The dismantling of environmental governance and the permissiveness of the mining-industrial complex in Argentina: an analysis of the Ley de Bases y Puntos de Partida Para La Libertad de Los Argentinos

• Grant number: 24/15189-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Frederico Daia Firmiano
• Grantee: Matheus José Costa Fernandes
• Supervisor: Lucrecia Soledad Wagner
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Instituto Argentino De Nivología, Glaciología Y Ciencias Ambientales, Argentina
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/03453-0 - The mining-industrial sector in Minas Gerais and changes in environmental Governance from 2019 to 2023 in light of the Brazilian pattern of capital reproduction based on commodities, BP.IC

Abstract

Over the past four decades, Latin America has become one of the most important frontiers for mineral expansion on the planet. In this process, countries that have historically fulfilled this role in the international division of labor, such as Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil, have ratified their status as exporters of mineral commodities. Others have been incorporated into the global circuit of extractivism, as in the case of Argentina, which, from the 1990s onwards, began to experience a boom in mining activity within the framework of the productive restructuring of capital and the implementation of neoliberal policies. More recently, this process has gained new momentum, with the demand for copper exploration, in the context of the presidency of Javier Milei (2023-present). This research proposal aims to analyze the recent Ley de Bases y Puntos de Partida Para La Libertad de Los Argentinos within the more general framework of the changes in environmental governance that have been occurring in favor of the mining-industrial complex and as part of the contemporary movement of expansion of this sector in Latin America. To this end, it will resort to bibliographic and documentary research and systematic participation in the Environmental History Group of IANIGLA/CONICET, in Mendoza, Argentina, seeking, in addition to the particularities of this process in that country, possible recurrences, approximations with the Brazilian case.