“A cold, hard asset”: Conservation resource spectacle in Chilean Patagonia

Abstract

Chile’s public conservation estate has expanded by unprecedented margins in recent years, following the creation of several mega projects. One such project is the Route of Parks of Chilean Patagonia, a public–private partnership to protect nearly 30 million acres of land across 18 national parks at the bottom of the South American continent. The partnership, over two decades in the making, was proposed by the U.S-based philanthropic foundation Tompkins Conservation but rejected by previous presidential administrations before finally being accepted in 2017. This article traces the role of two complementary forces behind the project – big philanthropy and big conservation – showing how both shaped the state’s eventual decision to take historic action for environmental protection. I argue that resource spectacle is key to understanding the ‘how’ and ‘why now’ of this mega project. Whereas traditional resource spectacles are conjured to court buy-in from private actors for extractive projects, a conservation resource spectacle is conjured in this case to court buy-in from the state for a large-scale national parks project. Big philanthropy emphasizes the spectacular investability of national parks by selling them as “a cold, hard asset,” akin to Chile’s other natural resources. It does this by rendering the value of protected nature legible and consumable through the same resource-making techniques that define extractivism. Yet, these resource-making techniques when applied to environmental protection not only establish perverse incentives for action, they also help fuel the convergence of conservation and extraction.