Facing poverty, inequality and the need for foreign currency, governments in Latin America have employed different strategies to promote development and economic growth, as multiple stakeholders seek to turn the reserves of natural resources into sources of wealth. It is against this backdrop that multilateral and regional agreements were concluded and national policies formulated promoting the construction of large infrastructure projects in sectors considered strategic, most notably the energy sector.
An example of this is the energy reform approved in Mexico in 2013-2014, whose purpose is to encourage competitiveness, provide greater certainty and promote private investment in this sector. Another example is the massive construction of large hydropower plants in the south of the continent. While the projects developed under this approach have been effective in attracting foreign investment, they often cause harmful impacts to the environment and produce few tangible benefits for the surrounding communities.
Environmental impacts, income distribution as well as the social and cultural impacts on communities coupled with the poor implementation of prior consultations have generated a growing set of conflicts in the region. According to a recent survey with more than 500 representatives from all sectors related to socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America, over 80% believe that the level of conflict in countries in the region has increased (FFLA 2016). This result demonstrates the need to rethink conflict transformation strategies in the energy and infrastructure sector, but also generally the strategies to solve environment-related disputes.
The multi-stakeholder dialogue is an important tool to achieve this transformation, but it does not replace other strategies, such as the defence of human rights, advocacy, Corporate Social Responsibility, resistance, among others. These tools should lead to greater justice and peace in the region within a transformative framework. To achieve complementarity between the different strategies and tools, we need a deeper dialogue among different stakeholders: companies, international organizations, communities, state actors and non-governmental organizations.
An attempt to bring different stakeholders together was made during the VIII Regional Forum on Transformation of Socio-environmental Conflicts in Latin America held on October 24 and 25, 2016.
More than 150 participants contributed to the multi-stakeholder event. Among them were representatives from different sectors such as business, civil society organizations, academia and indigenous peoples, and from a broad range of countries, such as Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Germany and Switzerland.
The Regional Forums on Socio-Environmental Conflict Transformation are led by Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano. After seven editions held in Ecuador, the Forum was brought to Mexico this year. The meeting in Mexico had the support of
The Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano plans to continue with this dialogue. The organizing committee has agreed to organize the ninth edition of the Regional Forum on Socio-Environmental Conflict Transformation in Mexico as well. This event, to be held in 2018, will discuss transparency and accountability mechanisms and their link to socio-environmental conflicts. This will give continuity to the discussions of the recent event that identified corruption and the existence of illegal armed groups as factors for the escalation of conflicts into situations of violence.
In this interview, EcoPeace Directors Nada Majdalani (Palestine), Yana Abu-Taleb (Jordan) and Gidon Bromberg (Israel) explain why disengaging from a shared environment can aggravate the region’s security challenges.
At the conclusion of the 50th Pacific Islands Forum, Pacific leaders issued a Forum Communiqué and the ‘Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now’ – the strongest collective statement the Forum has issued on climate change. Pacific leaders highlight the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit, the SAMOA Pathway Review, and 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 25) to the UNFCCC as “global turning points to ensure meaningful, measurable and effective climate change action”.
If ratified, the Mercosur-EU trade deal may reinforce the parties’ commitment to climate action. Yet, its potential relevance is weakened by a language that often stops short of concrete commitments, as well as political resistance.
Iraq is on the verge of an environmental breakdown, and climate change is not helping. The country's fragile environment and the increasing scarcity of natural resources — particularly water — are a result of poor environmental management, as well as several political and historical factors. However, as climate change impacts add to the existing pressures, the environmental collapse turns into a security issue.