Resisting Extractive Renewables: Chile’s Network for Free-Flowing Rivers

• In Event: Water and governance

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of public anthropology in environmental justice movements by examining ecological distribution conflicts over natural resources through policy-oriented research and advocacy. Drawing on applied ethnographic research, it traces the afterlife of a successful social movement: the Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia without Dams) campaign in Chile. As a direct result of the celebrated Patagonia Sin Represas movement, grassroots environmentalists in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia defeated HidroAysén’s proposal to build five mega-dams on the Baker and Pascua Rivers. This paper outlines how this movement against “extractive renewables” (Del Bene et al. 2018) grew into a new national network of river protectors across Chile, the Red por los Ríos Libres (Network for Free-Flowing Rivers). The paper pays particular attention to the relationship between this translocal movement and an international NGO: the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Working with local environmental activists, Mapuche Indigenous leaders and international scientists in Chile, the NRDC has raised awareness to persuade public officials and investors to seek more sustainable energy alternatives to proposed hydroelectric dam development projects. As an international advocate for NRDC and a member of the research committee of the Network for Free-Flowing Rivers, I provide an inside perspective on power dynamics of accountability and representation, based on 12 months of participant observation, document analysis and GIS mapping. Taking an engaged approach, the study ultimately sheds light on the role of public anthropology as a condition of possibility for environmental advocacy to enhance sustainability in collaboration with local residents.

Authors

• James Blair, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

• Grant M Gutierrez