Towards a climate change consensus: How mining and agriculture legitimize green extractivism in Argentina
Felix Malte Dorn, Robert Häfner, Christina Plank
Abstract
Following the goal of a post-fossil economy, institutional actors promote techno-managerial solution strategies, for example the green economy and the bioeconomy. While these strategies focus on technological progress to decouple economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions, the associated additional demand for raw materials causes a new global land and resource rush. In this article, we contribute to the debate on climate change commodities and resource governance by analyzing the symbolic-material legitimation of lithium mining and soy agribusiness in Argentina. Illustrating how large-scale resource extraction is not only proposed as being compatible, but rather framed as a necessity to deal with climate change, we identify a discursive reframing of extraction. Explicitly normative arguments of climate protection are used to justify social-ecological depletion and destruction. We argue that this green extractivism unfolds within the transition from a commodity consensus to a climate change consensus. This non-ideological reframing of commodity extraction beyond political camps results in profound resource governance challenges for the sustainability transition.