The tension between production and the environment or foreign currency versus sustainability is intense in Argentina. IDS Fellow Anabel Marín and STEPS Researcher Mariano Fressoli outline how two approaches to development – progressive economic development and progressive environmentalism – overlap in their interpretation and critique of what is happening. In their view, building an eco-social future requires narratives of hope in politics and technology, and more expectation in the actions of civil society than in those of the state.
In Argentina, the announcement of a possible agreement with China to set up industrial pig farms has rekindled a debate on development versus underdevelopment. This has been intensified in recent months by the uncontrolled outbreak of fires that have already devastated almost 900,000 hectares in 22 of the country’s 23 provinces, with the suspicion that many may have been deliberately started to clear land for farming, thus linking, in the public imagination, a relationship between environmental destruction and large-scale extractive activities.
Recognition of the severity and scope of the climate crisis at the global level and the impact of a large part of our economic activities on local environments is reaching a turning point. Criticisms of the development model in Argentina have existed for decades, embodied in social struggles against open cast mining, pulp mills and pesticide spraying, for example. But until recently, they were regional phenomena, associated with the not in my backyard style protests, which failed to break the alliance of interests, complicities and silences within the extractivist development model.
As in so many other aspects, the pandemic has made us realise the size and urgency of the environmental challenges both in Argentina and across the world. The growing demand for explanations about the pig agreement with China has begun to be symbolically linked with protests to stop changes in the legislation that would enable mining in Mendoza and mobilizations for a Wetlands Law.
The environmental crisis is built on an unprecedented economic and political crisis, even for Argentina. It is also defined by the difficulties in creating spaces for dialogue that allow the cultivation of new ideas or solutions. At a time of extreme positions in response to events, there is a risk of generating a new rift in our country, but this time within progressivism.
In one corner, there is a thinking that could be called progressive economic development (i.e. the neo structuralist tradition of thinking about economic development typical of most social democratic and left wing governments in the Latin American region). This tradition ignores or minimises environmental problems, prioritising the need to attract investment in order to generate employment, expand exports and foreign exchange, and more importantly, to promote production and technological linkages. In the other corner, progressive environmentalism warns about environmental and social damage, the dangers and risks associated with the activities that generate the most economic resources in the country, and demands significant changes.
These positions are not antagonistic, but increasingly we are seeing each side repeat its argument in an unproductive loop. What is needed instead is to initiate a dialogue and address inherent problematic issues within the two visions.
Progressive economic development thinking, while prioritising economic objectives, for example, does not incorporate a critical view of the economic sustainability of a model that is already being rejected in high-income markets, which are increasingly putting up barriers to products and services that destroy the environment or that are associated with health risks, such as most of those exported by Argentina. In a similar way, progressive environmentalism, beyond the very attractive initiatives and practices that it deploys and proposes on a micro scale, has not yet managed to provide a strategic vision on how to address current macro-economic challenges.
Enter the maze to reframe the model
To get out of this labyrinth, it is necessary to recognize the complexity of the problem in which we find ourselves. Argentina exports mostly natural resources, more or less processed, which are the main providers of the foreign currency required for imports and for paying the external debt. However, the economic, social and environmental problems that these sectors generate are increasingly evident for most of society. The need to increase dollar revenues collides head-on with a part of Argentine society that no longer accepts the social and environmental damage of those activities, while finding the benefits increasingly elusive.
We should take advantage of the crisis and the state of social alertness to rethink our model of growth and development, our vision of the future and our imagination of what constitutes progress. Those who think and design progressive economic policies need to stop trying to sweep environmental criticism under the rug and learn to give it the leading place it deserves, harnessing its democratic and creative potential. After all, it has been Argentinean civil society, increasingly informed and organized, which, with its requests for explanation, questioning and mobilization, is forcing the model to be rediscussed and re-negotiated in the first place.
But, is it possible to trigger long-term changes in direction without neglecting the challenges of the present? How can short-term urgencies be addressed while redesigning our future? We do not have all the answers, but we believe that starting down that path requires reviewing the strategies of environmental and developmental progressivism.
Exit the maze from below
A problem for the construction of a sustainable development model is the overvaluation of the role of the State. The vision of the State as the actor that represents the public good in the democratic system has always been more an aspiration than a reality. The idea that the same State that needs and promotes agribusiness, mega-mining or large-scale animal production may be able to monitor and control costs and risks, regulate and compensate the private ones, is naive. The State needs the foreign exchange that derives from these activities; it cannot give them up. This means it has a vested interest in negotiations with the companies doing the investments, generating the foreign exchange and generating the environmental problems. In addition, because of the brevity of the government’s term in office, policy makers tend to favour the present as they need to show results.
The short-term natural resource trap, therefore, has only one way out: democratize decision-making institutions, include civil society in a central role in executive processes and monitoring. The priorities at this stage should be transparency and participation; and the guiding principle, environmental justice, rather than sustainability as an abstract and disputed idea. Participation is the escape valve for the field of progressive economic development, which in its quest to obtain dollars to improve the distribution of benefits, ends up aligned with the interests of the elites for not democratizing investment decisions.
Civil society, self-convened and articulated in its organizations, must be part of the negotiations and decisions. Especially those who represent generally marginalized sectors, which are usually the most affected by extractive activities. Numerous experiences of citizen participation in conflictive issues associated with natural resources have left a bitter taste, but there have also been positive experiences.
In recent times, some of the greatest challenges to public participation in decision making have been identified. Some progress has been made in their treatment, for example in issues such as information, knowledge and power asymmetries. There have also been significant advances in the development of participatory methodologies that go beyond conflict resolution, aiming at the collective construction of tools and work agendas with a transformative perspective.
Transform the future, democratize knowledge
In the long term, the most important thing is to incorporate a dynamic and political vision of technological change. The construction of an eco-social development model requires both a change in policies and practices, as well as the construction of a new technological imaginary. This task cannot be postponed. At this point, just as progressive economic development thinking should not abandon the democratization of technologies, progressive environmentalism cannot outsource the vision of scientific-technological change either.
It is necessary to imagine and negotiate other futures, and to initiate actions to encourage radical changes in the direction of investments and efforts. Today’s environmental costs are the result of technological decisions that companies made in the past, in relation to where to direct their research, development and production activities. If they are not regulated, companies will exclusively seek to increase profits, reduce costs and increase their possibilities of control and appropriation, and there will be no change of direction. They need to be encouraged to redirect their searches, to pluralise priorities and the evaluation and selection criteria for existing and future investments. If social and regulatory requirements become more demanding and complex, companies will orient investments in more sustainable directions.
But this alone is not enough. Controlling, regulating and punishing companies to follow desirable strategies is not enough. There is a problem of asymmetry of information and knowledge between companies, the State and society that can only be saved by direct participation.
Neither political democratization, nor the redistribution of resources, nor resistance to polluting projects are enough to address the many challenges of sustainability. The construction of an eco-social future necessarily requires a narrative of hope for politics and technology. It is necessary to decentralize the processes of generation and appropriation of knowledge, innovation and even production, as thousands of free software projects, free hardware, open seeds and many others have been doing. Only in this way can society have the information and knowledge necessary to participate in decisions and realise the change of direction we need.
Spanish language version
This article was first published by Anfibia.
