Pro-ecological politic actions. Analysis of two towns in Argentina

The objective of this sociological study is to analyze the ecological political actions developed in two Argentine cities in relation with water resources. We compare two significant cities: Buenos Aires and Gualeguaychú. The first one was selected because a) in the nineties it was the focus of the largest privatization of water services in the world.  b) Buenos Aires developed as a city away from the river Rio de la Plata, despite being founded on the banks of the widest river in the world. The second city – Gualeguaychú – was chosen because of the international relevance of its environmental movement in defense of a trans-boundary river visibly threatened by the installation of a foreign pulp mill on the other bank of the Uruguay River.

Political behaviors we have considered as significant references: a) The mechanisms of citizen’s participation and civic responsibility, their utilization, and the public access to the environmental information, and b) The Citizenship Global Environmental Project of UNEP, one of its objectives is “acquiring a better knowledge of environment in order to use that information as a tool for responsible citizen environmental action, both individual and collective”.

The central question of our study is which are the types of political actions in defense of  water-dependence of ecosystems.

Our initial hypothesis is that the institutionalization process of environmental rights and the diffusion of ecological ideas and values are causal variables of the direct participation of the citizens’ direct participation in water environmental conflicts. Nevertheless, this direct participation is incidental to the ecological commitments in its strict sense.