Environmental Justice and Climate Change in Latin America Introduction

lasaforum fall 2016 : volume xlvii : issue 4

DEBATES

Environmental Justice and Climate Change in Latin America

Coordinated by Mattias Borg Rasmussen and Patricia Pinho

Introduction: Environmental Justice and Climate Change in Latin America by Mattias Borg Rasmussen | University of Copenhagen | [email protected] and Patricia F. Pinho | University of São Paulo | [email protected]

Climate change is a growing concern that are maintained by the current global Environmental Justice as a Field of Inquiry for populations, politics, and science in political economy order of production, Latin America. Numerous studies report consumption, and commerce (Ribot Environmental justice highlights the on the currently observed impacts of 2010). This perspective is also reflected in nexus between environmental and climate change. These include receding the statement on regional aspects by the social differences (Walker 2012). It is glaciers, altered patterns of precipitation authors of the 2014 Intergovernmental an analytical perspective that emerged and hydrological regime (extreme floods Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, out of the civil rights and environmental and droughts), cold and heat waves, and “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerabilities,” movements in the United States in the ocean acidification, affecting both the saying: “In many [Central and South 1970s and 1980s. It initially focused quality and quantity of water, ecosystems, American] countries, a first step toward on how Native American and black and other natural resources. There is also adaptation to future climate changes is to communities suffered disproportionately considerable concern regarding effects on reduce the vulnerability to present climate” from the pollution of air and waterways. economic activities, human health, and (Magrin et al. 2014). Such a perspective The Texas-based sociologist Robert Bullard well-being. Local people, politicians, and effectively links the uneven distribution of (2000), who is often seen as the father scientists also highlight that climate change climate change impacts to the social and of environmental justice, suggests that has an uneven impact. political arrangements mediating individual “environmental racism” or inequalities and collective responses. It moreover have direct expressions in the physical In part, the uneven impacts of climate underlines the need for further study of form of environmental harm. While the change owe to its uneven biophysical the ties between environmental and social early environmental justice movement manifestations across the globe. While justice in the context of global climate arose from the efforts of local advocacy global average temperatures are rising, change. and rights-based groups, it has also some places experience cooling. While come to constitute an academic field that some see dryer conditions and periods of The linking of academic and activist responds to a diversity of ways in which prolonged droughts, others experience perspectives holds transformational environmental inequalities arise and are more rainfall and flooding or consecutive promise. It is a perspective that integrates maintained. The U.S. Environmental events of extreme drought followed by biophysical, social, and political causes of Protection Agency even has an explicit flooding. Thus, it is the increased intensity vulnerability and suffering. Recognizing environmental justice agenda and and frequency of extreme events that are this, we aim in this introductory essay to guidelines (https://www.epa becoming the norm. Much scientific and give a brief genealogy of environmental .gov/environmentaljustice). In other words, political energy goes into furthering our justice as it relates to debates in the United these particular concerns voiced by activists understanding of these manifestations. In States. We then turn to the specifics of the and academics have resulted in significant this context, a climate justice perspective Latin American context before directing policy change. highlights how the uneven distribution our attention to the articulations between of detrimental effects is not simply a environmental justice and climate change. Since Bullard’s initial efforts to establish biophysical phenomenon but a social and Finally, we suggest a set of relevant a field of study, the environmental justice political one, deeply contingent upon social questions for further scrutiny with regards framework has been broadened by other and political conditions. This perspective to climate justice as an object of study and scholars to focus on a wide array of maintains that climate change impacts a field of inquiry. environmental “goods and bads,” moving do not just “fall from the sky” but are from the extremes of chemical dump sites shaped by preexisting socioeconomic to conflicting interests in, for instance, and politically contingent vulnerabilities urban green spaces where the question

