‘A New Issue that Lacked a Language’: Glocal Genealogies of Climate and Environmental Activism in Chile

Abstract

This article examines the historical process from environmental to climate activism in Chile, showing how it has occupied an intermediate and dynamic position that connects the local and the global, often ahead of national policies. Through an ethnographic approach and a genealogical and historical methodology (reviewing primary newspaper sources and administrative records), complemented by nine in-depth interviews, this research analyses the trajectories, organisations and knowledge of activists in relation to national institutions and international governance. The study highlights processes of professionalisation, diversification of strategies and the creation of transnational networks, consolidating activism as a key actor in climate governance, although constrained by limited resources and the restrictions of the neoliberal model.