ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors address the challenge of transforming extractivism into a progressive development path, part of a model that retains and combines both industrialisation and extractivism as essential parts of a progressive development model. The question is whether the greening of extractivism is possible. The authors preface their analysis of the challenges posed by the incorporation of extractivism into a new industrial policy for Latin America, with a discussion of the negative consequences that both industrialism and extractivism have had on the environment. As they see it, at issue in these negative consequences is not only the sustainability of extractivism as a model of development, but three brutal contradictions that put pressure on the growth rate of the economy, contradictions that are inherent to capitalism and thus difficult, if not impossible, to escape even with the strenuous efforts of governments and policymakers to construct a sustainable development policy regime. The chapter ends with a discussion as to the options available to the government in regard to the design of a new industrial policy that incorporates resource extraction but not extractivism as we have come to know it.
