Intensifying geopolitical rivalries and accelerating global environmental change are reshaping the political, economic, and territorial dynamics of extraction across South America. As national and international pressure to secure access to natural resources increases, the region's extractive geographies are being reconfigured in ways that raise urgent ethico-political questions.
This event brings together scholars working across South America’s so-called extractive frontiers to examine the evolving relationship between climate action, geopolitical competition, and extraction. How are decarbonization agendas and shifting global power relations reconfiguring South America’s geographies of extraction? What forms of dependency, sovereignty claims, and socio-environmental conflict are being (re)articulated in this conjuncture? And how are Indigenous peoples, social movements, and states navigating multi-scalar pressures to accelerate extraction amid the energy transition and geopolitical uncertainty?
Situating extraction within broader debates on colonialism, imperialism, development, and environmental justice, the discussion will critically interrogate whether contemporary climate strategies and geopolitical anxieties risk reproducing extractive logics or whether alternative pathways toward socio-ecological transformation remain possible in South America.
Presenters:
- Javiera Barandiarán, Associate Professor, Department of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Andrea Marston, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Rutgers University.
- Sylvia Cifuentes, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, Mount Holyoke College and Visiting Researcher, Center for Latin American Studies, Rutgers University.
- Daniela Mosquera-Camacho, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, Rutgers University
Zoom RSVP: here