage protests whereas others express their demands during peaceful negotiations with private companies? This paper identifies limitations to current research on social conflict during environmental licensing processes, a body of literature that is dominated by insights from social movement theory, and develops a structural-institutional framework to resource conflict. In terms of structure, the paper proposes that threats that are mitigable may more effectively trigger mobilization—peaceful and violent—than nonmitigable threats. It also examines how empty participatory procedures can be surprisingly effective at granting real power to communities, in general and relative to more substantive prior consultation institutions. The analysis examines key conflicts and negotiations in mining and hydrocarbons in Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, and Peru—where extraction is crucial to the national economy and where in recent decades there have been expansions of institutions of participation during environmental licensing, especially in the arena of prior consultation.

Author

• Maiah Jaskoski, Naval Postgraduate School