Voices from the territory,evidence-building processes,and scientific (un)neutrality: Learning lessons from indigenous responses to environmental impact assessment's territorial fragmentation in Tarapacá,Chile

Abstract

In contexts where extractivism operates as a neo-colonial state project, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) frame mining's environmental consequences through techno-scientific knowledge serving primarily economic interests. The paper's core argument posits that EIA results in the fragmentation of territories, thereby undermining indigenous communities' worldviews and livelihoods. Such fragmentation is inherent to the institutional frameworks governing environmental management practices for both land and natural resources. Community responses expose not just the limitations of employing scientific knowledge to legitimize economic decisions about particular territories, but also how EIA reports are tightly connected to specific economic agendas. These interests stem from both private corporations and the Chilean state itself. The paper develops how EIA is contested by indigenous communities who view resource frontier expansion as a direct threat to their territories and livelihoods. Communities critically challenge the knowledge contained in EIAs, producing counterreports that interrogate their validity and epistemological assumptions. This paper examines how indigenous groups confront expert knowledge, mobilizing their historical and holistic cultural frameworks-often with support from professional assessors. The paper delves into these agonistic practices as a vital site of epistemic contestation, revealing the negotiation of competing knowledge systems within extractivist governance and environmental institutions.