In the Defence of Place: Environmental Justice and the Anti-Fracking Movement in Argentina

Having lost its energy self-sufficiency due to the exhaustion of conventional fossil fuels and rising domestic consumption, the Argentine government has increasingly looked to shale gas to transform its energy mix and resolve an ‘energy crisis’. Historicising justice claims by examining the social, political, and economic relations that generates and sustains fracking, this article highlights how Argentina’s energy transformation is reproducing multiple systemic injustices, in particular the historical configuration of state society relations around natural resources and the struggle for (environmental) democracy and social equity, as well as supporting patterns of political and economic power and racial ideologies. Despite these challenges, the anti-fracking movement has formulated collaborative processes and mechanisms of engagement driven by the core principles of environmental justice and are challenging fracking through a variety legal-judicial and political strategies. However, as the cases of Mendoza and Neuquén demonstrate, confronting and dislodging the state-oriented power relations that are embedded in extractivism remains extremely challenging.