Geoforum 48 (2013) 196–206

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Geoforum

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The ISA crisis in Los Lagos Chile: A failure of neoliberal environmentalgovernance?

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.04.025

⇑ Address: Portugal 84, Santiago, Chile.E-mail address: bibustos@uchilefau.cl

1 According to Toennessen et al. (2009, pp. 308–309): ‘‘The infectious salmonanemia virus (ISAV) is classified as the type species of the genus Isa virus in theOrthomyxoviridae family and is evolutionarily remote to the influenza viruses. ISAwas first recognized as a disease in 1984 in farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) inNorway and has since been diagnosed in Canada, Scotland, the Faroe Islands, the US,and Chile. Fish in the terminal stage were found to be severely anemic, and thisfeature gave name to the disease. Field outbreaks of the disease have only beendetected in farmed Atlantic salmon. There are no reported natural outbreaks in otherspecies or in wild fish. The mortality can be higher than 95% during outbreaks, butlow mortality also occurs. The disease causes large economic losses for the fishfarming industry.’’

Beatriz Bustos-Gallardo ⇑Departamento de Geografía, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de Chile, Chile

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 10 December 2010Received in revised form 18 March 2013Available online 28 May 2013

Keywords:SalmonISA crisisEnvironmental governanceChileScienceNeoliberalism

a b s t r a c t

This paper discusses the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) crisis that affected the salmon industry in Chilebetween 2007 and 2009. For nearly 30 years, the salmon industry grew exponentially to become one ofthe top five exporting sectors, and the face of the new Chile: globalized and democratic. I argue that thecrisis showed cracks in the neoliberal environmental governance mechanisms followed by Chile duringthat period, raising questions about the need for socially restructuring the political economy relationshipwith the environment by increasing state oversight over the use of the natural landscape in which theindustry produced, while allowing firms to continue their exploitation pattern and global exports of com-modities as their accumulation strategy. Furthermore, the political solutions that were introduced testedthe ideological reliance of neoliberal environmental governance mechanisms on science and knowledgeproduction for providing appropriate answers.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The salmon industry in Chile has been known for its successfuland accelerated growth into one of the top producers and export-ers of fish in the world, transforming local and regional economies(see Fig. 1 for a map of regions of influence) and exacerbating socialdifferentiation (Barton and Floysand, 2010). However, in 2007 itwas hit by a crisis that threatened its accumulation strategy, break-ing apart the ‘‘picture-perfect’’ image of Chile as a model of eco-nomic integration into the global economy through naturaladvantages.

In July 2007, the country largest salmon company, Norwegianowned Marine Harvest, announced an Infectious Salmon Anemia(ISA1), a virus similar to the human flu virus, outbreak in Chiloé.While ISA does not affect humans, it produces high mortality ratesamong fish and a rapid deterioration of their physiology. Followingthe ISA sanitary crisis, the industry suffered severe economic conse-

quences: Many producers could not repay the loans they obtainedduring the industry’s boom to support further expansion, exposingits fragility and the effects of regional dependency on a single re-source for development.

In this article, I discuss how the ISA crisis reflects the shortcom-ings of neoliberal environmental governance mechanisms and therole of science in providing inputs into the decision-making pro-cesses involved. While political ecology literature acknowledgesthe importance of knowledge production in environmental policy(Merchant, 1980; Prudham, 2003; Duffy, 2006; Robbins, 2006;Prudham, 2007) the issues of how and what kind of science is usedboth discursively and in practice remains a key topic for examina-tion, particularly in resource-based economies where the science-policy-nature interaction is hybridized in neoliberal practices ofgovernance and political action. In this way, I examine how so-cio-environmental conflicts are resolved (Barton and Floysand,2010; Perreault and Valdivia, 2010) and the role of science in pro-viding alternatives within political spaces of decision-making(Apostolopoulou, 2010; Horowitz, 2010).

I argue that existing environmental governance institutions cre-ated are incapable of considering scientific arguments, demon-strating the inability of the formal political system to addresslong-term ecological implications of environmental crises. The caseof the ISA crisis shows that there are two moments in its treat-ment: first, a moment of framing, where scientific explanationswere looked for but were not found in the form and themes neededfor policy-making, and a second moment of intervention where theactual solutions focused on economic restructuring and financialconsiderations. In these terms, environmental governance

Fig. 1. Map of the area.

B. Bustos-Gallardo / Geoforum 48 (2013) 196–206 197

institutions did not use science to provide the solutions for natureas obstacle for capital accumulation, but instead, for providing thediscursive justification for the financial restructuring of the circuitsof accumulation for the salmon industry. In the process, the solu-tions are creating new circuits for capital accumulation (movingto new geographical areas, forcing firms mergers) at the same timeas structuring the social relation with the environment, (Bridgeand Perreault, 2009) by establishing new regulation but alsochanging perceptions on environmental exploitation.

To support this argument, I first discuss the science-policy-nat-ure interface from a political ecology perspective, followed by anarrative of evolution of the ISA crisis to emphasize the role of sci-ence in building the environment for salmon-production and thus,the contradictions that arise for environmental governance. I con-clude with a revision of the solutions proposed to understand thenew social structure of nature-society interaction post-ISA and po-tential implications for the industry in Chile.

2. Environmental governance and science in resource-basedeconomies

Scholars have broadly studied and presented Chile as an iconicexample of neoliberal policies in action (Collins, 1995; Drake and

Jaksic, 1995; Harvey, 2005; Barton, 2006; Barton and Murray,2009). It could more accurately be described, however, as an exam-ple of ongoing economic dependency on nature with an unresolvedtension in its accumulation strategy. The economic and politicalsystem has been unable to absorb the costs of using nature asthe backbone of the neoliberal export-oriented strategy (Cademár-tori, 1968; Meller, 1996; Quiroga and Hauwermeiren, 1996;Claude, 1997).

Barton and Floysand (2010) have studied the trajectories ofthe Chilean salmon industry as an example of globalizationand the rising concerns for the social and environmental im-pacts of export-oriented economies. This article builds on thatanalysis and examines knowledge of nature as an obstacle forcapitalist accumulation; ‘‘the material properties of the nonhu-man world influence direct attempts by capitalists to profitfrom these’’ (Benton, 1991 in Castree, 2008a, p. 145). Withthe implementation of neoliberal policies – such as free tradeagreements in the 1990s – the economic and political systemshave paid attention to nature as a barrier to the economicstrategy by implementing an explicit environmental frameworkbased on experts and science for decision-making (Azuela,1993). Such a framework requires the necessary intellectual dis-courses to support such purposes by identifying resources avail-

198 B. Bustos-Gallardo / Geoforum 48 (2013) 196–206

able for exploitation, and turning them into attractive enter-prises for investment (Azuela, 1993).

