Monitoring the Impacts of Extraction: Science and Participation in the Governance of Mining in Peru

Abstract

In Peru the recent growth of the mining economy has generated conflicts that often revolve around the environmental impacts of extraction. This paper examines a regulatory mechanism that has emerged as a response to these conflicts: participatory environmental monitoring. Focusing on a monitoring committee in the region of Ancash, I assess the committee's efforts to generate shared understandings about mining's environmental impacts, while also analyzing the consequences of the committee's work for the claims-making efforts of affected populations. I find that, while the work of the committee has not led to a cohesive environmental knowledge community, it has shaped the dynamics of mining-related struggle. Through its privileging of an expert framework for knowing and judging water quality, the committee has helped to demarcate the boundaries of credible environmental knowledge in ways that tend to constrain the capacity of area residents to hold the mining firm accountable for observed impacts on downstream water resources. My analysis points to the ongoing need to examine the uneven social effects that may flow from the privileging of particular knowledge systems and administrative rationalities within resource governance frameworks.