Socio-environmental Conflicts Research Articles

Can grassroots movements in water conflicts drive socio-technical transitions in water management systems?

Water conflicts open windows of opportunity for grassroots movements to transform water systems. However, academic fields studying social movements in socio-environmental conflicts are not well equipped to deal with complexity, non-linear dynamics, and emergent properties. Therefore, these fields rarely engage with long-term complex social processes and dynamics leading to systemic socio-technical changes. Researching water conflicts driven by grassroots movements, we ask whether and how the latter can influence a socio-technical transition of a water management regime. Through an emblematic water conflict in Mexico, we analyse the grassroots movement's trajectory since the conflict´s inception by following the dynamic process of developing agency. Our findings show that throughout the conflict, the grassroots movement accumulated and mobilized diverse capitals to initiate water management strategies and practices that catalysed change in the water management regime by stalling the implementation of large infrastructures. Eventually, this led to the inception of a sustainable and just transition.

Green Trade Opportunities and Challenges within the Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) presents new opportunities for global sustainable development, with a particular emphasis on promoting green trade. Green trade not only contributes significantly to economic growth in participating countries but also strives to balance environmental protection with efficient resource utilization. However, the development of green trade faces formidable challenges, including inadequate policy implementation, difficulties in technology transfer, and inherent conflicts between environmental conservation and economic interests. This study critically examines the successes and lessons learned from two key projects: the China-Europe Green Bridge Project and Pakistan's Karot Hydropower Project. The findings highlight that effective collaboration between China and Europe in policy coordination, green technology transfer, and financial support played a pivotal role in the success of the China-Europe Green Bridge Project. In contrast, deficiencies in policy execution, technological-adaptation mismatches, and socio-environmental conflicts contributed to the challenges faced by the Karot Hydropower Project. Building on these insights, the study proposes several strategic recommendations. These include conducting comprehensive, country-specific studies, quantitative analyses, and interdisciplinary research to enhance policy coherence, deepen international cooperation, strengthen financial support for green initiatives, and bolster environmental impact assessments and regulatory frameworks. These measures are aimed at advancing green trade under the BRI and fostering sustainable development on a global scale.

Avoiding ecosystem and social impacts of hydropower, wind, and solar in Southern Africa’s low-carbon electricity system

The scale at which low-carbon electricity will need to be deployed to meet economic growth, electrification, and climate goals in Africa is unprecedented, yet the potential land use and freshwater impacts from this massive build-out of energy infrastructure is poorly understood. In this study, we characterize low-impact onshore wind, solar photovoltaics, and hydropower potential in Southern Africa and identify the cost-optimal mix of electricity generation technologies under different sets of socio-environmental land use and freshwater constraints and carbon targets. We find substantial wind and solar potential after applying land use protections, but about 40% of planned or proposed hydropower projects face socio-environmental conflicts. Applying land and freshwater protections results in more wind, solar, and battery capacity and less hydropower capacity compared to scenarios without protections. While a carbon target favors hydropower, the amount of cost-competitively selected hydropower is at most 45% of planned or proposed hydropower capacity in any scenario—and is only 25% under socio-environmental protections. Achieving both carbon targets and socio-environmental protections results in system cost increases of 3-6%. In the absence of land and freshwater protections, environmental and social impacts from new hydropower development could be significant.

Sustainability of Informal Artisanal Mining in the Peruvian Andean Region

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the sustainability of informal artisanal mining in the Peruvian Andean area until the year 2022. The research is basic and non-experimental in design and ex post facto in scope. The sample consisted of crime prevention statistics on socio-environmental conflict from guardianship institutions and a television program on mining. Our research procedure focused on gathering secondary information for a documentary review analysis based on past proven and disseminated facts. Informal artisanal mining is strengthened in the Peruvian Andean area due to the following influencing factors: support represented as the social license granted by communal assemblies; the flexibility of governmental management in relaxing compliance related to formalization and preventive laws regarding environmental protection; the resistance to formalization and the 50% increase in socio-environmental conflict; and the 25% increase in production costs related agricultural activities, which promotes the displacement towards mining activities. The environmental sustainability consequences are as follows: limited reconversion of agricultural land-use change in one-third of the communal territories at the headwaters of the basin, which generates the displacement of environmentally friendly economic activity, and a parallel positive action is the impossibility of modification or intervention affecting water surfaces and wetlands due to communal agreements that mining companies must respect during operation.

