“Countering Documents with Documents”: The Politics of Independent Environmental Auditing in Mexico

Abstract

AbstractEnvironmental impact statements are designed to enable rational calculation of the ecological risks of proposed development projects and to serve as a basis for institutional decision making. In Mexico, a neo‐extractivist “boom” has led to massive ecosystem loss and environmental activists are increasingly under threat of violence. Now these same activists and the residents affected by development projects have targeted these bureaucratic instruments as key points of legal intervention and political mobilization. This article analyzes how volunteer scientists conduct independent audits of environmental impact statements and how their work provides the grounds for critiquing the state's performance of public reason. Independent audit constitutes an innovative form of administrative politics that seeks simultaneously to hold bureaucrats accountable and open the decision‐making process to the participation of excluded actors. [expertise, governance, environmental movements, science, Mexico]