Disaster as a Paradigm of Governance over Life

Glaciers and Neoliberal Extractivism in Chile and Argentina

Abstract

In the context of the contemporary ecological and environmental crisis and the growing water stress affecting much of Latin America, glaciers have acquired strategic ecological and political relevance. In Chile and Argentina, both Andean countries, these ice masses constitute fundamental freshwater reserves, natural ecosystem regulators, and producers of key water basins essential for the reproduction of human and non-human life. However, far from becoming axiomatically consolidated as indispensable territories for life and therefore protected from extractive expansion, glaciers and periglacial environments have become objects of dispute among environmental, scientific, community, and corporate interests, particularly those linked to large-scale mining and the expansion of extractive activities across the Andes mountain range. The examination of the Chilean and Argentine cases allows us to expose both the scope and the limits of current regulatory frameworks, as well as the way in which disaster — constitutive of the intensification of neoliberal extractivism — operates as a paradigm of governance over life.