Environmental governance in Latin America

Introduction: Environment and Society in Contemporary Latin America / Fábio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom, Michiel Baud Setting the Stage -- Origins and Perspectives of Latin American Environmentalism / Joan Martinez-Alier, Michiel Baud, Héctor Sejenovich-- Social Metabolism and Conflicts over Extractivism / Joan Martinez-Alier, Mariana Walter-- Indigenous Knowledge in Mexico: Between Environmentalism and Rural Development / Mina Kleiche-Dray, Roland Waast-- New Politics of Natural Resources-- The Government of Nature: Post-Neoliberal Environmental Governance in Bolivia and Ecuador / Pablo A. Andrade-- Changing Elites, Institutions and Environmental Governance / Benedicte Bull, Mariel Aguilar-Støen-- Water-Energy-Mining and Sustainable Consumption: Views of South American Strategic Actors / Cristián Parker, Gloria Baigorrotegui, Fernando Estenssoro-- Overcoming Poverty Through Sustainable Development / Héctor Sejenovich-- New Projects of Environmental Governance-- Forest Governance in Latin America: Strategies for Implementing REDD / Mariel Aguilar-Støen, Fabiano Toni, Cecilie Hirsch-- Rights, Pressures and Conservation in Forest Regions of Mexico / Leticia Merino-- Local Solutions for Environmental Justice / David Barkin, Blanca Lemus-- Community Consultations: Local Responses to Large-Scale Mining in Latin America / Mariana Walter, Leire Urkidi-- Afterword: From Sustainable Development to Environmental Governance / Eduardo Silva--

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.