After the Boomerang: Environmental Movements and Politics in the La Plata River Basin

Abstract

This article focuses on one common transnational NGO strategy, the boomerang strategy. In this strategy, Southern NGOs seek international allies to help them pressure their states from outside. The article uses a case study of a transnational mobilization against a water superhighway or "Hidrovia" in the La Plata River basin in South America to develop arguments about the long term impacts of throws of the boomerang. I argue that what happens after the boomerang depends on two related factors: the extent to which the target state(s) have accepted the international norms at stake and the presence or absence of a specific set of domestic capacities in the target state(s). Because Brazil has higher levels of national environmental legal capacity and greater acceptance of international environmental norms than its neighbors, environmentalists were able to block the Hidrovia there after the successful collective pressure, while Argentine environmentalists were not. Copyright (c) 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Corporate discourse and environmental performance in Argentina

“…Argentina is not a rich country and its citizens are currently less concerned with environmental protection than with economic growth (Hochstetler, 2002).…”

The Impacts of Environmental Movements

“…An early example occurred during a campaign to clean up the "valley of death" in Cubatao, Brazil in the 1980s when campaigners sought to reduce international funding for development that increased pollution and deforestation (Hochstetler 2002). Environmental movements in the global South often called upon allies in the North for support, particularly regarding the halting of environmentally destructive practices associated with large projects funded or commissioned by actors from the North, but as transnational environmental networks developed, the boomerang effect was put into play more frequently even without the clear presence of Northern interests (as in the case of the campaign against the Narmada Dams in India, which persuaded the World Bank to withdraw funding).…”

La emergencia del ambientalismo estatal y social en Argentina

“…En este sentido, en la (escasa) literatura sobre el derrotero de la política ambiental argentina (en perspectiva latinoamericana) suelen identificarse cuadro grandes procesos (Acuña, 1999;Hochstetler, 2002Hochstetler, , 2003Díaz, 2006;Bueno, 2010):…”

“…Ni el presidente Menem ni la secretaria Alsogaray tenían una agenda ambiental clara más allá de predicar la adopción de una versión del paradigma de desarrollo sostenible que priorizaba los mecanismos de mercado frente a la intervención estatal o la participación de la sociedad civil (Acuña, 1999;Hochstetler, 2002;Díaz, 2006;cf. también Leis, 1999).…”