Enrique Aliste Almuna

Latin America (LA) is one of the regions whose dependence on commodities has strongly affected the socio-environmental relationships of their territories. Numerous situations of socio- environmental conflict have led to the establishment of an important focus of tensions and consequences because the economy and the GDP of the region is grounded on commodity exports. So, socio-environmental conflict has aroused a genuine interest in developing initiatives that seek to strengthen capacities and protect the environment in the region from several international instances and initiatives, many of them in dialogue with local communities.

By the other side, the geopolitics of knowledge has been a subject explored by STS studies, but not so much the link between scientific knowledge, production of green discourses and their geopolitical reading. In this way, the possible overlap between green discourses and environmental knowledge, which many times gives value to local discourses from the scientific research in the region (for example from studies in the field of political ecology) allows us to suggest as hypotheses that the subject continues to be thought about, discussed, and promoted from the global north to speak by the global south. This phenomenon, which shows a geopolitical dimension, is considered valuable to explore, as a field little discussed in general for LA and which becomes especially interesting in the context of global discourses of action for climate, protection of biodiversity, respect for local ways of life, etc., that have the endorsement of environmental organizations from the global north with action in the global south. International support from the global north, often coming from or strongly supported by scientific knowledge, have allowed important advances in justice, new frameworks for understanding the environment and new rationalities that are installed in the territories. In this way, the hypothesis that guides this research project is that the logics of production and dissemination of environmental scientific knowledge play a gravitating role in the morphology of the rationalities of green discourse, and that they can be translated into a geopolitical reading.

The aim of the research is to explore green discourses, in addition to the dissemination of environmental scientific knowledge that is produced about LA, analyzing its resulting geopolitical dimension. The specifics aims and activities are: A bibliometric analysis (databases of scientific journals); An inquiry into the main concepts from LA literature (specially coming from NGOs); A NGOs discourses analysis working in Chilean Patagonia, and; A cartography of environmental scientific discourses and knowledge on LA. The research includes a seminar at MAK’IT, at least two articles with cross collaboration between research team, with special attention on transitions framework and a discussion about the role of controversies in this context. We hope, at the same time, to enlarge the scientific cooperation between University of Chile and University of Montpellier.