Energy Security in Ecuador: An Analysis Considering the Interrelationships of the WEF Nexus

The objective of this research was to analyze energy security in Ecuador, which is interconnected with water and food security. As a methodology, 21 indicators grouped into the following dimensions were analyzed: availability, infrastructure, energy prices, efficiency, social impact, environment and governance. For each indicator, a cross-sectional analysis was carried out with the countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, along with a longitudinal analysis from 2011 to 2021. The main contribution of this study is the characterization of the Ecuadorian energy system as available, accessible, affordable and renewable in an electrical matrix but inefficient and heavily dependent on fiscal resources. The factors that may affect Ecuador’s energy security were determined to be the risk of a reduction in income due to it becoming a net importer of energy, climate change, socio-environmental conflicts, poor diversification, energy subsidies and weak governance. A policy is proposed aimed at decoupling development from fossil fuels, with a systemic vision considering the complexity of interactions with other economic sectors, such as water and food, among others.

Grassroots leadership and negotiation style: The quest for justice in the movie Erin Brockovich

The power gaps nested in the political ecology of socioenvironmental conflicts often impose critical impasses on the attainment of justice. Therefore, negotiation is accepted as an alternate tool for environmental justice, especially to avoid the prolonged sufferings linked to uneven power relations between conflicting parties, unpredictable outcomes, mounting expenses and the time taken to get a decision through formal judicial trials or arbitrations. Against this backdrop, the American movie Erin Brockovich is selected to highlight the importance of negotiation as a tool to mitigate environmental conflicts. The movie presents how an ordinary woman, who has many blemishes and liabilities, transcends personal limitations to accomplish appreciable socioenvironmental justice through grassroots mobilization and negotiation. Using close study interpretive methods, the movie Erin Brockovich is analysed as a case study in environmental leadership, distributive negotiation and procedural justice.

Governance capture and socio-environmental conflict: a critical political economy of the global mining industry’s prior consultation regime

Prior consultation purports to mitigate socio-environmental conflict risks by creating deliberative and democratic spaces for local communities to influence decisions over newly proposed mining projects. Yet, many contest state and corporate claims to fair and inclusive decision-making, insisting that mines are often approved in violation of their human rights. Using a critical political economy of environmental governance approach, we analyze the multilevel governance regime which informs the practice of prior consultation within the global mining industry. We argue that this regime has become ‘captured’ by mining interests, as evidenced by the ‘market-enabling’ procedures which restrict communities’ capacity to exercise self-determination. Furthermore, we suggest that this leaves some local groups with little choice but to engage in risky protest action to express opposition. We utilize the Brazilian and Peruvian mining sectors as illustrative vignettes, for which data were collected from extensive fieldwork in both countries.

Experiences of Underground Mine Backfilling Using Mine Tailings Developed in the Andean Region of Peru: A Green Mining Solution to Reduce Socio-Environmental Impacts

In Peru, socio-environmental conflicts related to the development of mining-metallurgical processes and the responsible disposal of mine tailings have become central issues for accepting mining projects, especially regarding building relationships of trust with the communities. This condition has prompted the Peruvian mining industry to advance in managing alternatives to the conventional surface disposal of mine tailings. A promising and increasingly popular management strategy for mine tailings in Peru is their disposal inside underground mines. This article presents: site-specific conditions, advantages/disadvantages, and lessons learned from practical experiences of mine tailings disposal in underground mines in Peru. In addition, some techniques are highlighted, such as (i) hydraulic fill, (ii) cemented hydraulic fill, and (iii) cemented paste backfill. Finally, this article concludes that the responsible disposal of mine tailings in underground mines is a green mining solution that reduces negative socio-environmental impacts, limiting the generation of acid rock drainage (ARD) and the leaching of metals due to the decrease in contact with oxygen and rainfall, thus mitigating the contamination of surface and underground waters, reducing the footprint of affectation in the territory, and eliminating the emission of particulate matter in the environment.

Socio-environmental conflicts and land governance: a study of Chinese infrastructure investments in Argentina

This article establishes a dialogue between the neo-Gramscian approach and Latin American Political Ecology by analyzing land governance – specifically attempts at land grabbing through Chinese infrastructure investments in Argentina. Building bridges between these two perspectives enables an application of Robert Cox’s framework to the study of socio-environmental conflicts inherent to land governance. The study of two land grabbing initiatives in Argentina, one that was suspended and one that continues with modifications, shows that social resistance can condition attempts at land control through investments and their execution. Consequently, the dialogue between these two theoretical perspectives not only revitalizes Cox’s thought but also highlights socio-environmental conflicts in environmental and nature governance processes as a new research direction for IPE.

