Could the Search for Sustainability Reinforce Socio-ecological Conflict?: The Mining Industry in Chile and Its Impact at the Local and Regional Level

Abstract

This article discusses the notion of economic sustainability from an ecological modernization perspective. The main thesis is that the pursuit of sustainability may reinforce socio-ecological conflicts. In this context, we propose that ecological modernization is based on four interrelated characteristics of sustainability, which, jointly, increase the pressure on local ecosystems: (i) land achievement or territorial expansionism and (ii) unequal environmental role distribution, both of which are territorial orientations; (iii) sustainable economic entrepreneurship and (iv) goal-oriented sustainability, both of which are motivations for social action. The latter has a paradoxical effect, which becomes apparent when sustainable extractive enterprises acquire regional extensions and multiply the socio-ecological conflicts at the local level. Applied to the mining industry in Chile, the analytical model reveals the necessity to redefine sustainability from a multi-scalar perspective by showing how the expansion of extractive clusters reinforces the local competition for water, energy, land, work, and living conditions. The main argument disentangles the notion of sustainability as a normative referent – an ideal state of sustainability that should be pursued socially – from sustainability as factual phenomena, which are the different forms to materialize sustainability in a particular place and time. This distinction allows us to propose the thesis of the depoliticization of the socio-ecological conflicts associated with the search for sustainability in the framework of global productive restructuration.