(101000)Reducing power disparities in large-scale mining governance through counter-expertise: A synthesis of case studies from Ecuador

摘要

Among actors with stakes in natural resource governance, not all knowledge is equally distributed or considered to be legitimate. Instead, knowledge is arranged in a hierarchical manner, which in turn translates into power disparities. The socio-ecological dynamics entangled in large-scale mining exemplify this tendency. Engineers, technicians and environmental scientists are given a special role in defining, evaluating and implementing large-scale mineral extraction scenarios. The technical expertise and skills of these actors is referred to as 'techno-scientific' or 'expert' knowledge. Mining-affected communities are commonly excluded from formal expert-based processes. In response, these communities reject the technological trajectories developed by experts in extractive industries and governments. They engage in counter-expertise: practices of alternative knowledge mobilization and (co-)production that challenge official techno-scientific assessments of safety and risk. To do so, these communities deploy local, techno-scientific and legal knowledge. In addition, they develop alliances that span across rural and urban contexts and local, national and international scales. Such efforts converge with larger, ongoing projects of ontological self-determination coupled with experiments of self-governance and local and regional autonomy that prefigure the reorganization of society. At the intersection of Political Ecology, Fou-cauldian theorizations of power/knowledge, Feminist Science and Technology Studies and Latin American Decolonial Studies, these rather novel epistemic dynamics are studied in three emblematic cases of resistance to large-scale mining in Ecuador.