Felipe Irarrázaval

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile | UC · Instituto de Estudios Urbanos

The global race for critical minerals for the energy transition is triggering manifold discourses and initiatives in resource-rich countries regarding how to take advantage of the moment. From conventional accumulation strategies based on the capture of resource rents to more ambitious strategies seeking to move forward in the value chain, resource...

Many scholars have discussed how the last commodity supercycle changed the structural patterns affecting the position of Latin America in the international division of labor, particularly regarding its role as a supplier of natural resources for the global economy. This chapter contributes to this discussion by examining the developmental offshoot...

This article explains how ENAMI, the Chilean National Mining Company (ENAMI), has legalized and formalized artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). The experience reveals how promoting formalization strategies that provide much broader support for ASM, beyond mining licenses and tenure rights (i.e., legalization), defined as formalization (e.g., geo...

The presence of social conflicts in environmental impact assessment (EIA) is well recognized. However, it remains unclear how social conflicts impact the EIA process beyond specific case study or the examination of small samples. This article addresses this issue through a quantitative analysis of the projects submitted for EIA in Chile between 200...

Los cambios en los patrones de consumo doméstico de energía observados durante la pandemia de coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) han tenido un impacto en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) de los hogares. El documento presenta los hallazgos de una encuesta dirigida a 1200 hogares en cuatro ciudades del centro-sur de Chile, que proporciona...

Los cambios en los patrones de consumo doméstico de energía observados durante la pandemia de coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) han tenido un impacto en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) de los hogares. El documento presenta los hallazgos de una encuesta dirigida a 1200 hogares en cuatro ciudades del centro-sur de Chile, que proporciona...

The territorial turn in the research agenda about extractive industries and development has remarked the uneven and entangled processes through which industries anchor across space. Whereas the uneven developmental performance of mining areas has been largely discussed, this turn offers fertile ground to interact with the literature about contentio...

The literature about natural resources and development has largely described states' failure to translate large resource endowments into sustainable development. Consequently, terms like resource curse or Dutch disease have become widely accepted. However, the literature examining this process at the subnational level has been less conclusive regar...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has strongly affected economies and human lifestyles globally. The changes observed in domestic energy consumption patterns have had an impact on household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since GHG emissions inventories are only available at the country level and at annual intervals, most studies hav...

The ongoing choreography of extractive industries asks for a deeper appraisal about the processes and scales underpinning resource extraction. This paper unpacks how the assembly between natural gas production networks, extractivist states and local politics is anchored in resource peripheries in Peru and Bolivia through contingent schemes of value...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has strongly affected economies and human lifestyles globally. The changes observed in domestic energy consumption patterns have had an impact on household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since GHG emissions inventories are only available at the country level and at annual intervals, most studies hav...

RESUMEN El presente artículo analiza la producción académica que aborda la problemática articu-lada por los conceptos de conflicto, territorio y extractivismo en Chile. El análisis de 32 artículos publicados en revistas indexadas entre 2015 y 2020 da cuenta de una preocupa-ción importante por el fenómeno. Caracterizamos esta etapa de la literatura...

El último superciclo de los commodities, el cual se puede situar desde inicios del 2000 hasta el 2015, significó un aumento sin precedentes en el desarrollo de proyectos para la extracción de recursos naturales a gran escala en América Latina. Tras un relativo declive del sector en los últimos años, hay dos aspectos coyunturales que marcarán el rum...

This book discusses the conditions that underpin configuration of specific places as resource peripheries and the consequences that such a socio-spatial formation involves for those places. The book thereby provides an interdisciplinary approach underpinned by economic geography, political ecology, resource geography, development studies and politi...

The relation between resource extraction and the places in which extraction takes place has been a long-standing issue for academic, social and political debates. The paths through which resource extraction alter developmental dynamics, the everyday life of the local population and the environmental context have called the attention of social scien...

La literatura Latinoamericana sobre extractivismo ha evidenciado las contradicciones espaciales de los modelos de desarrollo basados en la apropiación intensiva y extensiva de recursos naturales. La categoría de análisis espacial que han primado ha sido el territorio, en la cual se contiene al estado nacional, como articulador del modelo de desarro...

Este documento presenta los resultados del proyecto Impactos del covid en la huella de carbono de hogares de Chile, financiado por la Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo de Chile (ANID), a través del fondo Asignación Rápida de Recursos para Proyectos de Investigación sobre el Coronavirus. El proyecto inició en julio 2020, y tuvo una dura...

In the last two decades, the 2008 Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) virus and the 2016 algal blooms crises have placed the Chilean salmon industry at risk and tested the capacity of its governance mechanisms to solve environmental and economic contradictions and ensure the industry’s continuity and its sustainability. Although in the 2008 crisis the s...