Supporting Activism in Latin America: The Role of Science Communication, Science Journalism, and NGOs in Socio-environmental Conflicts

ABSTRACT This exploratory paper addresses the relationship of science journalism, science communication, environmental activism, and social movements. It draws on data from Latin America, exploring how journalists and activists use science communication as a tool for telling stories about environmental conflicts that frequently turn violent (more than 1600 land and environmental activists lost their lives between 2002 and 2020 in Latin America, more than three times that of all other regions of the world combined). The main goal of the paper is to understand how scientific storytelling by NGOs helps them present their points of view for journalists and to influence public opinion. Our data is drawn from the formal reports of four NGOs and from semi-structured interviews with representatives from each NGO’s staff about their use of science communication. Our analysis suggests that Latin American NGOs use science communication tools such as scientific storytelling and scientific explanation to support journalists and to communicate with broad publics about complex phenomena such as socio-environmental conflicts, contributing to efforts to reduce the alarming amount of violence in the region.

Environmental justice at the environmental courts? Mining, socioenvironmental conflicts, and environmental litigation in northern Chile

With the judicialization of politics and the creation of new environmental institutions, environmental litigation is now an increasingly common dimension of socioenvironmental conflicts. This study examines this pattern in the context of recently created environmental courts in Chile, focusing on lithium and copper mining litigation in the Atacama salt flats of the Antofagasta Region. I argue that while the courts are formally open to a wide variety of legal complaints, community groups face an uphill battle when using legal mobilization strategies due to the underlying political and economic power of the mining industry in northern Chile. Nevertheless, environmental litigation matters for environmental policy implementation because it reveals conflicts over environmental compliance, highlighting gaps between environmental laws on the books and actual practices. In this sense, environmental litigation activates environmental regulations and can provide communities with greater leverage to demand stronger enforcement, even as the long-term implications of judicial rulings for addressing current and past harms remain to be seen. The paper is based on documents from the Chilean environmental courts database, media sources, and twenty-two semi-structured interviews with activists and community leaders, lawyers, scientists, and government officials to better interpret and contextualize the court archival data.

Political Ontologies of Colombian Amazonia: Peasant Resistance in Protected Areas

This paper investigates the ontological and material dimensions of peasant struggles in Colombian northwestern Amazonia in a context of increasing international deforestation concerns that press the Colombian government to enforce protected areas through military campaigns and market-based conservation programs. Building on ethnographic research in the region, the paper contributes to ongoing debates in the field of political ecology about the ontological dimension of dispossessions and social struggles. It brings together ontological studies with a perspective of critical geography to propose an integrative political ecology of socio-environmental conflicts that addresses the material and the ontological dimensions of domination and resistance.

Socioecological practices and community resilience strategies for sustainable agriculture in lower Sinú, Colombia

This research examines the socioecological practices of rural communities as an epistemological foundation to configure community resilience strategies and face socio-environmental conflicts due to limited access to water, loss of biodiversity and ancestral knowledge. To meet this objective, a qualitative approach was used with a non-experimental transectional research design of exploratory type with a case study method in the Association of Producers for Community Development of the Cienaga del Bajo Sinú-ASPROCIG, Colombia. As a main result, it is argued that the rural communities of the lower Sinú organized in associations carry out self-management models that promote the articulation of social and ecological systems, socio-environmental sustainability and make an adequate management of use and access to ecosystem services.

Dos lecturas de un conflicto socioambiental. El caso de Repechique en el norte de México

This paper aims to analyze two proposed approaches of a socio-environmental conflict generated by logging permits affecting the Repechique community of the Raramuri indigenous people in Chihuahua, Mexico. The first approach is to understand the conflict as a struggle for the unequal control of natural resources located in their territory; the second approach is to understand the conflict as ontological controversies that visualize a fundamental difference on what is the issue in conflict. Through both theoretical approaches, I present an analysis that accounts for the case, the conflict, and its implications. As a result, I conclude with a call to complement both approaches in order to capture the political, economic, and ontological implications of studying socio-environmental conflicts.

