Societies, environment and environmentalisms in Latin America

Abstract

The environment is understood here as the product of human interventions in the natural environment through socially organized work processes. These produce also generate environmental conflicts, to the extent that different social groups try to make mutually exclusive uses of the same ecosystem.  Every Society has a characteristic environment and environmental culture, developed over time. In this perspective, environmentalism expresses the cultural values and political behaviors of different social groups, which result from the contradictions inherent in their role in the production of the environment that everyone shares. In the Latin America has generated three characteristic trends: firstly, one of a liberal technocratic order, linked to the promotion of sustainable development; secondly, it is assumed as ecological, focused on the conflicts associated with the social metabolism breakdow of nature generated by the extractive nature of our economies, and thirdly,  a popular nature, associated with indigenous and peasant sectors, which resists the natural heritage transformation in natural capital, and urban popular groups that fights for accessing environmental living conditions such as: access for drinking water, sanitation and clean air.