Scientific and technical cadres significantly pushed state inter-ventions in nature that provided the rational justifications forintroducing natural resources to the accumulation strategy. Giventhe intrinsic connectedness of knowledge about nature and capitalaccumulation in a resource-based economy through the processesof commoditization and resource exploitation, I propose a politicaleconomy-political ecology framework to examine this case. Criticalresource geographers have illustrated the role of knowledge inenvironmental policy by discussing the constructed and contestednature of extractive spaces (Bridge, 2000; Bakker, 2003; Castree,2008b) through examining how decisions and consensuses arereached, and what role knowledge about nature plays in suchspaces. This case advances these ideas to examine them in timesof crisis and provides a concrete example of how capitalism easesthe contradictions for accumulation by circumventing actual sci-ence and turning it into an opportunity for economic restructuring.

Previous research suggests that by focusing on actors and coor-dination mechanisms within a context of neoliberalism (Bartonand Floysand, 2010), we can shape the geography of environmentalgovernance, and more precisely, the spaces of decision-making andstrategies for the circulation of ideas (Backstrand, 2004a,b; Bulke-ley, 2005; Duffy, 2006). I will start from this basis to examine therole of scientific knowledge in environmental policy.

Bridge and Perreault (2009, p. 277) emphasize that environ-mental governance encompasses ‘‘both the social organization ofdecision making with respect to the environment, and the produc-tion of social order via the administration of nature’’. As such, gov-ernance represents ‘‘efforts to offset various crises ofunderproduction by shoring up the ecological conditions on whichaccumulation depends’’ (Bridge and Perreault, 2009, p. 483). Exam-ining spaces of environmental governance then requires question-ing the science-policy interface in terms of its capacity to produce asocial order for the administration of nature.

Understanding the science-policy interface of the salmon indus-try begins with identifying the mechanisms through which salmonenters production processes, and the mechanisms of decision-mak-ing necessary for turning salmon from an ‘‘uncooperative com-modity’’ (Bakker, 2005) into a ‘‘cooperative commodity2’’ byadapting salmon to human-created cycles in ecosystems that arenot native to salmon. However, a crisis may emerge when these at-tempts to make salmon cooperative are based on the premises of‘‘equalized landscapes,’’ to use Smith’s terminology (1984), betweenChile’s constructed ecological conditions and those in Norway, Can-ada, and Alaska. As Smith (1984) argues, capital thrives from the ten-sion between differentiated landscapes and its need to equalizeproduction conditions in order to move on. However, there is nosuch thing as an ‘‘equalized landscape’’, at some point we will reacha crisis of accumulation considering the incapacity of different eco-systems to support high levels of production in stressful conditions.The ISA crisis lets us explore such a moment.

3. Salmon production in Chile: the science and the crisis

The geography of salmon production is particularly global: allspecies are originally from the northern hemisphere (either the Pa-cific or Atlantic Ocean), and are actively produced in Chile (seeFig. 2) and Norway, but are primarily consumed in the UnitedStates and Japan. Here, I focus on the biological processes involvedin producing salmon in Chile in order to understand how the sal-

2 As discussed by Bakker (2005) an uncooperative commodity is one whosebiophysical characteristics represent a set of contradictions for its commoditizationand therefore are a challenge for capitalist expansion.

moneros (salmon farmers) used science to work with nature toproduce salmon (Benton, 1989), a species that is not native to theseterritories.

Since salmon is not indigenous to Chile, its production inexporting quantities requires a series of active interventions inthe landscape and the actual body of the fish: the constructed land-scape and the real subsumption of nature (Boyd et al., 2001) startwhen eggs are selected to genetically improve the biophysicalqualities of the species. Here, the river gravel is replaced withthe hygienic and generic site of the laboratory. Several years ago,producing eggs in Chile was challenging and eggs were broughtin from Norway or other producer countries; however, by 2002,more than 90% of eggs were produced locally (Henoch, 2006). Onceeggs are chosen, prepared, and fertilized, they are released forhatching in lakes and rivers where conditions are controlled asmuch as possible before reaching smoltification. These attemptsat nature subsumption are part of the evolution of the industryin Chile, but also show that there was no local scientific knowledgeor innovation involved, just a low-budget copy of overseasexperiences:

In the first years of the salmon industry in Chile (1976–1986),the hatcheries were artisanal structures, roughly based on foreigndesign. According to the industry, local contractors used technolo-gies from other countries – particularly the United States, Norwayand Scotland – but using wood, plastic netting, and plastic tubesfor making cradled incubators or the construction of circular tanksand raceways (Technopress, 2003).

The newest techniques include using tanks where conditionsfor water flow and oxygenation can be further controlled withoutpolluting natural environments. These shifts are partly a responseto critiques from environmentalist groups. In Chile, salmon pro-ducers use different rivers and lakes to maximize the productionof smolts. In all of these, the landscape has been artificially shapedto simulate the natural conditions of salmon:

For production and maintenance of Atlantic salmon alevins,higher water temperatures are needed, which requires heatingthe water during the winter, either by electricity, wood, gas,or diesel burners, heat exchangers, and temperate water distri-butions systems. Inversely, there are hatcheries that need toreduce the water temperature to 8 �C in the fall, with the useof water chillers (Technopress, 2003, p. 243).

To deal with nature as an ‘‘obstacle, opportunity and surprise’’(Boyd et al., 2001, p. 560), the industry adopted a very hierarchicaland concentrated configuration. Firms control everything from theeggs to the export chain, facilitating the introduction and imple-mentation of technologies dealing with the main obstacles: suchas transport and feeding. This includes technology to control oxy-gen and temperature levels in the ships transporting salmon fromthe ocean farms to the processing plants without the need for kill-ing on site, reducing risks of site-pollution and damage to the fish.Additionally, the transition from hand-feeding to a blower dis-penser, not only replicates natural conditions, but speeds upgrowth and improves the quality of the meat, and involves theuse of video cameras and sensors to control and monitor the feed-ing process. Technology was also developed to speed up growthrates and increase farming capacity, by introducing photoperiodregulation, the application of oxygen in hatcheries to heighten ani-mal density per farm site (Henoch, 2006), and the implementationof new cages or ‘‘net-pens’’ to contain the salmon while in thegrow-out phase (from five square meter wooden squares to thirtymeter diameter circular plastic net pens). By increasing production,all these factors played a critical role in the ISA outbreak of 2007.

