A globally recognized facet of the “new” social movement wave is, of course, the environmental movement(s). Against the resource extractivism that prevails across Latin America, the ecological social movements call for a new environmentally aware development strategy. Brazil's plans to build a series of hydroelectric dams across the Amazon by 2020, flooding conservation zones and displacing indigenous peoples, is symbolic of what they are struggling against. The environment transcends politics, certainly class politics, and it is beyond left and right, at least in theory. Environmentalism in Brazil has taken a more explicitly socialist flavour, however, ever since the killing of Chico Mendes, environmentalist and rubber tapper, in 1988, which received global attention and became iconic for the global environmental movement. The articulation of ecology and socialism has meant that the trade unions are heavily involved, as are many indigenous and peasant movements. Thus, this particular articulation of what is perhaps best seen as an “empty signifier” – the environment – has become a paradigm for other social movements across the global South.

International NGOs have been particularly important in the creation and sustaining of environmental social movements. During the neoliberal era they were encouraged to bypass the state to deliver services. They also sought to encourage what they saw as “civil society”, although local understandings might have differed. They played a central role in promoting indigenous rights and sustainable development. They advocated for environmental legislation and promoted ecologically friendly small-scale community economies. Thus, environmental social movements inflected by international NGOs have a very distinct politics, which has often brought them into conflict with the progressive governments of Ecuador and Bolivia, for example, especially when ecological concerns and oil or gas exploration have clashed. A very different ecological politics was practised by the progressive governments with their far-reaching political philosophy of Buen Vivir (Living Well), which promoted an ecologically sustainable approach to development based on the cosmology of the Amerindian peoples.

Extractivism is widely seen as the principal mode of economic domination in Latin America. It is rooted in the colonial logic of the Americas as a source of gold and silver. Colonialism – and, after colonialism, dependent capitalist development – placed Latin American economies as providers of raw material.