Upon the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the first Argentine environmental agency was early created with the return to democracy in 1973. Nevertheless, the creation of state environmental institutions was not incremental and only gained strength in the 1990s. Simultaneously, social environmental organizations have arisen in successive waves from the mid-60s through today. This article traces back the emergence of environmental institutions and the way in which state and social actors have interacted along the process. We argue that social environmentalism and the creation of state environmental institutions moved through separate roads and had no major contact until the beginning of the new millennium, when a new kind of social environmentalism managed to impact the government agenda due to a number of environmental conflicts. We also argue that the journey of social and state environmentalism in Argentina must be understood in the light of international influence (both ideological-normative and financial) and of the dynamics of the political regime. Regarding the latter, we show that both regime change and institutional changes within the regime have favored the development of a public environmental agenda and its connection with the government agenda.
environmental policy; social environmentalism; Argentina