8 is not so much about the geographies of thereby naturalized. It also draws attention distinct environmental movements in hazard as the dynamics of exclusion. With to procedures and how justice is tightly Latin America. This is important when this has come an expanding focus that goes bound to political inclusion. considering the distribution of conflicts beyond spatial distribution to examine arising from economic, social, and procedures of decision making around the ecological phenomena and more recently environmental phenomena that determine Latin American Perspectives global environmental change that place both where the environmental issues are the burdens of development impacts on and what form they take. This includes Also in Latin America, environmental the poorest and most discriminated and the study of knowledge production about justice has become an integrating and excluded areas and populations of the and representations of the environment. mobilizing concept (Carruthers 2008), Latin American region. There are promises It thereby represents a movement toward connecting environmental, social, and but also limits of environmental justice in a more encompassing analytical interest ethical dimensions of sustainability and Latin America, both as flagship for popular in social differentiation around the development. In Brazil, social movements mobilization and as a set of principles for environment. since the early 1970s have articulated analysis, interpretation, and policy. In other environmental matters in their claims for words, there are many ways by which From its early years, environmental justice land rights as well as access and control Latin America’s popular movements fuse has been a hybrid, that is, it is a situated, over natural resources (Porto 2012). This environmental dimensions into community social, and political concept. Growing out was mostly stimulated by the Catholic struggles for social justice, mainly as of the civil rights movement, the concept pastoral social movement not only in Brazil a means to access and control natural has migrated into the worlds of NGOs but throughout the region. In this context, resources and to ensure land rights. and academia. It is therefore a discourse traditional communities—indigenous, for policy making, a social movement quilombolas (African slaves’ descendants), for change, and an analytical tool for and other native people who live from Fields of Action understanding the uneven distribution of forest gathering, agriculture, and fishing— socioenvironmental vulnerabilities related have been central. These peoples inhabit Within wider environmental justice to environmental change. territories that are disputed by powerful debates, climate justice is being advanced economic groups from the industries of as a topic of concern. As opposed to Its hybrid nature is both a weakness and agribusiness, mining, and hydropower. the site-specific focus common to much a strength, which has been discussed environmental justice scholarship (e.g., at length elsewhere. The partition of Environmental justice in Latin America the location of waste facilities), climate environmental justice into discourse, has become a unifying banner of reflection justice introduces a different scale social movement, and scholarly critique and mobilization. It has drawn together and need to respond to more elusive reflects parallel and converging intellectual the experience of struggle of diverse cause-effect relations than many other agendas. As a branch of applied individuals, communities, and entities environmental justice issues. Rather than philosophy, environmental justice has been including grassroots movements, traditional focusing on particular sites and locations tied to ideas of what constitutes social populations (indigenous), small farmers of environmental injustice, such as access justice. A central figure in that debate has and landless workers, environmentalists, and control over natural resources, climate been Nancy Fraser (2008), who suggested and scientists. Historical patterns of social justice connects disparate sites across a focus on redistribution and recognition, inequality and ethnic discrimination, and the globe. Climate justice links carbon and eventually representation, highlighting environmental conflicts in Latin America emissions and global warming to the that social justice works in different and are now broadly understood to have a uneven distribution of harm. Viewed thus, overlapping domains: how benefits and strong relationship with the conditions climate change is effectively a political harm are distributed among a diverse produced by the region´s insertion into the matter, contrary to representations of society, how institutionalized forms of international economy. climate change that portray it as a purely affirmative action may or may not ease scientific matter. or exacerbate social inequalities, and how Environmental justice works as a hierarchies be discursively constructed and critical theoretical framework for

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Both as a field for action and a field for offered by the broad scientific consensus very little to the furthering of the harms are inquiry, climate justice is still maturing. on the causes of climate change reveals those who suffer most. Works such as Naomi Klein’s 2014 the connections between the patterns of This Changes Everything have further consumption and commerce of the global Climate justice connects environmental sparked popular attention to the issue, economy and the unequal share of the concerns to a critique of global capitalism. as did the widespread public protests in environmental burdens. In this way, the Whether we look at climate justice as a relation to the different iterations of the climate justice movement has obvious links discourse, a social movement, or as uneven Conference of Parties under the United to the rich Latin American tradition of impacts, we are forced to consider the links Nations Framework Convention on social mobilizations and capitalist critique. between deeper patterns of production and Climate Change. In 2014, 300,000 people Persisting ecological neocolonialism, the lifestyle of affluent elites in both the gathered on the streets of New York for built on past patterns of plunder, attain North and the South, and the distribution the Peoples Climate March, and the same a new environmental dimension as the of climate-induced vulnerabilities. In 2010, year, thousands also marched in the streets lifestyle of the North spills directly into representatives from governments from the of Lima for the 2014 COP 20 meeting. processes of environmental change, driving South, civil society, and large environmental This is also true for other parts of Latin disadvantaged communities to change their NGOs met in Cochabamba at The Worlds America. Similar marches and campaigns lifestyles and livelihoods. People’s Conference on Climate Change have also been seen in different European and the Rights of Mother Earth. A central cities including the capitals of Scandinavian As suggested above, climate change outcome of that encounter was a statement countries, for example the climate action transforms ideas about environmental that expresses a profound critique of the and climate jobs campaigns in the United damage by effectively having the sites capitalist world order. Not unlike Klein, Kingdom and Norway. Internationally, of impacts physically and temporally this calls for fundamental changes in the large environmental NGOs and networks disconnected from the sites of consumption global political economy. While this is such as Oxfam and 350.org have pushed and extraction. The spatial distribution expressed in the social movements and for an agenda focusing on climate of harm is therefore very different from NGO networks of climate justice within justice. Reparations (“polluter pays”), traditional extraction or waste sites. Latin America, the case studies on impacts compensations, technology transfers, and “Adding insult to injury,” as Fraser would and adaptation display the articulation of so on are proposed as ways of easing the point out, climate justice debates reveal a different set of concerns that are much compounded impacts of industrialization. the intersections between the unequal more grounded in quotidian dynamics of Local social movements have also distribution of benefits and burdens, the making do and getting by. appropriated and reshaped discourses on global hierarchies of cultural politics, and climate and social justice, for example the continued exclusions from political the transition town campaigns aiming at processes. It is also worth remembering Frames of Interrogation creating sustainable cities, predominantly in that the burdens of climate change are the global North (see Transition Network, unequally shared not only among nations Environmental justice frameworks focus https://transitionnetwork.org/). of the global South and the global North, on distributive justice, procedural justice, but as important, among the different justice of recognition, and capabilities. Climate justice has also the potential to socioeconomic strata of these societies, When thinking about climate justice, feed into the long traditions of social which are among the most unequal on it can be helpful to direct our attention movements in Latin America. It connects the planet. The climate justice debate has to four empirical and interrelated areas to a new environmental concern within demonstrated that climate vulnerability for interrogation that address spaces the region that critiques global capitalism is not about North-South only but just for understanding problems and spaces anew. It thereby potentially connects and as much about a small global elite whose that may produce positive changes. First, recontextualizes the critique posed in consumption patterns drive processes that impacts and adaptations provide an Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin harm them but who are relatively well analysis of the different ways in which America (2009) to the Latin American sheltered by their wealth. By contrast, the global climate change become rooted in debates about ecological debt from the large poor majority that contributes only particular places. While climate change early 1990s. The global perspective is a global phenomenon, it is always

