ABSTRACT
The current decarbonization of the world economy entails a renewed boom in raw materials and natural resource exploitation, which is likely to reinforce the natural resource exporting development model that has already dominated the region for the past two decades. This time, however, the strategy is to serve the requirements of sustainable development in the sense of a “green extractivism” as an enabler of social–ecological transformation. In order to assess the strategy's chances of success, this chapter starts off with an analysis of the most recent boom phase of natural resource and raw materials extraction (2003–2014). Subsequently, it identifies the preconditions for the compatibility of a development model based on the export of natural resources and raw materials with sustainability requirements. Over the course of the analysis, it becomes clear that tax reforms will most likely be among the central challenges for Latin America's development in the twenty-first century.
