Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

This paper examines how communities in extractive zones use local participatory institutions to challenge new, large-scale extraction. It focuses on participation built into the critical environmental licensing stage in Peru, a country that has experienced high levels of social conflict over new mining and hydrocarbon extraction in recent decades. Through analysis of 11 important conflicts, the paper explains why in some cases organized communities express their complaints about a project using environmental impact assessment hearings, whereas in other cases they organize around, or in reaction to, those opportunities. It identifies two key factors that explain variation across the cases: first, whether the project design places mobilized actors inside or outside of the project’s area of direct impact; and second, the degree of unity among the “insiders.” The paper, based on fieldwork the author conducted in Peru in 2012, 2017, and 2018, contributes to scholarship on social conflict over new extraction and research on local participatory institutions. These literatures have not yet delved systematically into the different ways by which groups mobilize through and also around participatory opportunities during project approvals.