Juliana Jaramillo reviews Sebastian Smart’s Socio-Environmental Movements Against Extractivism: Legal Mobilisation and Resistance in Chile (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).
As environmental harms become increasingly visible and politically salient, conflicts over extractive projects have moved to the forefront of contemporary politics. While the global push toward an energy transition appears promising, socio-environmental conflicts are far from disappearing. Indeed, many so-called “green projects” continue to reproduce the same extractive logic: profits are unevenly distributed, while environmental and social costs are disproportionately borne by the peripheral communities where these projects are located. It is precisely this tension between the developmental promises of extractivism and its social and environmental consequences that lies at the heart of Socio-Environmental Movements Against Extractivism: Legal Mobilisation and Resistance in Chile, in which Sebastian Smart examines the social, political, and environmental conflicts generated by large-scale mining, energy, and infrastructure projects.
Focusing on Chile, a country long associated with extractive development, Smart demonstrates that governments across the political spectrum—from neoliberal to progressive—have continued to anchor their economic model in extractive industries, justifying them on the grounds that they are sources of employment and fiscal revenue needed for funding redistributive policies. Yet, for the communities where such projects take place, extractive development is more often experienced as dispossession, rights violations, and environmental injustice. This resulting tension, as the book shows, fuels the emergence of socio-environmental conflicts that are locally situated yet transnational in reach, involving a wide range of actors: communities bearing and resisting the costs of extractivism, domestic and transnational actors that support their struggles, corporations that own and operate the projects, and government and international bodies that intervene to mediate these disputes.
As Smart puts it, in Chile “[a] mixture of political and economic factors has produced both a form of predatory extractivism and the subsequent social conflict that accompanies it” (p. 47).
The book delves into these socio-environmental conflicts to examine how communities organize to resist extractivism by resorting to what he terms socio-legal mobilization: collective action that relies not only on social protest and political lobbying but also, and increasingly, on legal tools such as litigation, constitutional rights, and international human rights norms. Indeed, as socio-environmental conflicts in Chile have become increasingly judicialized—with 45 of the 131 conflicts registered as of 2025 resulting in legal action before courts or administrative bodies—the book is particularly concerned with understanding how communities deploy legal discourses and tools in innovative ways, how courts responds to these challenges, and the effects of these strategies.
Smart shows that legal mobilization has at times succeeded in halting extractive projects, reflecting “not only the increased legal knowledge of communities and NGOs but also the growing legitimacy of the courts as arenas of environmental dispute” (p. 102).
The book pursues this objective through three case studies that trace the emergence of socio-environmental movements in contemporary Chile: the Caimanes case, which pitted a rural community against a large-scale mining project; the No Alto Maipo case, in which an urban community challenged a hydroelectric development; and the Chiloé case, which examines Indigenous mobilization against smaller-scale extractive initiatives.
Drawing on these cases, Smart argues that the combined use of social and legal strategies, both extra-institutional and institutional, has strengthened communities’ capacity to resist extractivism and sustain mobilization over time. Protest tactics such as blockades and transnational advocacy have enabled local actors to raise the visibility of their grievances, attract external allies, and increase their leverage in negotiations. At the same time, legal action before courts has often resulted in victories that legitimize community claims and compel public authorities and companies to adopt measures that mitigate the most harmful effects of extractive projects and provide benefits to affected populations. Despite such partial gains, however, the overall picture remains far from optimistic. As Smart notes, socio-legal mobilization alone cannot substantially curb the expansion of extractive activity. In a context where extractivism remains deeply embedded within Chile’s development model, political considerations and economic imperatives ultimately take precedence over the needs and demands of local communities.
The argument unfolds across eight chapters. Following the introduction, the second chapter develops an integrated theoretical framework for the analysis of socio-environmental movements. The third chapter offers a critical account of the historical consolidation of Chile’s extractivist model, followed by an overview of the study’s methodological approach. Chapter four traces the evolution of environmental activism in Chile, showing that its origins predate the democratic transition and extend back to the period of dictatorship. Chapters five through seven are devoted to the analysis of the three empricial cases. The concluding chapter synthesizes the main findings, assesses both the promises and limitations of legal mobilization as a grassroots strategy, and reflects on the emerging environmental challenges associated with climate change and the construction of data centers that underpin the artificial intelligence industry. Importantly, in this final chapter Smart also explores the broader implications of his findings and outline possible pathways for Chile to transition from a reactive to a preventive approach in addressing the potential impacts of extractive projects.
