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- Convenors:
-
Piergiorgio Di Giminiani
(Universidad Catolica de Chile)
Elliott Oakley (University of California, Santa Cruz)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on the relation between democracy and neoliberalism as it emerges in conservation projects along the Argentina-Chile border. Attention is drawn to the implementation of participatory schemes in conservation and their impact on broader debates on democratization.
Long Abstract:
Since the 1990s, the southern Andes along the Argentinean-Chilean border has seen an unprecedented growth of public and private conservation projects. Such growth has contributed to the transformation of this area from a remote natural resource frontier, whose economic and political foundations date back to settler expansion and Indigenous dispossession at the turn of 19th century, to a global ecotourism destination. This transition shows both continuities and disruptions between settler colonialism and conservation, which has partially succeeded in mitigating natural resource depletion while reproducing settler forms of exclusion of local populations from the emergent green economy. The conservation boom of these frontier areas is strongly linked to broader political and economic processes taking place in Argentina and Chile since the 1990s. Both countries have been undergoing processes of democratization, following military rule during the 1970s and 80s. At the same time, neoliberal adjustments of public governance – favoring new state-market alliances and the liberalization of land and other resources – was pivotal to the establishment of non-governmental and corporate conservation projects, including private protected areas. In this panel, we interrogate how the relation between democracy and neoliberalism emerges from both conflicts and collaborations generated by conservation in and around protected areas along the Argentinian-Chilean border. A comparative look between the two countries reveals differences and similarities in the implementation of now-dominant participatory schemes in conservation management and their impact, or lack thereof, on broader debates on democratization and the role of local knowledge unfolding in both countries. This panel brings together scholars and practitioners based in Argentina and Chile and institutions from the Global North in the hope of generating a symmetric dialogue on democracy and conservation and the challenges posed by neoliberal processes of environmental private investment.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Thinking through the lens of connectivity, I analyze the models and methods of Tompkins Conservation through the ‘infrastructures of conservation’ – la Ruta de los Parques de la Patagonia and the wildlife corridors of organization’s rewilding initiatives – envisioned to materialize these projects.
Paper long abstract:
Thinking through the lens of connectivity, I examine the models and methods of Tompkins Conservation as their project reorganizes the Chilean Patagonia. I propose to analyze the ‘infrastructures of conservation’ through the Ruta de los Parques de la Patagonia and the wildlife corridors of organization’s rewilding initiatives. Marketed by Tompkins Conservation, the Ruta is an elaboration and extension of the carretera austral, or the Southern Highway, constructed under the infamous Chilean dictator Pinochet in the 1980s. The highway laces together remote national parks and the ‘gateway communities’ positioned to capture tourist revenue, an infrastructural site to witness the articulated visions of state materialization and capital integration embedded within this model of conservation. The novel conservation method of rewilding relies on wildlife corridors to connect species, so engineering new interconnected ecosystems that purport a return to an earlier ecological moment. I suggest that the connectivity imagined through these new infrastructures of conservation provide a site to trace the competing visions for the future of the region held by conservationists, scientists, residents, tourists, state actors, and capital developmentalists.
Paper short abstract:
Private conservation areas and privately developed condominiums are transforming the politics of water in the Futawillimapu, southern Chile. While the environmental outcomes differ, these neoliberal land politics infringe on the territorial autonomy of the Mapuche-Williche Pueblo.
Paper long abstract:
Rural land management strategies involving private conservation areas and privately developed condominiums are transforming the politics of water in the Futawillimapu, Mapuche-Williche territory of southern Chile. Increasingly, private conservation areas are building small hydropower projects and other water diversions within park boundaries and generating conflicts over the legality of these decisions. Simultaneously, neighboring lands zoned for agriculture are being illegally transitioned by inmobiliarias (real estate companies) to condominiums in a frenzy of private speculation. Inmobiliarias’ strategies are emergent; however, their rapid and often hectic growth tends to affect water flows in two critical ways. First, they clear cut large sites of native forest for access roads and development sites, creating erosion and altered surface water flows in the Andean and Coastal mountains. Second, they often seize groundwater and surface water in larger quantities than initially reported, affecting water quantity and quality. Ultimately, Chile’s neoliberal model of managing water and land as separate goods creates the conditions for rural water grabs. While the environmental outcomes of these two forms of land control drastically differ, both forms of neoliberal land politics infringe on the territorial autonomy of the Mapuche-Williche Pueblo.
Paper short abstract:
This work presents findings from recent interdisciplinary research, involving anthropology and marine biology, with and by Kawésqar communities on their claims for cultural, environmental and territorial rights in relation to Parque Nacional Kawésqar and the expansion of the salmon farming industry.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents the processes and findings of recent interdisciplinary research, involving anthropology and marine biology, carried out with and by a group of Kawésqar communities that have taken a stand for the protection of the sea through a series of actions, the Comunidades Kawésqar por la Defensa del Mar, located in western coastal Patagonia, Chile. We aim to summarize the methodological approaches and experiences in order to contextualize the discussion and introduce key issues that are relevant to understand cultural, political and environmental claims.
In particular, the recent establishment of the Parque Nacional Kawésqar reveals a complex situation. Despite being seen nationally as an accomplishment, the communities perceive this initiative as insufficient for multiple reasons, such as the fragmentation of the categorization, which leaves the waters unprotected as a Reserva Nacional and not a Parque Nacional, and the lack of due consideration of Kawésqar participation in these processes. Further, the growth and expansion of the salmon farming industry intensifies and sustains challenges on conservation matters. These elements are presented in strong relation to violent historical processes of indigenous dispossession from the late 19th century and well into the 20th century, that have shaped the contemporary sociocultural contexts, and in a way, are seen as a repetition of state-business practices.
In the current political scenario, these Kawésqar communities, through organizing and gaining public visibility of their struggles and committed leadership, have unfolded different strategies, both formal and informal, in order to pursue their cultural, environmental and territorial views and interests.