Slow Harms and Citizen Action

Abstract

Abstract Slow-moving environmental harms are typically ignored or accepted parts of everyday life, particularly in low-resource settings in Global South cities. How do communities mobilize around habituated exposure to toxins and initiate policy change for a historically ignored policy problem? The book compares advocacy movements for river pollution remediation in the capital regions of Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. Citizen-led efforts helped create environmental governance through networks that included impacted communities (bonding mobilization) and resourced allies (bridging mobilization). The book argues that bridging mobilization was strongest when bridges had material resources, common pasts, and a resonant frame for understanding the historically ignored problem of river pollution. This occurred in settings with established human rights movements and center-left presidential administrations that were unaligned with mineral wealth extraction. Through bonding and bridging mobilization, citizen advocacy for slow harms activated the state’s regulatory capacity. Citizen action included diverse claims making strategies such as protests, marches, rallies, participatory institutions, litigation, and media campaigns. By unpacking human rights movements as throughfares for environmental activism, these cases shed new light on the struggles for environmental justice in Latin America.