Sacrifice Zones and Socio-environmental Recovery in Chile: Failures and opportunities of the environmental policy

Abstract In this article we analyze the Social and Environmental Recovery Plans implemented by the State of Chile in the communes called sacrifice zones. From the contributions of environmental justice and the debates regarding participation and governance that this policy involves, we account for the contradictions and difficulties for the transformation of territories damaged by the intensification of extractivist activities, mainly mining-energy. We conclude by showing how these limitations and failures of state environmental policy are related to the dissociation of the environmental and social, -through the undervaluation of the latter-; the instrumental understanding of participation as a techno-bureaucratic tool for state purposes; and the tensions generated by a neoliberal environmental governance model. Finally, we propose the need to think about the concept of sacrifice zone linked to socio-environmental recovery as a proposal from the territories for the transition towards recovery zones.