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Conclusion: with or against elites? How to move towards more sustainable environmental governance in Latin America
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | An overall summary of the situation would be that there has been a certain degree of elite shifts, but its significance for environmental governance varies. In general, it can be said that in the struggle to ensure economic growth and more equitable distribution of resources, governments of the “new left” have taken a rather pragmatic venue in their relation to different elites, which has not always resulted in taking greater consideration for the environmental consequences of such growth. This results, in most cases, in forms of environmental governance that have not brought the environmental concerns, visions, values and interests of marginalized or subaltern groups to the forefront. Pointing, as we have done, to the role of elites has provided us with significant insight into why this is so, in spite of promising signals from several of the leftist regimes about a willingness to search for a more sustainable development model. Many of the findings were actually not very surprising: both class theory and elite theory have predicted the difficulties of leftist governments in transforming societies characterized by a high degree of concentration of resources and deep structural inequalities. While these theories never explicitly focused on the environment and natural resources, their conclusions also seem to be highly relevant for environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. First, there is a strong difference between countries, and also, in large countries such as Brazil, between states in a country. Larger countries with stronger economies such as Brazil are transiting towards a path in which certain measures (such as those related to forest governance) are transformed by the dynamic interaction of new and old elites in a global context in which forests have taken a heightened significance in terms of global climate change. At the other extreme, smaller countries, with more vulnerable economies such as Guatemala do not seem to be transitioning towards a path that allows greater inclusion of the concerns and interests of marginalized groups in environmental governance. This is also related to the sectors we examined in these countries, and again to the links such sectors have with the global economy. Although not examined with the same depth in all cases, the case analyzed in Chapter 9 is extremely illustrative in terms of how important, how variedand how flexible the elites' views on the environment are, and at the same time how more conservative views (like those of the business elite) exert a greater influence on the overall output of different efforts to regulate the environment, because of the significance and variety of resources these elites control. In other words, there seems to be some slight room for optimism. To the degree that new elites are capable of influencing the positions and views of old elites, there might be opportunities for reorienting the priorities of governing parties towards more inclusive and equitable environmental governance. How much new elites would be capable of influencing old elites in terms of environmental governance and sustainable development is, however, to some extent limited by ongoing power struggles in other arenas than the environmental one, as exemplified by many of the cases analyzed in this book. |
| Related Links | https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/chapters/edit/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9781315764276-24&type=chapterpdf |
| Ending Page | 231 |
| Page Count | 8 |
| Starting Page | 224 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781315764276-24 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2014-11-13 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Environmental Politics in Latin America Cultural Studies Environmental Governance Governance and Sustainable Interests of Marginalized |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