“[A] shift is needed from a reactive legal model—where communities must resort to contestation after environmental impacts have begun—to a preventive model of legal and territorial governance, where rights, risks, and responsibilities are negotiated in advance. This is not only a legal matter, but a question of political legitimacy and environmental justice” (p 296).
One of the book’s major strengths lies in its ability to capture the complexity of socio-environmental conflicts. Rather than portraying these disputes as two-sided confrontations between communities and corporations, Smart reveals the multiplicity of actors, interests, and strategies that shape them. The cases show that conflicts often emerge within communities themselves, when residents hold differing views on the desirability of extractive projects or when some are willing to abandon confrontation in exchange for compensation. Tensions can also arise between communities and their ally networks. This was evident, for instance, in northern Chile, where several environmental NGOs withdrew their support after local communities advocated for the relocation rather than the cancellation of a dam project. As Smart notes, “The dichotomy of frames between national and international organisations that wanted to stop the construction of the project and local communities that wanted to relocate it, ended up in a fragmentation of the support network that decided to step out of this conflict” (126-127). Equally important, divisions run through the state itself, which, far from adopting a unified position on extractivism, is characterized by competing agencies, some aligned with community demands and others more supportive of corporate interests. Readers can therefore expect a nuanced, critical, and honest analysis of the actors, tensions, and power dynamics that underpin socio-environmental conflicts.
The book also stands out for its critical assessment of legal mobilization as a repertoire of collective action. The cases illustrate the well-known fact that courtroom victories do not automatically translate into material benefits. Even after securing favorable rulings, communities must continue to mobilize beyond judicial arenas, pressuring authorities and cultivating alliances to ensure the enforcement of legal achievements. Moreover, while legal strategies can yield important gains, they also entail significant costs. Because litigation requires both resources and specialized expertise, communities often become dependent on external lawyers. Such dependence carries its own risks, as the interests and priorities of legal representatives do not always align with those of the communities. In the Caimanes case, for example, Smart shows how some community leaders ended up filing a legal claim against the law firm representing them—“accusing their own lawyers of breaching fiduciary duty and pursuing personal financial interests” (149)—after the firm supported a compensation deal backed by other residents.
Despite these strengths, the book would have benefited from a more explicit engagement with the existing scholarship on legal mobilization and the judicialization of politics in Latin America. There is a rich and growing body of literature that has examined rights-based legal struggles across the region, including environmental conflicts, land rights, reproductive rights, LGBTIQ rights, and socioeconomic rights. While the book rightly notes that theoretical frameworks drawn from North Atlantic social movement theory are not always well suited to Global South contexts, a closer engagement with scholarship that has develop analytical approaches attuned to the region’s specific historical and political dynamics would have strengthened the discussion further.
Beyond its contribution to debates on legal mobilization, the book offers an interdisciplinary reflection on the broader political and normative landscape of extractivism. It shows that Chile’s current “predatory extractivism” model is ultimately unsustainable for everyone involved. This model clearly fails local communities, who bear the greatest burden of environmental degradation and human rights violations. It also fails states, which must deal with social unrest, declining legitimacy, and the long-term environmental consequences inflicted on their territories. Ultimately, it does not serve the business sector particularly well either, as it must face the uncertainty and risks associated with investing in projects that may be suspended due to a lack of robust prior agreements with communities.
As the book makes clear, the current environmental governance framework remains ill-equipped to guarantee meaningful participation, mediate conflicts effectively, and ensure the enforcement of its own regulations.
Overall, Smart makes a compelling case for the urgent transition toward a more sustainable model of environmental governance—one that can prevent future socio-environmental conflicts, protect the environment, and safeguard the rights of communities and future generations. This empirically rich and analytically rigorous book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of socio-legal studies, contentious politics, and socio-environmental conflict. It will also be relevant to environmental and human rights activists and policymakers by illuminating the limitations of current environmental governance models and offering important insights into the structural transformations needed to advance environmental justice.
Juliana Jaramillo is Assistant Editor at the Review of Democracy and Postdoctoral Researcher at Catholic University of Chile.
