Climate action and obstruction in Argentina from the actors’ view

CHRISTEL, LUCAS G.; GUTIÉRREZ, RICARDO A.; MÖHLE, ELISABETH

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 27th World Congress of Political Science; 2023

International Political Science Association

Latin America is called upon to play a central role in global efforts to decarbonize the world economy and combat climate change. In this context, the region's strategic natural resources appear both as a target for the deepening of extractive processes and as a potential contribution to the green economy. In the case of Argentina, contradictory trends can be identified from the combination of an ambitious promise to reduce GHG emissions by 2030 and a strategic commitment to agricultural exports and the energy sector as the axes of the post-pandemic economic recovery.Based on semi-structured interviews with key-informants from different sectors (the academic sector, environmentalism, the public sector, and the media), this paper seeks to answer: how do the different actors perceive the progress of climate action and the strategies of climate obstruction in Argentina? We argue that most actors perceive that the progress of the Argentine climate action is incipient and lacks comprehensiveness and coordination and that the main strategies of climate obstruction are related to the economic lobbying against specific policies, in a context of narrative disputes where the climate issue is confronted with the needs of economic growth. This article is part of the project "Clashes in Paradise: Development Models and Climate Obstruction in Argentina and Brazil", funded by Brown University and The Climate Social Science Network, which seeks to product and disseminate relevant knowledge on narratives, forms, means and ends used by state and non-state actors in the field of climate denial, delay and obstruction policies in Argentina and Brazil.