The EU-LAC Foundation, the Institut des Amériques (IdA), the French Agency of development (AFD) and the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs invite to the symposium "International strategies and environmental justice. Europe. Latin America. Caribbean". The event is part of the Latin American and Caribbean Weeks (SALC 2025).
This symposium invites to debate the impact of a renewed global geopolitics on the way the environmental question is posed in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean today, through an examination of international governance instruments and promising new concepts.
Programme
Round table 1: Energy transition and decarbonisation
Raw material markets for decarbonisation: green hydrogen, lithium, biomass...
Does the decarbonisation of European industry depend on the export of raw materials from Latin America and the Caribbean? A new unequal exchange and threatened territories?
Round table 2 : Imported deforestation and Mercosur
What are the motives and consequences of using non-tariff tariff barriers to demand green production?
Round table 3 : Biodiversity certificates
How can we finance biodiversity without falling into the trap of the carbon market?
Round table 4 : Bioeconomy: the new Amazonian economy
What kind of economy for the Amazon and its socio-biodiversity?
The official launch of the publication resulting from the 2024 colloquium ‘Social protection systems, public policies and social challenges of ageing’ will take place on 5 June.
Scientific Argument of the 2025 Symposium
With the affirmation of a new multipolar world, linked in particular to the emergence of the BRICS, the interplay of dependencies and interdependencies between continents is changing at many levels. This is particularly true of relations between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. A Europe in the process of "provincialisation" (Chakrabarty), whose energy vulnerability has been brutally aggravated by the war in Ukraine, faces a Latin America that is still struggling to find its place in a world that is more fragmented than it was twenty years ago. While China's presence had given the region hope of greater room for manoeuvre, enabling Latin America to emerge from its historic confrontation with Europe and the Trumpist US, we have to admit that it has hardly been able to renegotiate its role as a supplier of raw materials to the major powers. A land of unequal extractivism, but also a laboratory for new international forms of ecological regulation and home to the socio-environmental movement to overcome the harmful effects of "development", the region questions the link between social and environmental injustices at different scales and from its extraordinary cultural diversity. This symposium therefore invites us to debate the impact of a renewed global geopolitics on the way the environmental question is posed in Latin America today, through an examination of international governance instruments and promising new concepts.
New clothes for biodiversity governance
Environmental governance, orchestrated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has led governments to prioritise the fight against climate change over energy issues. Biodiversity has thus often been neglected in public policy, despite the work of scientists who have demonstrated its interdependence with other environmental and social challenges (climate, desertification, the high seas, plastics, pollution, and inequalities and vulnerabilities). This interdependence is now recognised in scientific and political circles, by social movements and even by the business world that depends on it. However, decarbonisation goals remain a priority and we need to think about how to pursue them without damaging biodiversity.
This symposium will examine how the governance of biodiversity, defined here as the institutions and practices aimed at protecting species, ecosystems and their services, is redefining trade between Latin America and the European Union and affecting the territories and the various actors involved.
Carbon and biodiversity, a conflicting pair
The European Union's international trade is characterised by a paradox: it strives for carbon neutrality on the Old Continent while contributing to deforestation through soy and meat purchases and mining exploration. Calls for environmental protection go hand in hand with markets in commodities and carbon credits to ensure the decarbonisation of the economy. However, these markets often turn out to be environmentally damaging.
The European Parliament's June 2023 regulation against imported deforestation has met with strong resistance, including over issues of sovereignty, the cost of implementing traceability, and even contradictions with the Mercosur international trade agreement. Mirror measures, such as border carbon taxes, are seen as barriers to international trade.
The export of primary production from soils in the South to those in the North raises issues of geopolitical equity, social justice, and environmental and health impacts. The international consensus on the need to decarbonise economies runs the risk of using resources from the South to decarbonise the North (green hydrogen, lithium, wood chips, etc.).
The same question applies to projects that claim to be carbon neutral by offsetting CO2 emissions through plantations or purchases on forest carbon markets. Today, these offset markets are criticised for being inefficient and for violating the rights of indigenous peoples and local populations. Will European initiatives proposing the creation of biodiversity certificates or the Brazilian proposal for a Tropical Forest Fund help mobilise new funds for biodiversity conservation and restoration?
The bioeconomy in the Latin American laboratory
The collapse of biodiversity is visible to everyone, locally and over short periods of time. More than other challenges, it is therefore a powerful indicator for directly challenging the patterns of production and consumption that threaten the habitability of the planet. At the national and local level, we'll look at the bioeconomy, the latest avatar of sustainable development. While the bioeconomy is synonymous with the substitution of fossil fuels by renewable energies, it takes on a completely different meaning when applied to the "sociobiodiversity" of the Amazon, where it is linked to the fight against deforestation. This brings us closer to agroecology, which is based on the interaction of all living things within complex agricultural systems, with priority given to defending the rights of local populations to their territories. It also relies on nature-based solutions, i.e. those based on the proposals of ecological science. How can international cooperation be directed to support the development of this Amazonian bio-economy?
Scientific Coordination:
Catherine Aubertin (IRD), Research Director, Economist, Latin America, Africa, Asia
Pierre Gautreau (PRODIG-Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), University professor, geographer, Latin America