Due to these transformations in the landscape and the fish, theChilean salmon industry production grew from 104 tons in the

Fig. 2. Spatial distribution of Chile’s salmon industry by stage of the production process.

3 Fieldwork was carried out in Santiago, Valparaíso, Puerto Montt, Valdivia, Chiloé,and nearby localities. It included interviewing 46 experts for 1–2 h, via an open-endedquestionnaire, recorded and transcribed (in Spanish). Experts came from thegovernment sector (13), the private sector (7), academia (10), NGOs (13), independentconsultancy (1), and congress (2). The data gathered was coded identifying key wordsthat represented the concepts involved in the research question (discourses aboutnatural resources, salmon impact on the region, relationship between actors, materialtransformations, knowledge production and science, environmental policy, neoliber-alism). I chose those based on the literature review and the main ideas and themesdiscussed through interviews.

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mid-1980s to 630,647 tons by 2008 and exports of US$ 2.392 mil-lion, with reported jobs around 30,000 before the crisis. (SERNAP-ESCA, 1998–2008). These numbers turned Chile into one of themajor players in the farmed fish industry, the most rapidly growing‘‘animal-food producing sector’’ since 1970s representing over 30%of fish production (FAO, 2006), far surpassing wild salmonproduction.

Along the chain there are several moments in which aspects ofthe constructed environment for salmon production in the Los La-gos region represent a threat to production itself. The most obviousis the introduction of foreign eggs and species into a different eco-system, which became one of the explanations for the ISA outbreakaffecting the industry. In the words of a salmonero (AQUA, 2008a):

‘‘It must be understood that the salmon is an ‘ecological fuse’,which means that if the environment is not at its optimal con-ditions, the business doesn’t work.’’

Through the production chain, the industry is connecting notonly three different ecosystems (marine, rivers, estuaries), but alsoat least four different scales of regions and economies. From thephysical challenges inherent in transporting eggs, salmon, and foodfrom one point to the other, to the political and economic implica-tions of moving capital, people, and knowledge, the industry grewon the premise that it was possible to equalize everything – eco-system, production processes, and profit rates – to the productionconditions in salmon’s original countries.

In those terms, technological and scientific practices as well aspolicy spaces are appropriate arenas to test the capacity of any gi-ven economic system to overcome crisis and accommodate newconditions. This is why we turn now to see how the ISA crisiswas dealt with and resolved so accumulation could move forward.

4. The ISA crisis: from scientific explanations to economicsolutions

In this section, I outline the two moments for approaching thecrisis: first, the framing, where the gaps in the science-policy inter-face were exposed, and second, the interventions focusing on theeconomic restructuring and financial concentration. I examinethe way in which the outbreak was discursively configured as asanitary problem, but later on, was dealt with through the intro-duction of structural and financial changes that saw the industryadjust to the new circumstances of lower exports, closed opera-tions, and less financial credit that required a redistribution ofthe accumulation circuits. My analysis is based on fieldwork3 car-ried out during the first 18 months of the crisis (July 2007–December2008), the period that represents the peak of the conflict. To guidemy narrative of the ISA outbreak I use material from interviewsand the news portrayed in the industry’s main newspaper, AQUA,a specialized journal where all news related to the salmon industryis published.

Fig. 3. Crisis timeline.

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4.1. The framing

The story of the political debate regarding the ISA virus beganwhen the governmental agency Servicio Nacional de Pesca – SER-NAPESCA, the National Fishing Agency – officially declared theexistence of an ISA outbreak and established health and safety con-trol measures (see Fig. 3).

On July 30th 2007, the Norwegian company Marine Harvest re-ported a case of ISA virus in some of its operations on the Chiloécoast. By August 1st, the sanitary authority (SERNAPESCA) had de-tected at least nine centers affected by ISA, in Chiloé. An academicinterviewed provides an explanation as to the origins of the ISA:

What happened was that man made an activity grow in such away that the ecosystem could not assimilate it. It was thoughtthat you could measure the impact of the industry by observingthe ocean floor and the level of oxygen below cages. . .butclearly it didn’t work, the system exploded somewhere else.(01.12.2008).

5 Bravo (2006b) studied aquaculture research produced in the period 1987–2005,and found 895 projects funded by public sources, 178 of them on salmon involving 48principal researchers for M$13,772,960 (US$26.183.300 approx., 20% of total figure)developed by four universities: Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad de

ISA renders salmon unsuitable for export.4 Thus, the economicimpact is important: according to reports, production of Atlantic sal-mon in Chile decreased from 386,000 tons in 2006 to a little morethan 230,000 tons in 2011 (Gutierrez, 2011). The speed of the out-break in 2007 and the absence of ready to use vaccines affectedthe capacity of the industry to react and by the end of the first year,there was a widespread consensus on the causes of the ISA crisis:overproduction and fish overcrowding, importing of contaminatedeggs, spatial concentration of operations, lack of knowledge of therelationship between salmon production and the marine environ-ment in which it takes place, and lack of oversight and enforcementmechanisms by the public sector (lack of resources, personnel, infra-structure, and legal faculties).

4 Meat quality is affected, and the salmon cannot reach the necessary tradingweight and size.

While the salmon industry initially denied that there was anoutbreak, later on, it explicitly framed the outbreak in terms ofthe end of the industry in the Los Lagos region and called for statesupport. NGOs, on the other hand, raised broader questions aboutthe capacity of the industry to pass environmental tests. In re-sponse, the government decided to create a task force, the ‘‘Mesadel salmón’’ (Salmon Task Force) in April 2008, to coordinate allthe public sector agencies involved in monitoring the industry, todefine new industry guidelines, and to consider scientific evidenceto redesign the environmental regulations and the public institu-tions responsible for their enforcement. In the following months,the political actors responsible for containing the crisis turned tothe scientific sector looking for solutions, but they found that thescientific community for the salmon industry was atomized5 andthat its research was not addressing the pressing issues that wereneeded to make decisions.

