Presentation short abstract

This paper examines environmental contestation of the repeal of the world’s only blanket ban on mining, which occurred against the backdrop of one of the largest swaps for nature by an authoritarian government that combines conservation and extraction with punitive and securitarian imaginaries.

Presentation long abstract

This paper explores environmental contestation in El Salvador against the backdrop of one of the world’s largest swaps for nature by a government that is highly mediatic and popular yet also authoritarian and repressive. Using digital ethnography and media research, we examine the repeal of a mining ban and the resulting mobilisation involving manifold uses of the law. Environmental resistance has faced complex challenges since the government of El Salvador removed checks and balances, undid the separation of powers, and declared a state of emergency that has become the country’s governing system. In 2024, prior to the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP16), the world’s largest swap for nature to benefit a river basin, which consisted of a complex financial operation involving the governments of El Salvador and the USA as well as financial organisations, was announced. The government of El Salvador committed to investing in the protection of the Lempa River basin. However, soon after it repealed the world’s only blanket ban on mining and announced its intention to facilitate mining investment affecting the same river basin. We argue that this parallel move is not a policy contradiction, but rather part of a form of ‘environmentalism’ that presents extraction as being compatible with conservation through compensations and green accounting, combined with punitive and securitarian imaginaries. Such far-right and authoritarian ‘environmentalisms’ are rendering the actions of environmental movements increasingly illegitimate. Re-legitimising these actions and promoting alternative futures has called for forms of contestation that highlight the paradoxes of such ‘environmentalisms’.