State intervention in socio-environmental conflicts in Peru

State intervention in socio-environmental conflicts in Peru

Socioenvironmental conflicts under COVID-19 pandemic and the need of historical-sociological perspectives in conservation science

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global epidemiological, economic and social crisis of unprecedented scope and scale, with significant corollaries for biodiversity conservation. In response to this challenge for humanity, the scientific interest in COVID-19 in a short period occupied the attention of several researchers in different disciplines. However, understand the causes and impact of the pandemic is a complex task. In part, because even though it is a global crisis, the impact of the pandemic is not the same for everyone. The historical asymmetric power relations in the World-System are crucial for understanding environmental impacts and thinking about solutions in the post-pandemic world. In this article, we review some synergistic effects of the pandemic on socioeconomic and environmental conflicts. For this, we conducted a critical review of several primary studies, from July 2020 to March 2021. We observed that socioeconomic inequalities and our strong footprint in terrestrial and marine environments are putting humanity in a position of increasing fragility. We also note that systematic exploitation processes, power conflicts and the complex situation of abandoned local populations interact and reinforce each other, playing a dominant role in driving the dynamics of the pandemic. Likewise, we emphasize the need for a historical-sociological perspective in conservation sciences, and the development of an interdisciplinary scientific perspective, aiming to attack the bases of production and reproduction of inequalities that compromise the success of the objectives of biodiversity conservation and human well-being.

Rivers and Reconciliation

AbstractThis article presents an ethnographic and participatory action research project to reconstruct the “socioecological memory” of the Mandur River watershed in the Colombian Amazon. The objective of this project was to create conditions for community dialogues over the territorial ordering, recovery, and conservation of the watershed in the midst of ongoing socio-environmental conflicts. The author introduces the proposal to engage in what grassroots organizations call “profound reconciliation” along with the ethical stakes of reconciliatory processes that tend to human and more-than-human relations damaged by the interconnected dynamics of structural violence and decades of war. The author presents the environmental humanities-based methodologies that emerged in the collective process to elaborate the memory of the Mandur. The article also discusses the importance of fostering spaces for bettering conflict and offers reflections about the challenges posed for public engaged scholarship when a post–peace accord transition shifts toward the perpetuation of violence and militarized forms of conservation. Scientific and arts-based practices provided distinct evidentiary and speculative tools for analyzing the current conditions of the watershed and imagining future reparative strategies. The article argues that these methods allowed communities to not only diagnose the problems at hand but also hesitantly ask “What else is possible?” in a context of economic precarity, chronic insecurity, and institutional omission.

Socio-environmental conflicts and the path to greater environmental justice: interpretations by social work educators

ABSTRACT The article presents the results of a study conducted in northern Chile that sought to determine how social work educators interpreted the socio-environmental conflicts taking place in their territories. Based on these interpretations, we discuss the educational capabilities required to guide learning processes that ultimately result in greater environmental justice. The study was qualitative, comprising interviews and content analysis. Our findings indicate that extractivism, the absence of the state, and the political struggle between extracting and conserving must comprise the backdrop against which we think about pedagogical processes focused on environmental ethics, the eco-territory, and critical thinking regarding our professional role and its complexities.

The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North

Abstract The political economy of lithium, a “critical mineral” for the renewable energy transition, is marked by two striking developments. First, Global North governments that have historically offshored mining are onshoring lithium to enhance “supply chain security.” Second, these governments have committed to “sustainably sourcing” lithium. In this article, I theorize both developments in terms of a novel security–sustainability nexus: an interlocking set of policies and justifications that promote lithium extraction and emphasize the environmental credentials of Global North mining. The security–sustainability nexus evidences an alignment between state and corporate interests. For public officials, onshoring policies counter China’s “dominance” over battery supply chains. For mining and auto firms, onshoring translates into lucrative incentives, supply security, and reputational benefits. However, despite this state–corporate alignment, the tensions within the security–sustainability nexus illuminate the contradictions of green capitalism. I conclude that the geopolitical and socioenvironmental conflicts over the material foundations of the energy transition are reshaping the inequalities linked to extractive sectors.

Resilience and conflict: rethinking climate resilience through Indigenous territorial struggles

ABSTRACT Resilience to climate change demands a transformation in social and political relations, but the literature has largely neglected how these are embedded within legacies of conflict. We explore the roles socioenvironmental conflicts play in the scaling up of transformation amidst ongoing settler colonial projects in Indigenous territories in Nicaragua. Drawing on insights from resilience, climate change, and critical agrarian studies, this article reframes resilience as a process produced within socioenvironmental conflicts, placing contestation and negotiation in the centre frame. By re-signifying the meanings and practices of resilience, Indigenous agrarian struggles contribute to ‘eroding capitalism’ and its entwinement with climate change.