Bravo (2006a) found that project themes did not respond to anystrategic long-term logic, but more to each researcher’s personalinterests and were closely linked with industry needs, but lackingany strategic long term perspective. Twelve thematic areas wereidentified, with disease and sanitary management (28%) and genet-ics and reproduction (16%) the most important ones. It becameproblematic that an economic sector so dependent on the naturallandscape did not have readily-available and publicly-availableinformation on ecological interactions and the effects of the indus-try in the ecosystem because the industry became dependent onforeign interpretations and provisions of veterinary solutions, butalso because the state wasted important time gathering data and

Los Lagos, Universidad de Valparaíso, and Universidad Católica de la SantísimaConcepcion. While the figure may not tell much, the academic community self-defined as small, dispersed and isolated with important mistrust between each otherin all the interviews conducted during fieldwork.

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information to understand the extent and consequences of thecrisis.

Thus, scientific information became a contested terrain for deci-sion-making and diverted attention from examining the cracks inthe existing development model that the crisis exposed. On theone hand, policies were discursively reliant on scientific knowl-edge, on the other, in practical terms; policies reconfigured thefinancial and territorial practices of the industry to sustain thesame accumulation strategy without much consideration of scien-tific information which was pointing toward the need for new pro-ductive practices. One way to think about this tension isconsidering the kinds of knowledge available for policy makersand what science is left behind. Over the past 20 years academiahas prioritized research moved by publication and grant agendas,moving away from policy-relevant research. This scenario pro-vided the perfect discourse to legitimize those policies focusingon reforms to the industry’s financial structure as a way to rebuildthe circuit of capital accumulation instead on those policies callingfor ecological control which lacked scientific support.

SERNAPESCA had no other choice but to officially declare it anoutbreak by August 16th (AQUA, 2007a,b), and establish a seriesof measures to control it: (1) the immediate removal or harvestingof animals within cages/centers affected by the outbreak; (2) theestablishment of strict bio-security and disinfection measures, fol-lowing standardized procedures defined by technical standards forlive fish; (3) the moving of fish was prohibited without the permis-sion of the service; (4) the reporting by each affected farm of theweekly mortality rate from their center; (5) the use of open well-boats for transferring the fish was prohibited.

The measures, however, proved to be ineffective; by the end ofAugust 2007 over thirty farms were officially infected. By mid-Sep-tember, SalmonChile – the industry lobby group – decided to coun-teract the increasing rumors and debates about the implications ofthis outbreak (AQUA, 2007c), while the government declared thatenvironmentalist concerns were unjustified attacks (AQUA,2007d). However, by the end of 2007 the outbreak expanded to-ward the Aysén region, transforming the regional sanitary crisisinto a national problem.

The initial reaction was to frame ISA as a sanitary problem andtherefore a ‘‘scientific-pharmaceutical’’ one. Several scientific con-ferences and meetings were organized by transnational pharma-ceutical companies6 (AQUA, 2007e,f,g) to discuss the ISA virus andsalmon health, which included presentations by international ex-perts from Canada, the USA, Norway and Scotland, but only a fewChilean scientists. Around the same time, the government and Sal-monChile organized a joint private workshop to discuss the ISA out-break (AQUA, 2007h). By December 2007, the NGO world alsoorganized a meeting of ‘‘salmon dialogs’’7 in Chile, discussing chem-ical inputs, nutrients, carrying capacity, and the social and economicimpacts of the industry.

4.2. The interventions: sites of knowledge production and policy-making

These meetings and conferences demonstrated the primacy of aparticular kind of science and knowledge (biotechnology,

6 BIOVAC, Aquagestión, Skretting, NOVARTIS, DSM, Schering Plough and Nutriser-vice, to name a few.

7 The salmon dialogues were established in 2004 by WWF-US to gather theperspectives of the industry, communities, and environmental groups towardcreating a common set of standards that would increase the industry’s environmentalperformance while facilitating access to markets through developing a green-label inthe way of Forest Stewardship Council, FSC. In addition to WWF-US, the board ismade up of the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, Fundación TERRAM, MarineHarvest, National Environmental Trust, Norwegian Seafood Federation, SalmonChile,Salmon of the Americas, Skretting, and WWF-Chile.

veterinary, pharmaceutical) referring to animal disease, ownedby private pharmaceutical companies. These companies were con-cerned with framing the disease in terms of animal pathogens andimposing their scientific solution to treat ISA as the way to preventthe outbreak from affecting production. The seminars exposed theexistence of a market for knowledge production within the salmonindustry, closely associated with productive practices, and whosemain actors are multinational corporations that produce knowl-edge outside the Los Lagos region.

From 1990 to 2010 the number of actors and sites producingscientific knowledge in Chile has increased. These new actors havethe explicit aim of influencing decision-making, changing theexpectations of the state about what constitutes legitimate knowl-edge. If before (1960s), universities gained legitimacy throughbeing the site of knowledge production, now, legitimacy is ob-tained by providing policy-relevant (usually economic-based)knowledge. One key factor in understanding the new landscapeof actors and sites for knowledge production is the collaborationestablished between them, or rather, the lack thereof. Severalinterviewees (from NGOs, academia and government) argued thatscientists are usually isolated from other actors:

I believe that there is good research, but what is missing is anintegrated system. There are plenty of isolated efforts, evenwhen researchers decide to work together and create consortia,they even create a pretty website, but that’s not true, they donot integrate with each other, they don’t do it even with the sci-entist next door, therefore, there is an important barrier tobreak. (NGO officer 09.04.2008).

The consequences of this isolation, according to governmentand NGOs interviewees, is that university scientists are not ableto produce relevant research for the kind of environmental chal-lenges the country is facing. In turn, decision-makers need to goto new sites and actors for knowledge production: the independentconsultant, in the case of government and firms, or NGOs’ own re-sources as part of global networks (in the case of internationalNGOs), resulting in a lack of systematization of produced research,privatized results (they belong to those who paid for them), andcontested knowledge about the same reality.

