The Extractivist Development Model, Socio-Environmental Conflicts, and Indigenous Rights in Latin America

Extractivism is a development model grounded in natural resource extraction (fossil fuels, metals, ores and minerals, and agricultural products) for commodification as raw material in the world market without significant value added. Its endurance in many Global Southern countries is the first factor that makes Marcela Torres Wong’s and Roger Merino’s books so topical. Moreover, the ongoing energy transition away from fossil fuels, sometimes touted as humanity’s big step towards sustainability, is far from severing natural resource extractivism. On the contrary, the current global scenario of ‘green’ capitalism is triggering “reloaded” extractivism understood as boosted fossil fuel extractivism in flat contradiction of the Paris Agreement and enhanced mineral extractivism sparked by the demand for technologies necessary for harnessing renewable energy sources. The traditional position of the Global South in the international division of nature, i.e. the provision of raw material and energy resources for the world economy, and its implications for the domestic social formation has been widely approached in academic literature. Yet, the second and perhaps the most important factor that makes Torres Wong’s and Merino’s work so relevant for scholars, who aim at engaging with the broad field of contemporary area studies from manyfold academic perspectives, is that precisely in Latin America, natural resource extraction often takes place in fragile ecosystems and culturally sensitive territories. Notably, more than half of the world’s conflicts over extractivist activities take place in Latin America. Both books delve into the latter; a common argument is straightforward: the extractivist development path and indigenous peoples rights are closely intertwined. More precisely, socio-environmental conflicts over natural resource extraction in indigenous territories unveil shortcomings and opportunities for the implementation of indigenous rights at the national level, and also reveal indigenous peoples’ different (post-)developmental goals entailed in particular visions of what should be understood as a ‘national project’.