International Politics of bioeconomy: prospects and challenges from the Global South

MELISA DECIANCIO

Conferencia; British International Studies Association Annual Conference; 2021

This paper examines to what extent bioeconomy can be considered as an alternative development model for South American countries, considering its implications in terms of economic growth and sustainability (social and environmental impacts). To address this goal, this paper will focus on the Argentine case. As an economically peripheral country, a leading exporter of bioeconomy products (GM soy, biofuels, biotechnology), where the struggles over the development model and its governance are still being discussed, contested and redefined, Argentina is a very appalling case. The main questions are: What are the possibilities for the bioeconomy to emerge as a new development model in Latin America? What are the structural and contextual conditions for its development? To what extent and how do core-periphery dynamics manifest within this development model? Is bioeconomy a pathway to overcome these dynamics or take them even further? Through the lenses of a renewed reading of Latin American structuralism, my hypothesis is that in order to emerge as a new development model in South American -and also the wider Latin America-, the bioeconomy debates have to engage in previous debates on Latin American development, considering the structural and contextual conditions of the region and its insertion in the world. The extent that core-periphery dynamics could be overcome will depend on the approach and definition of development adopted, where an integral view of it (this is, including its sustainability component of social and environmental concerns) must be considered.