Routledge Handbook of Latin America and the Environment

The Routledge Handbook of Latin America and the Environment provides an in-depth and accessible analysis and theorization of environmental issues in the region. It will help readers make connections between Latin American and other regions’ perspectives, experiences, and environmental concerns. Latin America has seen an acceleration of environmental degradation due to the expansion of resource extraction and urban areas. This Handbook addresses Latin America not only as an object of study, but also as a region with a long and profound history of critical thinking on these themes. Furthermore, the Handbook departs from most treatments on the topic by studying the environment as a social issue inextricably linked to politics, economy, and culture. The Handbook will be an invaluable resource for those wanting not only to understand the issues, but also to engage with ideas about environmental politics and social-ecological transformation. The Handbook covers a broad range of topics organized according to three areas: physical geography, ecology, and crucial environmental problems of the region. These are key theoretical and methodological issues used to understand Latin America’s ecosocial contexts, and institutional and grassroots practices related to more just and ecologically sustainable worlds. The Handbook will set a research agenda for the near future and provide comprehensive research on most subregions relative to environmental transformations, challenges, struggles and political processes. It stands as a fresh and much needed state of the art introduction for researchers, scholars, post-graduates and academic audiences on Latin American contributions to theorization, empirical research and environmental practices.

Part I Introduction Chapter 1 Suturing the Open Veins of Latin America, Building Epistemic Bridges: Latin-American Environmentalism for the 21st Century Beatriz Bustos, Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, Gustavo García-López, Felipe Milanez, and Diana Ojeda Part II: Biophysical Processes and Environmental Histories Chapter 2. Latin American ecosystems vulnerability in a climate change scenario Patricio Pliscoff Chapter 3. Soil degradation and land cover change in Latin America Daniela Manuschevich, Marco Pfeiffer, and Jorge Perez-Quezada Chapter 4. Climate Change Impacts on Caribbean Coastal Ecosystems: Emergent Ecological and Environmental Geography Challenges Edwin A. Hernández-Delgado Chapter 5. An Environmental History of the ‘Second Conquest’: Agricultural Export Boom and Landscape-Making in Latin America, ca.1850-1930 Diogo de Carvalho Cabral and Lise Sédrez Chapter 6. Extractivism: The Port-a-cathed Veins of Guatemala Liza Grandia Chapter 7. Environmental Colonialism and Neocolonialism in Latin America Chris O’Connell and Rocio Silva Santisteban Chapter 8. Water scarcity in Latin America Maria Fragkou, Natalia Dias Tadeu, Vanessa Empinotti, Rodrigo Fuster, Maria Teresa Oré, Facundo Rojas, Anahí Urquiza, and Lucrecia Wagner Part III:Latin American Environmental Issues in Political-Economic Context Chapter 9. The Political Economy of the Environment in Latin America Amalia Leguizamón Chapter 10. Ecological debt and extractivism Tatiana Roa Avendaño Chapter 11. Trajectories of adaptation to climate change in Latin American cities: Climate justice blind spots María Gabriela Merslinsky and Melina Ayelén Tobías Chapter 12. Environmental disasters and critical politics Alejandro Camargo and Juan Antonio Cardoso Chapter 13. Latin America in the Chemical Vortex of Agrarian Capitalism María Soledad Castro Vargas and Finn Mempel Chapter 14. Resource Radicalisms Thea Riofrancos Chapter 15. The fruits of labor or the fruits of nature? Towards a political ecology of labor in Central America Andrés León Araya Chapter 16. Transnationals, Dependent Development and the Environment in Latin America in the 21st Century Paul Cooney Chapter 17. Challenging the logic of ‘the open veins’? The geography of resource rents distribution in Peru and Bolivia Felipe Irarrazaval Part IV: EnvironmentalStruggle and Resistance Chapter 18. Resistance of women from "sacrifice zones" to extractivism in Chile. A framework for rethinking a feminist political ecology Paola Bolados García Chapter 19. Environmental conflicts and violence in Latin America: Experiences from Peru Raquel Neyra Chapter 20. Quilombos and the Fight Against Racism in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic Givânia Maria da Silva and Bárbara Oliveira Souza Chapter 21. The "Greening" by Sustainable Development: Stretching Biopiracy Ana Isla Chapter 22. Territorialization through the Milpa: Zapatismo and Indigenous Autonomy Mariana Mora Chapter 23. Indigenous Autonomies as Alternative Horizons in Latin America: Societal movements and other territorialities in Bolivia and Mexico Pabel López Flores Chapter 24. Land occupations and land reform in Brazil Nashieli Rangel Loera Chapter 25. From Chico Mendes to Berta Cáceres: responses to the murders of environmental defenders Diana Jiménez Thomas, Grettel Navas, and Arnim Scheidel Part V: Environmental Disputes and Policies Chapter 26. Latin America's Approach in the International Environmental Debate. From Stockholm 72 to Rio + 20. Between "eco-development" and "sustainable development" Fernando Estenssoro Saavedra Chapter 27. Degrowth and Buen Vivir: perspectives for a great transformation Alberto Acosta Chapter 28. Social Cartographies in Latin America Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre Chapter 29. Rights of Nature and Specialization in Jurisprudence: Moving Forward to Better Protect Our Environment? Ximena Insunza Corvalán Chapter 30. How tenure reform processes can lead to community-based resource management? Experiences from Latin America Iliana Monterroso Chapter 31. Environmental Policy and Institutional Change: The Consequences of Mobilization Ezra Spira-Cohen and Eduardo Silva Part VI:Toward Oppression-Free Futures Chapter 32. Feminist thought and environmental defense in Latin America Diana Ojeda Chapter 33. Decolonising time through communalising spatial practices María Carolina Olarte-Olarte and María Juliana Flórez Flórez Chapter 34. Environmental Thought in Movement: Territory, Ecologisms, and Liberation in Latin America Melissa Moreano Venegas, Diana Carolina Murillo Martín, Nadia Romero Salgado, Karolien Van Teijlingen, Iñigo Arrazola Aranzabal, Manuel Bayón Jiménez, Angus Lyall and Diana Vela-Almeida Chapter 35. Agroecology and Food Sovereignty in the Caribbean: Insights from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Sint Maarten Georges F. Félix Chapter 36. Re-existance struggles and socio-ecological alternatives for reproduction of dignified and sustainable life in territories affected by the extractivist offensive in Latin America Mina Lorena Navarro, Sandra Rátiva Gaona, and Talita Furtado Montezuma Chapter 37. The Dimensions of Life: Environment, Subject, and Amerindian Thought Ailton Krenak and Felipe Milanez Chapter 38. Environmental Justice Movements as Movements for Life and Decolonization: Experiences from Puerto Rico Katia R. Avilés-Vázquez, Gustavo García-López,Carol E. Ramos Gerena, Evelyn Moreno Ortiz, Elga Vanessa Uriarte Centeno, Roberto Thomas Ramírez, Jesús J. Vázquez Negrón, Marissa Reyes Díaz,José Santos Valderrama, and Angélica M. Reyes Díaz Chapter 39. Community Contributions toa Just Energy Transition Juan Pablo Soler Villamizar