Although private sector investment in research has reached 40%of Chile’s total investment in research and development (Acade-mia-Chilena-de-Ciencias, 2005) during the last decade, it has notbeen a key actor in either the funding or consumption of science.One interviewee from the private sector explained as follows:

Still, the salmonero is a very complicated character to deal within terms of research and development, because generally theyonly see bucks, they just see the bottom line, thus, they see thatthe bottom line tells them that probably what they invest inresearch even if it solves a problem won’t be enough to makethe money they need to make, you see? I mean, the cost-benefitrelationship is what’s first for them. (02.12.2008).

As a result, the growth experienced by Chile’s export-basedeconomy is not correlated with an increase in the scientific bodythat might contribute added value to nature. The intervieweesfrom the private sector argued that academia does not fulfill theirrequirements in terms of time and quality of research; thus, privatefirms prefer to import and buy technology from abroad:

Chile has the problem that basic science is really behind. Acade-mia still has a hard time turning their research and develop-ment into ventures or part of the technology offer forindustry; however, I am not saying it is not possible. Forinstance, Chilean scientists who have researched in the US havediscovered the genomic map of salmon, but they are the excep-tion to the rule. Today, the research centers of universities are

8 The idea, proposed by Camilo Escalona, senator for the Los Lagos region, was tointroduce a charge between 0.5% and 5.0%, to the profits obtained by salmoncompanies (depending on volume produced) that had marine concessions alongsidethe shore of the region. Up to 2010 the aquaculture law established that the salmonsector pay a patent (permit) of 2UTM (Monthly Tax Unit) per hectare of surface(CLP$70,170 or US$146 as May 2008). Fifty percent of the money goes to the RegionalDevelopment Fund (FNDR), and the remaining to municipalities where the industryexists. In 2007 the industry paid $791.7 million (US$1.5 million). The new aquaculturelaw, a reformulation of the existing one as a policy solution to the crisis, was approvedin March 2010, and it raised this patent to 6 UTM in 2011 and 10 UTM by 2013.

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far away from global research centers. Furthermore, I believemost Chilean universities, not to mention PhDs, are below inter-national standards. (Corporate sector 19.01.2009).

This statement exposes the failure of Chile’s demand-driven sci-entific policy: on the one hand, firms have not produced demandfor scientists, on the other, university scientists have failed to ad-dress policy relevant research, showing that Chile lacks scientiststo face the challenges of a development strategy based on export-ing natural resources (Prenafeta et al., 1987). This new map ofknowledge production shows how university scientists have beendisplaced from their privileged position as state-advisors, but alsoexposes several tensions between the kind of knowledge neededfor decision-making and the knowledge produced by scientistswithin universities: timing (‘‘they want it right now’’ and ‘‘sciencetakes time’’), processes (‘‘no peer review’’, ‘‘when they invite us,’’and ‘‘we don’t get paid for participating’’), legitimacy (‘‘who arethese consultants?’’). Interviewees also noted problems withinthe academic community that prevented their involvement in pol-icy-making processes: the lack of coordination between groups,the non-existence of an integrated database which contains find-ings related to environmental problems that could be used by deci-sion-makers (‘‘who has time to do it?’’), and also the lack ofincentives for participating. Usually universities assess scientistsby their capacity to publish in peer review journals and obtainfunding; there is no reward for outreach (including policyprocesses).

In June 2008, a private laboratory – BIOVAC – discovered theDNA sequence of the Chilean ISA virus (AQUA, 2008b). This discov-ery enabled the identification of vaccines, but once the pharmaceu-tical solution was found, the debate turned to finding thescapegoat: why did the crisis take the industry by surprise, leavingit with no available scientific information to face it speedily andefficiently? During 2008, several scientific meetings took place, atwhich each party appeared to be blaming the crisis on someoneelse. The government highlighted their innovation policy that pro-vided funds for research and development, the industry arguedthat they invested more than any other economic sector in re-search, and the scientists argued that there was both a lack of fund-ing and government guidelines. In all, these meetings showed thatresearch produced over the past decade was concentrated in activ-ities associated with production and there was no synthesis ofexisting research, making it difficult for both industry and govern-ment to access the results in a practical way.

4.3. Economic solutions for a sanitary problem

In addition to the scientific explanations, during 2008 other is-sues such as the responsibilities and financial impacts of ISA on theindustry were also discussed. Marine Harvest was the most af-fected company (with reported losses around US$15 million), andrumors spread that they imported contaminated eggs from theirheadquarters in Norway, so Chilean producers argued for the com-plete prohibition of eggs imported from that country. The companyvehemently denied these rumors, stating that ISA existed in Chilelong before the crisis began. The ‘‘egg controversy’’ became a geo-political matter, as Chilean producers aligned against Norwegianproducers in a struggle between economic forces to define theproblem in a way that affected the economic interests of all in-volved by the redistribution of their share in the accumulationprocess.

The Norwegian producers claimed that the overproductionmethod of the Chilean industry was the main cause of the ISA out-break. The government promised to identify the sources of conta-gion and to improve the screening of imported eggs, but did notprohibit imports because Chile is a member of the WTO sanitary

and phytosanitary agreement and it could be considered a barrierto trade.

Through bypassing the debate over who was responsible, thestate played a role in aligning opposing forces into a single frontredefining the ways in which nature entered accumulation toaccommodate the tensions created by the sanitary outbreak. With-in the debate over responsibilities, the industry (mainly SalmonCh-ile) argued that nobody expected this to happen. However, amongthose I interviewed (even from the industry), there was wide-spread consensus that an outbreak was predictable:

Our current sanitary status is due only to a lack of proactivity. Imean very few can say today, ‘‘Hey, I never thought we wouldget to this situation.’’ I believe this was the result of a systemof production that was not at the level of the animal biology(Industry executive, 12.02.2008).

The crisis that the industry faces was avoidable. Six or sevenyears ago people could have told you what happened, butbecause they had no problems and were growing and makinghuge profits, nobody asked what was going on (Academicresearcher, 10.12.2008).

If in 2000 they had taken the same measures, [ISA] could havebeen avoided. We were raising awareness, so, of course thiscould have been avoided (NGO officer, 29.10.2008).

I believe there was a series of elements that hinted that thismight happen, but what was prioritized in the general discoursewas the exponential growth of the industry and the goal to pro-duce two million tons by 2015 (Public sector officer,15.12.2008).

