Political Risk Management and Sustainability in Latin American Natural Resource Projects

This article aims to review economic and regulatory developments across Latin America regarding natural resource exploitation, particularly in the mining industry, seeking to understand what lays as a source of the recent path of economic growth in the region, the relevance of aspects such as poverty, inequality and institutional fragility in terms of sustainable growth, focusing on trends in public, private, and community participation, and comparative conditions for foreign investment vis-a-vis the local legal framework, political risk, social unrest, and environmental and community issues.

Our review of these similarities and common problems in Latin America, seek to provide the discussion with certain elements that may help identifying regional common aims as a means for interested parties to construct an environment of institutional inclusiveness, and environmental awareness, that may also meet the common goals of sustainable investment, economic growth and social development in the region.

1. ECONOMIC OVERVIEW

Although the 2008 global economic crisis severely affected Latin American and Caribbean economics, some of them were able to display a certain capacity of reversing the tendencies with a positive performance as compared with other world economics, having most Latin American countries had a sustained GDP growth since 2007, with the exceptio