Este artículo se enfoca en discutir este asunto en el caso chileno, y proponer la incorporación de indicadores de brechas de infraestructura territorial para las políticas públicas. El objetivo es analizar los criterios y tendencias en la inversión descentralizada en infraestructura territorial en los últimos años en Chile, con el fin de proponer l...

Economic geographers have largely shown concern about the interaction between extractive industries and local economies by studying how lead firms create economic linkages with national firms. From a global production networks approach, this work looks to deepen the understanding of interfirm dynamics in extractive industries. This work has a criti...

Este documento busca socializar los resultados de la tesis de doctorado del autor, titulada “Global Production Networks and the Extractive Sector: Natural Gas rents and Regional Economic Change in Peru and Bolivia”, la que fue presentada para obtener el grado de Doctor en Geografía Humana de University of Manchester. El presente trabajo discute la...

There are few studies that address the relationship between the State and entrepreneurs in specific productive sectors, so that the elements that play a role in this relationship are not entirely clear. This paper deals with the relationship between salmon entrepreneurs and the Chilean State during the institutional change in aquaculture. This is d...

Political and academic debates about the distribution of resource rents to producing areas have addressed the issue of whether or not the transfers unleash conflicts. While this kind of debate is valid, the present paper argues that such a discussion is missing the point regarding the processes behind said types of conflicts, as well as how such co...

Firms’ strategies for turning nature into commodities are heavily oriented toward reducing the ecological indeterminacy of the production process by controlling its biophysical properties to ensure that nature commodification leads to a profitable business. However, research on global production networks (GPNs) has not focused on firms’ strategies...

Resumen Este artículo aborda las territorialidades asociadas a la extracción gas natural en Perú y Bolivia, las que son definidas como las prácticas y estrategias que diferentes grupos sociales adoptan para ejercer control espacial con la finalidad de modificar, rechazar u obtener beneficios de la cadena productiva del gas natural. Conceptualmente...

Local governments of intermediate cities face significant challenges regarding their interactions with surrounding areas, as well as with other cities. The present article deals with such challenges, based on two conceptual frameworks: intermediation processes, and scale. The methodological focus utilizes a qualitative approach, based on mobile met...

Pléyade revista de humanidades y ciencias sociales número 18 | julio-diciembre 2016 online issn 0719-3696 / issn 0718-655x

Intermediate cities have had a key role in urban dynamics and development in Latin America since the second half of the twentieth century, yet the theoretical and methodological approaches to research about these types of city have not been suited to their complexity. Most research on them reduces to demographic criteria, overlooking the fact that...

Due the efforts of Chilean state to promote Araucanía Region as a touristic place, its landscape has been usually represented with nature and immaculateplaces. However, such representation involves two constraints to understand the region's cities. First, it does not recognize the daily practices of their inhabitants; and second, it locates hierarc...

Since the late 1980s, a new vocabulary associated with concerns about climate change has emerged. Nevertheless, this article argues that the concepts used to describe urban adaptation are a part of the history of urban planning. Consequently, climate change should not be seen as a new phenomenon disconnected from this past. By means of a historical...

Following Jason Moore, we argue that the realization crisis and the ecological crisis that the ISA virus provoked in the Chilean Salmon industry became a single ecological realization crisis, which forced an industrial restructuring of conditions of production, thus pushing forward the a new round of capital accumulation. In what follows, we will e...

Tras la crisis del virus ISA, el cual brotó el año 2007, el hasta entonces asombroso sector salmonero sufrió drásticas transformaciones. Desde prácticamente no existir exportaciones salmoneras en 1980, tras poco más de 20 años de su inserción comercial, la actividad salmonera se ha convertido en motor de las exportaciones industriales chilenas junt...

PurposeCities have been exposed to a variety of natural disasters such as flooding, extreme temperatures, storms, earthquakes, and other natural shocks, and have had to respond and adapt to such pressures over time. In the context of global climate change, natural disasters have increased across the globe. Apart from climate change, many urban envi...

This article points to two geographical representations. Both relate to the activities of the Military Geographical Institute (IGM) in Chile. The first representation, following on from the importance of the cartographic tradition in state-building, and the role of military institutions in this process, is a critical engagement with the representat...

The commodification and instrumentalization of different natural elements and processes have created perfect platforms for wealth accumulation. This has been possible thanks to political, social and economic conditions. Likewise, in the case of urban environmental conditions, a “green imaginary” based on living in spaces surrounded by nature emerge...

Resumen Se analiza y evalúa la manifestación de la segregación socio-ambiental en la comuna de Peñalolén, considerando que corresponde a una escala geográfica que da cuenta de procesos de exclusión en un contexto donde el mercado ha determinado en gran medida su actual estructura. Al respecto, los grupos socioeconómicos se distribuyen en áreas espe...

Current relationships between urban temperatures and particulate matter concentrations at a scale that is representative of the whole city have been analyzed, highlighting a clear division in two zones, the eastern and western part of the city during the days that register the worst air pollution. On a more detailed scale, based on characteristic u...