Evidence in Times of Denialism

Climate change is at the heart of the denialist agenda of the global right. Despite the consensus among scientists and the clear evidence that climate events leave in their wake, a significant number of those in power defend the idea that the climate crisis is a hoax. The evidence shows that these events are not only becoming more frequent but also more extreme, thus resulting in more severe consequences.

Although our countries and cities are not among the largest contributors to the environmental crisis, some research suggests that “Latin America and the Caribbean are among the regions most affected by climate change and external meteorological phenomena, which are causing enormous damage to life, health, water, energy, and socioeconomic development in the region. Between 1998 and 2020, climate-related events and their impact claimed over 312,000 lives in Latin America and the Caribbean, affecting more than 277 million people”.

In this context, it is estimated that 80 percent of the total damage caused by climate events in the region occurs in urban areas. As is widely known, these events disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities, which have seen their homes destroyed and their ability to stay on their land threatened by climate change.

Land has also been commodified in cities and, as a result, the real estate market has enabled the kind of extractivism described by Acosta, with urban land now an asset appropriated in large volumes by capital.

We are at a crucial juncture in which the environmental crisis, social inequality, and spatial injustice have now converged. These three phenomena cannot be explained — whether together or in isolation — without challenging our current model of development and urban planning. Testing explanations as based on an analysis of this model provides us not only with a means to understand the impact of the climate crisis with which we are currently confronted, it also helps us to develop tools, alternatives, and projects that can give us solutions to tackle it.

Urban Extractivism

For this reason, we believe it is crucial address the concept of “urban extractivism” when it comes to the climate crisis in urban contexts. Talking about urban extractivism means establishing a relationship between environmental collapse and the deepening of social and gender inequality caused by the capitalist urban model. Sacrifice zones — that is, geographic areas that have been systematically degraded by heavy industrial activity — also exist in cities. Real estate speculation encroaches on environmentally protected areas, such as wetlands, and devastates entire territories, thus contributing to the precarious conditions of those who have already been pushed to the city margins.

Understanding the dynamics of traditional extractivism and the phenomena characteristic of neoliberal cities has led us to conclude that the logics, practices, and consequences of mega-mining, fracking, and the expansion of monocultures can be likened to those that result from real estate speculation and other persistent dynamics that are characteristic of our large cities. This is the basis for introducing the category of urban extractivism, a concept that seeks to address the problems and inequalities present in cities, not as isolated issues but as the result of a specific development model.

Although the concept of urban extractivism was coined in Argentina in an attempt to provide the academic field and social movements with a new notion that would help understand the environmental, social, and housing problems that persist in the city of Buenos Aires, it could well be applied to the analysis of various phenomena common to all large Latin American cities. Thinking urban settings through the lens of extractivism allows us to examine phenomena such as: real estate speculation; the disproportionate allocation of public land for private development; the literal cementing of ever greater areas of urban nature; the felling of trees to create new roads; gentrification; the rise in violent evictions; the housing crisis: as well as increased flooding and its worsening effects on the population. It also allows us to look at these phenomena in relation to the economic model that produces and sustains them.

For ease of understanding, and following Alberto Acosta, “we will use the term extractivism to refer to those activities which remove large quantities of natural resources that are not processed (or processed only to a limited degree), especially for export. Extractivism is not limited to minerals or oil. Extractivism is also present in farming, forestry and even fishing.”

As has been argued by various scholars, extractivism is also a model of territorial occupation that seeks to displace other economies by competing for access to water, energy, and other resources, while creating dynamics of exclusion and new language as to how value is assigned to land.

An Accelerated Process of Extraction

Land has also been commodified in cities and, as a result, the real estate market has enabled the kind of extractivism described by Acosta, with urban land now an asset appropriated in large volumes by capital. In this sense, the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires is undergoing an accelerated transformation based on the extractive model, in which large corporations collect the income generated from the land. We are thus confronted by a model of land occupation that generates real estate speculation, internal displacement, wealth accumulation, the appropriation of public goods, and widespread environmental damage, as well as institutional and social deterioration.

The city is being economically squeezed under the pretence of development, causing dramatic land and social inequalities. The displacement caused by eviction capitalism leaves its mark across the city, while the consequences of the climate crisis continue to have a greater impact on its most neglected neighbourhoods and communities.

Unfulfilled Basic Needs

In Buenos Aires, the map of unmet basic needs coincides with the neighbourhoods worst hit by climate events. Low-income neighbourhoods are exposed to higher climate risk because of higher population density, poor ventilation in homes, and the lack of basic infrastructure, as well as an absence of green areas that contributes to higher temperatures and the urban heat island effect. The location and built features of these neighbourhoods are also conducive to flooding during rainfall. The heavy storms that struck the country in March 2024 had major consequences in the City of Buenos Aires, the Greater Buenos Aires area (GBA), and part of the Province of Buenos Aires. In particular, the city’s low-income neighbourhoods were badly affected due to the same structural sanitation problems that affect people in their everyday life.

However, the classes that have been rendered subaltern are not the only ones to suffer the effects of climate change. In a city that is now asphyxiated by asphalt, the population as a whole is beginning to experience a drop in their quality of life. In the last fifteen years, 500 hectares of public land have been lost, the equivalent of 500 urban blocks. Neoliberal real estate expansion is destroying green areas, while the city is experiencing a crisis of public space that is deepened by exclusionary urban planning based on privatization. The model employed by the City of Buenos Aires allows towers exceeding 100 metres to be constructed on ecological reserves without any requirements for environmental impact studies.