Beatriz Bustos is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Chile. Her research focuses on resources geography and the sociopolitical transformations that exploitation of natural resources produces in rural communities. Her work ranges from examining the geography of commodities such as salmon, copper, wine, agro-industries, coal, lithium and green hydrogen, to rural livelihoods under neoliberal extractive economies. More recently she is researching ideas of rural citizenship. Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies of SUNY New Paltz (US), teaching courses on physical and people–environment geography as well as on socialism. He is Senior Editor for Capitalism Nature Socialism and Reviews Editor for Human Geography. He has recently published Socialist States and Environment and, with George Martin, Urban Food Production for Ecosocialism. His research areas include soil contamination and acidification, urban food production, and socialism and the environment. Gustavo García-López is an engaged researcher, educator, and apprentice organizer, from the islands of Puerto Rico. He has experience in transdisciplinary social-environmental studies. His work is situated at the intersection of ecology and the political, postcolonial/decolonial, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. He engages with commons and commoning, autogestion, and environmental and climate justice issues. He is part of the JunteGente collective in Puerto Rico, the Post-Extractive Futures initiative, the Climate Justice Network and the Undisciplined Environments blog. He lives uprooted from his lands but finding home and guiding stars in his daughter Maia. He is held in life by broad networks of care and nourishment, of people, spirits, memories, and ecologies. Felipe Milanez is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Humanities, Arts and Sciences Profesor Milton Santos, at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Author of Memórias Sertanistas: Cem Anos de Indigenismo no Brasil and Guerras da Conquista, with Fabrício Lyro, his work and activism focus on the violence against environmental defenders, the genocide of indigenous peoples and ecocide. More recently, his research dedicates to learn with indigenous art, anti-colonial epistemologies and political ecologies from Abya Yala. Diana Ojeda is Associate Professor at Cider (Center for Interdisciplinary Development Studies) at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work analyses processes of "green grabbing", dispossession, and state formation from a perspective that combines feminist political ecology and critical agrarian studies. More recently, her research has focused on pesticide use in Colombia.