Bioethanol production as a contested issue. Local movements struggle for environmental justice in Córdoba, Argentina

TOLEDO LÓPEZ VIRGINIA; TITTOR ANNE

Kiel

Workshop; Narratives and Practices of Environmental Justice; 2019

Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

Bioenergy has been promoted as a sustainable answer to environmental crisis and climate change. Nevertheless, the production of bioenergy is highly contested, both on a local and global scale. While most works focus on rural areaswhere the crops are grown, our research analyzes a conflict on bioethanol production within an urban context: the city of Córdoba, Argentina.The enterprise Porta Hermanos has been producing alcohol for decades here. Since it has started to expand their territory in 2012 and begun to refine bioethanol, the community has been affected in different ways: In 2012, a firstexplosion happened, which made the neighborhood feel insecure, as neither authorities, nor the enterprise responded to their questions about the incident. Insecurity about future accidents was not the only motive to foundthe neighborhood association VUDAS (which stands for Vecinas Unidas en Defensa de un Ambiente Sano/ United Neighbors Defending a Healthy Environment) that argues for the closure of the factory. The residents noted increasing health problems, especially their skin and their respiratory system were negatively affected. Various children were born with malformations; some did not survive the first year of their life. The research will focus on how the narratives of environmental justice, including territorial representations and practices of VUDAS, are transformed during the contentious process. Additionally, it shows that what businesses and many governments present as sustainable energy production has huge environmental and social impacts at the places where biofuels are produced, deepening preexisting inequalities.