Environmental Governance in Latin America

Abstract

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents List of Figures and Tables viiPreface viii List of Contributors xi PrefaceThis book is the result of the collaborative research project Environmental Governance in Latin America (ENGOV) funded by the European Union (EU). For four years, a team of experts from ten Latin American and European academic institutions investigated how environmental governance is currently being shaped in Latin America. In this joint effort, we were driven by our concerns about widespread ecological degradation, poverty and injustice, as well as by our curiosity about the ways in which the emergence of new political regimes and elites, and innovative steps by communities and social organizations, affects governance practices and nature-society relations. To understand the possibilities and obstacles for sustainable and equitable natural resource use, a range of case-studies were carried out in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico. Although some of the research topics and cases are not included in this volume, their findings have contributed to the discussions and theoretical reflections in the overall analysis. The ENGOV project has been simultaneously challenging and inspiring. The theme of environmental governance is a huge academic enterprise because it addresses complex social relations, practices and views influencing how societies perceive nature and use natural resources. Combining methods and theories from different fields of the social sciences is a prerequisite which in practice is fairly demanding. Furthermore, by encompassing political, economic, cultural and environmental changes, formal as well as informal arrangements, and cross-scale connections, the study of environmental governance can easily become a 'mission impossible'. Arguably this is even more the case for contemporary Latin America, with its variety of local and national conditions facing rapid-paced changes. Finally, collaborating in an international research consortium of ten institutional partners and more than 25 researchers from different disciplines, schools of thought and generations has also proved to be both daring and rewarding. The fact that we spoke in different academic languages and idiom accents was not only a hurdle to tackle during our group discussions, but also forced us to learn from each other's approaches and convictions, and the foundations on which these are based. As a typical governance process, next viii Preface ix to misunderstandings, dissonances and unbridgeable differences, the exchange of different insights and perspectives proved to bring ab...

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