ECOLOGIES OF INEQUALITY AND NATURES IN DISPUTE: TERRITORIAL MEMORIES, GREEN WARS AND CLIMATE GOVERNANCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN.
Contemporary climate crises constitute one of the main scenarios in which historical memories, power relations and disputes over the future of the Americas converge. Beyond being an environmental issue, climate change reveals the persistence of inequalities rooted in Modernity/Coloniality, whose current expressions manifest in new forms of nature governance, conservation policies, energy transitions and climate security strategies. In Central America and the Caribbean, these dynamics reconfigure relations between states, markets, communities and international bodies, frequently reproducing old colonial hierarchies under discourses of sustainability, resilience and innovation.
In line with the theme of the 59th International Congress of Americanists, Tradition and Innovation: The Memories of the Americas, this symposium proposes to reflect on how the memories of colonialism, extractivism, environmental racism and struggles for territory continue to shape responses to the climate crisis. We start from the premise that tradition and innovation are not opposing categories, but complementary processes that enable societies to face the challenges of the present. From this perspective, territorial memories and local ecological knowledge constitute not only cultural heritage, but also political and epistemological resources for building fairer and more inclusive forms of environmental governance.
The symposium calls for anthropological and interdisciplinary research analyzing the intersections between climate change, environmental justice, Modernity/Coloniality and nature governance from historical, ethnographic, comparative and decolonial perspectives. It seeks to promote a dialogue that transcends technocratic explanations to examine how global climate agendas interact with inequalities of class, gender, race, ethnicity, generation, disability and territoriality, as well as with historical processes of dispossession, displacement, militarization, securitization of natural resources and the criminalization of environmental defenders and communities.
The symposium also invites debate on the so-called “green wars” as an expression of socio-environmental conflicts linked to extractive projects, energy infrastructure, carbon economies, protected areas and other conservation mechanisms that, under certain circumstances, deepen exclusion and territorial precarization. It also seeks to highlight the responses built by indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and peasant, fishing and urban communities through practices of resistance, ecological regeneration, territorial defense and the revitalization of ancestral knowledge.
Contributions are welcome on water justice, climate-induced migration, health and well-being, the racialization and feminization of environmental policies, energy transition, ecological debt, governance of the commons, conservation policies, technologies for environmental management, and local experiences of adaptation, resilience and community innovation.
By placing the dialogue between tradition and innovation at the center of anthropological reflection, this symposium seeks to contribute to a critical understanding of how the memories of the Americas continue to shape responses to the climate crisis. In this way, it connects with the three thematic axes of the Congress—Technologies: Power, Culture and Society; Territories, Regeneration and Climate Change; and The Past Always Present—promoting an interdisciplinary dialogue that strengthens decolonial, intersectional and territorially situated perspectives for imagining environmentally sustainable, democratic and socially just futures for Central America, the Caribbean and the Americas.
