Book review: Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities

Herrera Veronica, Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities, Oxford University Press: New York, 2024. p. 272. ISBN: 9780197669037.

In many cities across the globe, residents are regularly exposed to toxic contaminants in the water they drink and the air they breathe. Among the most dangerous of these toxins are chemicals, pathogens, and heavy metals from deteriorating infrastructure, industrial runoff, and deficient sewage systems. Veronica Herrera’s pathbreaking book, Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities (2024), brings into focus the politics of government responsiveness to these hazards. Unlike the immediate devastation of natural disasters like earthquakes, flooding, and fires, slow environmental harms are often hard for residents to physically see and to connect to long-term health problems. As a consequence, slow environmental harms can be challenging threats around which to mobilize and demand government action. Why have some governments taken steps to mitigate exposure to slow environmental harms while others have done little or nothing?

To investigate this crucial question, Herrera examined three major Latin American cities—Buenos Aires, Bogotá, and Lima—and the river basins in which they are situated. Several decades ago, all three of these river basins were heavily polluted with a range of contaminants, including nitrates, heavy metals, and pathogens from untreated human and industrial waste. Yet, since the mid-2000s, the three cities have diverged sharply in the degree to which river pollution has been addressed by the public authorities. Buenos Aires represents a case where considerable government action has been taken to clean up the river. Lima, at the other extreme, has seen little government action to improve water quality. Bogotá lies in between the other two cases, with middling levels of government action. The three cities, therefore, provide an important opportunity to delve into the factors that underpin these divergences in government action.

Herrera weaves together impressive fieldwork, interviews, and historical materials to examine these divergent trajectories. What emerges from this data collection effort is a richly nuanced account of the factors that drive government responsiveness to slow environmental harms. Using historical process tracing, Herrera finds that several factors converge to shape the extent of state responsiveness. The first factor is the extent of horizontal collective action (“bonding mobilization”) within exposed communities. In Buenos Aires and Bogotá, communities have mobilized and formed associations to voice their concerns about water quality and persistent health risks. Lima, by comparison, has not exhibited the same level of grassroots collective action.

Community mobilization, though, is by itself insufficient to command state responsiveness. Such bottom-up mobilization needs to be met with strong, vertical forms of “bridging activism” with NGOs, universities, and various state and non-state actors who can amplify resident concerns. These activist “bridges” possess resources, elite networks, visibility, and even technological and legal knowledge to broadcast local concerns and push for policy change. The convergence of grassroots mobilization and bridging activism produced significant government action in the context of Buenos Aires. While local communities in Bogotá have organized to demand a cleaner river, they lack robust connectivity to higher-level political actors and institutions, leading to a more muted government response. Lima exhibits neither bonding mobilization nor bridging connectivity, resulting in a continued lack of government action to address the dangers of river pollution.

Government action to address slow environmental harms can take on many forms. Herrera carefully conceptualizes and measures government action along three fronts: allocated funds, regulation, and institutional change. Each of the case study chapters methodically delineates these government responses and traces the extent of their policy movement, over time, as a consequence of grassroots mobilization and bridging activism.

A fascinating part of the book’s argument is that human rights movements—which emerged in response to earlier episodes of state repression and violence—served as key activist bridges, particularly in the context of Argentina. Human rights activists helped to frame citizen exposure to toxic water contaminants as human rights injustices. This framing, combined with the presence of center-left political administrations, created an enabling environment in Argentina for government action on slow harms. In Colombia and Peru, relatively weaker mobilization around human rights—as well as more right-leaning political administrations—did not allow for the construction of activist bridges. This finding has important implications—communities exposed to slow environmental harms can find “bridging” partners that otherwise do not typically cover environmental issues.

Slow Harms and Citizen Action generates several important paths for future research. One area for this is a deeper examination of the role of ordinary residents in demanding state responsiveness to slow harms. Local mobilization in Slow Harms and Citizen Action is predominantly approached as something conducted by local activists and organizations that operate across a larger number of communities. Many of these organizations appear to have limited membership, propelled by a handful of especially motivated activists. To what extent were ordinary residents involved in collective action—episodic and sustained—to exert pressure on their government? How, if at all, does participation in these efforts change political preferences and partisan linkages? To what extent has increased awareness of water contamination altered residents’ daily interactions with the river? How do grassroots leaders arise from within affected populations, and what strategies do they use to drum up support and establish legitimacy within their communities?

Herrera’s Slow Harms and Citizen Action is essential reading for scholars of urban politics, environmental politics, and comparative politics more broadly. It promises to launch a larger, multi-disciplinary research agenda on the political economy of slow environmental harms—and government responses to them. Scholars interested in qualitative methods will also find Herrera’s book to be a first-rate model of process tracing, case study research, and the importance of sustained fieldwork. In short, Slow Harms and Citizen Action is a compelling, deeply researched, and beautifully written book on some of the most alarming environmental crises of our time.

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