This debate about what was expected and what was not froman industry that grew at such a fast pace is related to the fractureof the neoliberal premise that the market is the most efficient allo-cator of resources and production. Although the outbreak helpedthe industry dampen public debates on implementing a newroyalty8 surcharge on the salmon sector (AQUA, 2005, 2007i), theindustry was facing financial challenges, given the high costs of pro-duction (particularly the high costs of fish oil for food), and the lowvalue of the US dollar. Thus, banks and insurance companies noticedthe situation affecting the industry and by March 2008 they wentpublic with their concerns:

The ISA virus is a matter of concern within our business portfo-lio. We have talked with our clients to understand how they aredefending themselves and what measures they have taken tominimize the impact of the disease and survive the outbreak. . .

there is concern about the ISA virus, but the salmon industrywill not disappear. (Rabobank executive director in Chile, AQUA,2008c).

By June 2008, when the reported losses of the sector reachedbetween US$34 and US$64 million and over a thousand jobs werelost (AQUA, 2008d), another bank (BCI) publicly announced that itwas reconsidering the criteria and requirements to loan money tothe salmon industry, given the higher probability of many compa-nies defaulting on their debt payments (AQUA, 2008e). The sal-moneros understood that the increasing losses and fall in

B. Bustos-Gallardo / Geoforum 48 (2013) 196–206 203

production numbers meant only one thing: a tougher end-of-yearnegotiation with the banks over the US$2 billion in debt. In thewords of a public officer involved in the sector for over a decade:

. . .ISA is a production and sanitary problem that would not havethis repercussion if the financial crisis had not happened. I canname five or six events that the industry faced through the 90s– which could be a sign, because it is not normal for an industryto have so many crises – but from a sanitary point of view, wehave several endemic diseases that kill more salmon than ISAand nobody says a word. But today we have ISA and everyoneflagellates themselves about it. To me, we need to worry aboutthe financial crisis, because firms are not going to lose money.They will adapt, but that means that they will fire people, yousee? (Public sector officer, 02.12.2008).

Five banks (Banco de Chile, BCI, BBVA, Santander and Corpban-ca), encompassing 75% of the debt, organized themselves by nam-ing negotiators and taking a common position, to hint that onenegotiation would be a sign for the others to come. In April 2009,BICE bank decided not to renew the US$5 million credit to INVER-TEC, one of the three bigger salmon companies (AQUA, 2009a).While the amount was not significant, considering that the samecompany owed Rabobank US$25 million,9 the idea was to let themarket know that the banking system was not willing to negotiateunless serious restructuring happened.

The banking industry and the salmon industry had differencesof opinion in relation to three key areas: (1) participation in theownership of the companies for the duration of the loans; (2) useof farm concessions (the rights to exploit marine concessions) ascollateral; and (3) the interest rate for new loans. Of these, pointtwo was the most debated between the parties because it impliedlegal reform (to the aquaculture law) and was framed strategicallyby environmental groups as a privatization10 of marine waters.

It was a struggle to define what kind of structural arrangementwould prevail: either a new institutional and legal system (pre-ferred by the banks) that would redistribute property rights andthus, participation, or a geographical shift that would retain thesector structure and participation, but which would compensatethe lower revenues by expanding production south (preferred bythe industry).

The ‘‘way out’’ of this impasse was the geographical expansioninto the Aysén and Magallanes regions. As reported by SERNAPES-CA (AQUA, 2008f), several salmon firms introduced over 171 pro-jects totaling US$354 million for environmental assessment inAysén between January 1st and February 23rd, 2008. Despite thefact that the presence of the virus was confirmed in that region,nearly 80% of new concessions requested were concentrated inAysén and Magallanes11 (AQUA, 2008g). As stated by BanChileinvestments, one of the main banks involved in the sector (AQUA,2008h):

. . .The relocation of production to the XI (Aysen) Region and thegreater geographic diversification of crops will help the com-pany to tackle the sanitary challenges that have affected theindustry, allowing them to reach higher levels of productiveefficiency. Specifically, it is expected that growth rates will be20% higher, there has been a drop in the presence of Caligus(75% lower than the X Region) and a decline in mortality rates,

9 As a comparison, the other big company, AquaChile owes US$400 million, 25% ofthe total debt from the salmon sector (AQUA, 2009b).

10 Although in essence it was the transfer or creation of property rights. In this casethe proposed policy implied that concessions could be transferred in the market andbanks could control them in case of inability to pay debts, thus, the state would deferits control over them to the market.

11 It is important to note that there was also a saturation of available concessions inthe Los Lagos region that also pushed concessions south.

converging to make normal ranges 50% lower than crops in theX Region.

Another example is found in this interview with Victor HugoPuchi, owner of the second largest producer of salmon in Chile(AQUA, 2008i):

We have to reorganize the industry and create mechanisms torelocate concessions in bigger management areas. The revisionof current regulations must be made for the future, not just forthe moment, guaranteeing the sustainability of the industry.There is a need to develop incentives for us to abandon denseareas and for those to be replaced by new ones.

In this way, the industry’s discourse quickly focused ondemanding that the government map out new zones where theindustry could move, a discourse that the government embraced:

The government is working alongside the industry to improvemechanisms against ISA, but the measures are not on the sideof developing vaccines, they go along the lines of managingthe fjords and sectors where farms are located. . . the govern-ment should promote a law to reorganize the industry and tospeed up the granting of these new concessions. Today, theminimum wait time is three years, and that is not fast enoughto be effective against ISA (AQUA, 2008j).

While moving south seemed a mere geographical shift, thebanks’ demand for using marine concessions as collateral is themost explicit sign of the kind of structural shift that the bankingsystem promoted: to explicitly incorporate the biophysical proper-ties of both the salmon and the ocean into capital accumulationprocesses. In those terms, it was absolutely necessary to have anactive state intervention in order to push forward the legal reformsneeded for this new industrial order, and for securing consensus onthe legitimacy and necessity of it.

