Contribution short abstract

We approach the study of multi-species and socio-environmental conflicts generated by climate change and the extractivism of natural resources. We focus on emblematic species and the animal agency in conflicts triggered by the mining projects in the Aconcagua Valley, central Chile.

Contribution long abstract

This proposal seeks to explore the political agency of animals in conflicts generated by extractive projects and in the climate change context. From a multispecies perspective, we focus on emblematic species in the Andes. Especially, the cougar and Andean cat inhabit the heights of the Andes mountain range. Although the second is in danger of extinction, both face large-scale mining and climate change, which cause alterations, fragmentation, and loss of their habitat. Based on conflicts over the installation of a mining project in the Aconcagua valley in central Chile, and with an ethnographic method, we analyze the effects and affectations of the project on the human and more-than-human population and the relationships between species. It also considers the methodological and technological challenges in studying more-than-humans and their perspectives, as well as the paradox inherent in the need to make visible and quantify the presence of a species characterised by its elusiveness. We explore how these animals have been degraded by extractive projects based on a vision of modern colonial and anthropocentric development. At the same time, we want to study the emergence of animal resistance associated with cosmopolitics of social or community movements that confront extractive projects.

Finally, this case addresses the question of the possibility of building a future with more than human justice. To consider other, more just forms of coexistence, this article is an invitation to think about conflicts linked to extractivism from a more-than-human perspective and to imagine other futures.