In the aftermath of the Cold War, there has been a renewal in the Latin American academic debate on tensions between environmental protection, ethics and international politics. Those who defend the idea that international relations stem from an exclusive interaction between sovereign and independent political entities are confronted with those who reaffirm the relevance of many other players beyond the state in the global ecopolitics. That means that the tenets of unconditioned sovereignty and non-intervention, which have traditionally built the sense of 'international relations', are questioned by the growing transnationalization of political demands by environmental movements in favor of ethical and responsible patterns of action and behavior. Rooted in these premises, the present article is structured in two parts: (1) a discussion on the process of internationalization of the environmental problematique, and contemporary tensions between environment, ethics, and international politics in Latin America; (2) an analysis of political demands by Latin American environmental movements associated with transnational antiglobalization contention in the World Social Forum.
political ecology; environmental movements; transnational contention; international relations; Latin America