The geographical shift of the industry to the Aysén and Magall-anes regions was criticized by environmental NGOs and artisanalfishing associations, who asked for government intervention tofreeze further action until the causes and solutions for the outbreakwere defined through a participatory process. This environmentalopposition, as well as increasing unemployment from salmon com-panies, ongoing debate about the creation of a new royalty tax forthe salmon sector, industry lobby for new regulations and subsi-dies to overcome the crisis, and legislative initiatives to reformthe industry, created a very tense social atmosphere that explodedafter a March 2008 New York Times piece exposing the environ-mental and social impacts of the industry (Barrionuevo, 2008).The article triggered an immediate response from the government,given the dependency on the US market for salmon exports and thedecision of one of the largest supermarket chains in the UnitedStates (Safeway) to stop importing Chilean salmon. In domesticterms, it became an opportunity for the government to create a for-mal policy solution to address the now evident structural problemsfaced by the industry. By presidential order, the Ministry of Econ-omy established in April 2008 what became known as the ‘‘Mesadel salmon,’’ composed of all the public agencies involved in thesalmon sector, to coordinate and discuss an integral plan of inter-vention and reform for the industry.

Justified by discourses about employment and growth - thestate apparatus put itself at the service of the industry, not onlyto facilitate the appropriation of new territories and natural re-sources into circuits of production and accumulation, but also tospeed up the process of reorganization to avoid interruptingproduction.

12 When asked if they had studies that scientifically support the decision to createbarrios, or that identified the best places within the region to locate those barrios, theexecutive coordinator of the Mesa del Salmón replied that they did not (personalcommunication 2008). He responded that they essentially thought barrios wouldwork because of its success in those countries that implemented barrios such asCanada, Norway, and Scotland.

204 B. Bustos-Gallardo / Geoforum 48 (2013) 196–206

5. Policy solutions and scientific knowledge

I have argued in the previous section that there are two mo-ments in the approach to the crisis. It was only at the moment inwhich the industry framed it as a financial crisis that the state ac-tively entered into the governance of the problem. In this section Iexplore the policy institutions and discourses created to legitimizethe actions implemented and the changes imposed on the salmonsector.

5.1. The ‘‘lack of knowledge’’ trap

The government gave the Mesa a ninety-day period to identifyshort-term policy solutions. To endow the Mesa with some sort ofpolitical leverage, Felipe Sandoval, former Undersecretary of Fish-ing, was appointed coordinator and leader of the process. In gen-eral terms, interviewees regarded the Mesa del Salmón initiativeas an opportunity to restructure the sector within sustainableguidelines, for which a scientific advisor was appointed. However,the interviewees and public opinion raised several critiques interms of access to information, transparency about the ideas de-bated, who was participating, and whose voices were heard. Somescientists felt excluded, other groups questioned the real capacityor willingness of the Mesa to incorporate scientific information,or even the capacity of the policy-makers involved to understandthe information provided. Furthermore, given the long-term natureof marine and aquaculture research, and the fact that policy-rele-vant research was not produced by traditional actors, not all thescientific information could be considered on time. Thus, the scien-tific information available was that produced by the Fondo deInvestigación Pesquera (FIP) with its productive bias, and the CON-ICYT (National Commission for Science and Technology) system,which did not properly covered the policy-relevant themes, andconsidering that reports produced by NGOs or other sources out-side official academia were dismissed, the Mesa ended up demand-ing more knowledge production than using what was available,thus, circumventing knowledge for decision-making. As the scien-tific advisor for the Mesa (07.04.2009) explained:

‘‘How would you describe the role of scientific knowledge in themesa?It is respected. If there are elements, usable elements for discus-sion, they are incorporated. In fact, the Mesa requests reports allthe time, we’re thinking and suggesting projects that can bedone. In fact, around eight to ten projects have been started likethat [When someone says,] ‘why don’t we look at this theme?’‘Why don’t we research this other issue?’ Projects happen andmoney is designated from somewhere like the FIP. . .

. . .We met regularly once a week to discuss and analyze differ-ent topics. . . there were people from the fishing under-secretar-iat and SERNAPESCA working, new reports and data arrive allthe time. In all, it is a task force that provides guidelines forthe activities implemented. And part of that group for example,the president or executive secretary plus some others, continuethe negotiations with the salmoneros, the fishing associations,etc.’’

There are several interviewees who feel that within the com-munity, scientists seriously criticized those few scientists that took‘‘sides’’. Yet both government and industry in general question theacademic capacities of scientists:

. . .All scientists have that perspective, that NGOs do not producescience, [but] the minute that [NGO] offer them money; they[scientists] jump right into it. So, NGOs ponder ‘‘why getinvolved with the big names’’ if when the time is right they willnot stand strong when that research needs to be translated into

policy, which is the main purpose of NGOs. Right then is whennobody takes chances. . . (NGO consultant, 20.08.2008).

However, the main critique from the scientific community isthe degree to which the national environmental policy is subordi-nated to the economic strategy pursued by Chile over the past30 years. Scientists feel that the state lacks commitment to moveforward, and that it is using the ‘‘we do not have enough informa-tion’’ discourse as a way to avoid taking hard but necessary mea-sures. Similarly, the lack of governmental priorities for research,have become a blind spot for both scientists and decision-makers.Neither CONICYT or CONAMA (National Commission for Environ-ment, now Ministry of the Environment) or any of the sectoralstate agencies have defined priority areas for research to which sci-entists interested in contributing to decision-making can look. Fur-thermore, CONICYT lacks a cross-listed database to identify themesthat have been over studied, those that have not been fully coveredor those that might be integrated. Each year projects compete forfunds, and the researcher’s CV is the main factor for assigningthem. Thus, repetition is rewarded over the proposal of newthemes or relevance for national policies.

Scientists acknowledged their role in the lack of necessary re-search, but at the same time, they perceived this as an excuse, be-cause the state has not created any funding or special policy toactively fill those knowledge gaps. The question became: Howmuch is enough knowledge to make a decision?

5.2. Toward a new configuration for the salmon industry

By the end of August 2008, Mesa del Salmón published its rec-ommendations: to modify the Environmental Regulatory Frame-work for Aquaculture (RAMA), to implement new requirementsfor processing liquid and solid residues (RILES and RISES) from in-fected farms with the Sanitary Regulatory Framework (RESA), andto certify eggs through regulation. One of the most important anddebated components of the recommendations was the establish-ment of ‘‘barrios’’ (neighborhoods). Wherever there are at leastthree contiguous concessions, owners could, on a voluntary basis,request to be declared a ‘‘barrio’’ to coordinate their operationsin terms of seeding and harvesting, applying antibiotics or otherchemicals, and most importantly, better controlling and containingof future outbreaks. The main incentive offered to owners was tobe located at a greater distance from other farms and operations.This idea has been accepted by most parties, but academics haveraised critiques concerning the lack of studies regarding oceano-graphic conditions in Chile that would support the barrios, but alsobecause barrios represent the deepening of a monoculture mental-ity that has had devastating consequences for the ecosystem.12

Barrios became a political response to a financial crisis that neededa structural change to survive, instead of being a scientific responseto a sanitary and environmental crisis that was collapsing a fragileecosystem. Environmental NGOs questioned the efficacy of the rec-ommended measures and called for an immediate closing of all oper-ations in Los Lagos and a prohibition on moving south. Both sectorscalled for a new legal framework, but the government argued itwould not be feasible to have a new regulation before the electionsof December 2009.

