1st Edition

Social-Environmental Conflicts, Extractivism and Human Rights in Latin America

Edited By Malayna Raftopoulos Copyright 2018
    146 Pages
    by Routledge

    146 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book focuses on the issues of global environmental injustice and human rights violations and explores the scope and limits of the potential of human rights to influence environmental justice. It offers a multidisciplinary perspective on contemporary development discussions, analysing some of the crucial challenges, contradictions and promises within current environmental and human rights practices in Latin America. The contributors examine how the extraction and exploitation of natural resources and the further commodification of nature have affected local communities in the region and how these policies have impacted on the promotion and protection of human rights as communities struggle to defend their rights and territories. The book analyses the emergence of transnational activism in the context of collective action organised around socio-environmental conflicts, the infringement of basic human rights and the emergence of alternative and sometimes conflicting development models. Furthermore, it critically discusses why governments are often willing to override their commitments to sustainability and human rights to promote their development agenda.



    The chapters originally published as a special issue in The International Journal of Human Rights.

    1. Contemporary debates on social-environmental conflicts, extractivism and human rights in Latin America Malayna Raftopoulos 2. ‘ …Beggars sitting on a sack of gold’: Oil exploration in the Ecuadorian Amazon as buen vivir and sustainable development Joanna Morley 3. State-led extractivism and the frustration of indigenous self-determined development: lessons from Bolivia Radosław Powęska 4. Ethnic rights and the dilemma of extractive development in plurinational Bolivia Rickard Lalander 5. The international human rights discourse as a strategic focus in socio-environmental conflicts: the case of hydro-electric dams in Brazil Marieke Riethof 6. Extracting justice? Colombia’s commitment to mining and energy as a foundation for peace John-Andrew McNeish

    Biography

    Malayna Raftopoulos is an assistant professor in Latin American studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. She is also the co-editor of Provincialising nature: Multidisciplinary approaches to the politics of nature in Latin America (ILAS, University of London Press).