ABSTRACT
The Routledge Handbook of Latin America and the Environment provides an in-depth and accessible analysis and theorization of environmental issues in the region. It will help readers make connections between Latin American and other regions’ perspectives, experiences, and environmental concerns.
Latin America has seen an acceleration of environmental degradation due to the expansion of resource extraction and urban areas. This Handbook addresses Latin America not only as an object of study, but also as a region with a long and profound history of critical thinking on these themes. Furthermore, the Handbook departs from most treatments on the topic by studying the environment as a social issue inextricably linked to politics, economy, and culture. The Handbook will be an invaluable resource for those wanting not only to understand the issues, but also to engage with ideas about environmental politics and social-ecological transformation. The Handbook covers a broad range of topics organized according to three areas: physical geography, ecology, and crucial environmental problems of the region. These are key theoretical and methodological issues used to understand Latin America’s ecosocial contexts, and institutional and grassroots practices related to more just and ecologically sustainable worlds.
The Handbook will set a research agenda for the near future and provide comprehensive research on most subregions relative to environmental transformations, challenges, struggles and political processes. It stands as a fresh and much needed state of the art introduction for researchers, scholars, post-graduates and academic audiences on Latin American contributions to theorization, empirical research and environmental practices.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|8 pages
Introduction
chapter 1|6 pages
Suturing the open veins of Latin America, building epistemic bridges *
part II|89 pages
Biophysical processes and environmental histories
chapter 4|15 pages
Climate change impacts on Caribbean coastal ecosystems
chapter 5|12 pages
An environmental history of the “second conquest”
part III|106 pages
Latin American environmental issues in political-economic context
chapter 11|15 pages
Trajectories of adaptation to climate change in Latin American cities
chapter 15|13 pages
The fruits of labor or the fruits of nature?
chapter 17|11 pages
Challenging the logic of “the open veins”?
part IV|87 pages
Environmental struggles and resistance
chapter 18|8 pages
Resistance of women from “sacrifice zones” to extractivism in Chile
chapter 23|12 pages
Indigenous autonomies as alternative horizons in Latin America
chapter 25|12 pages
From Chico Mendes to Berta Cáceres
part V|68 pages
Environmental disputes and policies
chapter 26|10 pages
Latin America's approach in the international environmental debate
chapter 29|9 pages
Rights of nature in the courts of Latin America
chapter 30|15 pages
How can tenure reform processes lead to community-based resource management?
part VI|99 pages
Toward oppression-free futures