Contributions of the EU to the Construction of Latin American Environmental Governance

This paper examines the evolution of the EU-Latin America environmental relationship and the EU contributions to environmental governance in Latin America over the past two decades.  It argues that environmental governance in Latin America is the result of the combination of three elements: a) progress, albeit problematic, of international environmental frameworks, b) domestic transformations in Latin American states demanding better environmental standards, and c) international cooperation. From this perspective, EU contributions to Latin American environmental governance have increased since the early 2000s at the regional and bilateral levels and vary according to level of agreements reached between the EU and Latin American regions, sub-regions or individual countries. While in some cases the environmental agenda clashes (for instance between EU and Ecuador or Venezuela), in some others a synergy has already started to take place (EU-Brazil or EU-Mexico). However, in spite of some bilateral differences, from the early 2000s onwards the environmental variable has gradually raised its profile in the EU programs to Latin America paving the way to several EU sponsored cooperation programs in the region in the areas of climate change, renewable energy, water and investment support programs