The environmentalization of mining in Colombia, Chile, and Peru: A comparative analysis of green state formation

The environmentalization of mining is similar but different in Colombia, Chile, and Peru, and adopting an embeddedness theory framework helps to explain this. Green state formation diffuses because the international political economy demands so: world society embeds the economy and pushes for environmental rights, which leads to trade rules. However, particular institutional and ecological contexts shape the development of distinct varieties of state greening. In particular, the 1970s and 1990s junctures were windows of opportunity for diverse green state formation processes, conditioned by their respective national contexts: there was an early start with decentralized features in Colombia, a late beginning and constrained state formation in Chile, and very late and mostly legal progress in Peru. Environmentalization is highly idiosyncratic, characterized by policy and law progressivism in Colombia, neoliberal technocraticism in Chile, and lawmaking with the lowest bureaucratic autonomy in Peru. Mining being so powerful, its environmental impacts so complex, and green state formation so restricted or minimal, the environmentalization of mining appears formal and discursive for the most part, especially in Peru's weak state.