10 located somewhere, aptly demonstrating How is climate justice useful as an Brazilian Amazon, Patricia Pinho shows that climate manifests itself locally in analytical approach to understanding the how representations of the region as an diverse and unequal ways. Second, we are entwinement of social and environmental empty space critically shape the possible concerned with the complex relationships difference in Latin America? policy interventions. Astrid Stensrud turns between environmental issues and climate our attention to the Peruvian Andes and change. Processes of land degradation The intimate relationship between the production of water scarcity at the through deforestation or desertification, environment and social difference calls intersections between climate change and for example, may be driven by logging attention to questions of equity and justice, water governance regimes. For the case concessions or agro-industries, but these or conversely, to the uneven distribution of of Bolivia, Nicole Fabricant and Kathryn effects can be exacerbated by changing harm and benefits and the production and Hicks document recent developments of climatic patterns. Similarly, extractive maintenance (and sometimes, contestation) the Climate Justice Platform, a grassroots industries and small-scale mining, both of injustices. Bullard’s environmental initiative voicing concerns over the impacts intensive in water use, incur further water racism attains a neocolonial attire within of climate change. Finally, Jorge Daniel stress. Thus environment degradation and the global political economy. Whether Taillant and Peter Collins chronicle the climate change are compound phenomena focusing on distribution, inclusion, or work towards creating a policy framework with multiple, ambiguous, and interrelated procedure, questions of rights and the for glacier protection in Argentina, showing drivers. Third, we are interested in how historical responsibility become linked how this not only concerns fragile and vital climate change is mobilized in social to the production of uneven geographies ecosystems but also human well-being. struggles for justice. This is linked to of environmental degradation and social the rich scholarly tradition on social development. As such, they display obvious movements and emphasizes how ideas continuities between climate justice References about justice are mobilized to confront scholarship and engaged political ecology, Bullard, Robert the adverse effects of global climate science and technology studies, cultural change. This is particularly relevant in studies, and environmental history. 2000 Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and the Latin American contexts of vivir bien. Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Last, we are interested in frameworks for This collection seeks to explore the Westview. action and how a focus on the uneven potentially fertile grounds for cross- Carruthers, David, ed. distribution of burdens and benefits pollination between such established may serve climate justice advocacies disciplinary traditions and the nascent 2008 Environmental Justice in Latin America: seeking to improve the living conditions analytical and empirical focus on climate Problems, Promise, and Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. of marginalized populations. Thereby justice in Latin America. We have divided aiming at understanding the potentials of a this debate section in two parts: one that Fraser, Nancy climate justice approach to environmental takes an environmental justice approach degradation and conflict in Latin America, to understanding the impacts of climate 2008 Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics. Edited by Kevin Olson. we pose the following questions: change in terms of vulnerability and London: Verso. adaptation, and one that specifically What contrasting expressions of climate addresses the local articulation of climate Galeano, Eduardo justice exist? How is climate justice defined justice/injustice. Highlighting recent 2009 Open Veins of Latin America: Five and articulated by different actors, and linkages between social movements Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. what are the results of these in the policy working also outside the region, Astrid Translated by Celdric Belfrage. London: domain? How are the big NGOs pushing Ulloa suggests that the inequalities related Serpent’s Tail. for a climate justice framework? How are to gender and ethnicity must come to the ideas about climate justice linked to other fore in analysis of climate justice. Elma Klein, Naomi issues of social justice and environmental Montaña and Paula Mussetta make a 2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. degradation? To what extent does the case for vulnerability-focused analysis the Climate. New York: Simon and Schuster. attention to climate justice seep into other for understanding uneven distribution of spheres of these highly segregated societies? environmental harm. Working out of the