Most countries have hard-to-abate “Achilles heel” sectors for domestic environmental action. In Latin America these are large export-oriented primary industries, like fossil-fuel extraction, mining, and industrial agriculture.
GreenLeAP will enhance the theoretical and empirical understanding of environmental policymaking in Achilles heel primary industry sectors in Latin America, and thereby increase the knowledge on how the region can contribute to attaining global environmental targets.
GreenLeAP will develop an analytical framework for understanding how the interaction between different elites and institutions enables or hinders greening of Achilles heel sectors in Latin America, and employ this framework in systematic cross-country comparative analysis of sectors in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.
More about the project
The project objectives will be addressed through five key research questions
RQ1: How can we best analyse the dynamics of elites and institutions as switching and sticking factors for environmental policymaking in Latin American primary industry sectors? (WP1 and WP4)
RQ2: What characterises the formation of environmental elites in Latin American countries? (WP2)
RQ3: Under what conditions can environmental elites function as switching factors for environmental policy change in primary industry sectors? (WP2)
RQ4: What is the role of bureaucratic institutions in environmental policy processes in primary industry sectors? (WP3)
RQ5: To what extent and how do changing international environmental demands influence the relationship between sectorial and environmental institutions in environmental policy processes in Latin American primary industry sectors? (WP3)