In October 2008, the head of SalmonChile, Cesar Barros, publiclyexplained that the industry would need US$250 million to containthe crisis. While he did not explicitly ask for this amount from the

B. Bustos-Gallardo / Geoforum 48 (2013) 196–206 205

government, help came in the form of a funding package an-nounced by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet herself on Novem-ber 2008. The package included a state guarantee for up to 60% ofbank loans funding sanitary and environmental investmentsthrough the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción, CORFO,with a cap guaranteed at US$8 million. In terms of a regulatoryframework, the package confirmed the proposed measures onegg imports, the implementation of ‘‘barrios,’’ and the definitionof standards for antibiotic use. Finally, the funding package alsoacknowledged the need for more and better science, and consid-ered a cooperation agreement with the governments of Norwayand Canada to provide research funds to fully sequence the salmonDNA (AQUA, 2008k). All these measures became part of a newaquaculture law, passed in early 2010, and which would go into ef-fect in March 2012.13

I have argued that environmental governance institutions cre-ated – like the Mesa, the barrios and the geographical shift-circum-vented scientific arguments, demonstrating the inability of theformal political system to address long-term implications of theenvironmental crisis. I also discussed the way in which scientificexplanations were discursively used through the two moments ofthe crisis: first, during framing, the lack of dialog between scientificproduction and policy was used to define the crisis in terms of lackof knowledge as opposed to over exploitation, later, during theintervention, solutions referred to economic restructuring andfinancial concentration, instead of biological recovery. In theseterms, environmental governance institutions were not meant toprovide the solutions for nature as obstacle for capital accumula-tion, but instead, to provide the discursive justification for thefinancial restructuring of the circuits of accumulation for the sal-mon industry. This reflect what Bridge and Perreault (2009) calla social restructuring of the relationship with the environmentby building new circuits for accumulation.

6. The salmon industry moves forward?

The previous section examined the spaces of environmentalgovernance created to deal with the ISA crisis questioning the sci-ence-policy interface in terms of its capacity to produce a social or-der for the administration of nature. This section discusses theimplications regarding neoliberal environmental governancepractices.

The interviews identified several critiques of the mesa and thescience-policy interface: the distance between spaces of scienceand spaces of policy, the lack of guidelines for scientists to producepolicy-relevant research, but most importantly, the lack of realtransformations based on scientific assessment of the salmonindustry. These critiques reveal the limitations of neoliberal envi-ronmental governance mechanisms. By selectively opening spacesfor debate and inviting all actors, the state’s neoliberal governancemechanisms create the illusion of participation and inclusivenesswhen in reality the mechanisms for incorporating public opinionare not available. This case along with the latest conflict in Chile’senergy sector14 reflects what Zografos and Martínez-Alier,(2009:1726) argue about participation in environmental policy:

13 Between 2010 and 2012 several administrative regulations were approved andimplemented such as waste treatment procedures, environmental and sanitaryauthorized certificates, imports, to name a few, but the modification to the sanitarymeasures and territorial organization of aquaculture concessions was approved bythe parliament on March 22nd, 2012 (AQUA, 2012a).

14 The rejection by the supreme court of the approval by the EIA system of the coal-based thermoelectric plant of Castilla (August 2012) in the Atacama Region showedthe tension between the political nature of decision-making in Chile’s environmentalmatters and the technical system in place to define the conditions in which projectsare implemented, as well as the lack of mechanisms for public participation in thedecision-making process, leaving only the courts as last resort.

‘‘the absence of opportunities for meaningful deliberation in decisionmaking and the predominance of decisional bottom lines curtailclaims to fairer distribution of costs and benefits from locally hostedenergy developments, as well as alternative landscape value claims,and that this fuels conflict’’. On the one hand, neoliberal ideas pro-pose that experts and scientific knowledge should be at the forefrontof any decision-making process. On the other hand, the knowledgeproduced by this kind of governance space relegates scientific exper-tise to a justification of political and economic decisions. I would ar-gue that they are an example of the ‘‘unstable and contradictorypolitical form’’ of the neoliberal state (Harvey, 2005, p. 64) wherethe private sector enjoyed a privileged position for negotiating theterms of their participation and the use of the information discussedin the Mesa, to the detriment of the NGOs and the scientific commu-nity who felt their own perspectives were excluded.

The critiques also reveal the tension that exists in terms of therole of knowledge in neoliberal spaces of decision-making. Oncethe political space was created, the official discourse of the stateturned to explaining in new terms the history of the industry to po-sition the current crisis within a long-term perspective, emphasiz-ing that the industry was here to stay. The main argument runningthrough speeches, interviews, and analysis of the salmon sectorwere framed in terms of ‘‘the unprecedented speed of the indus-try’s growth and success,’’ forgetting that the industry faced sev-eral crises throughout its history, including two dumping15

accusations in the United States. This framing contributed to erasingalmost 30 years (if not more) of active territorial intervention,including state action to change property rights through implemen-tation of tradable property rights, and to finance private enterprisethrough market mechanisms. According to all the experts I inter-viewed, time was key point in explaining the crisis: ‘‘productiontimes were fast’’ and ‘‘scientific times were slow,’’ or ‘‘the industrygrew fast’’ but ‘‘policies developed slower’’.

Two years after the peak of the crisis was reached the salmonindustry in Chile is showing disturbing signs. While the govern-ment celebrates that finally all the legal reforms were finally com-pleted and Chile has a new aquaculture law (with still uncertainenvironmental impacts), the news warns that the industry is show-ing similar production levels as before and similar practices thatlead to the crisis in the first place. The scientific community isbuilding more alliances (AQUA, 2011; AQUA, 2012b,c,d) with inter-national research centers and even some private salmon producers,but there are no clear indications that the blind spots identified inthe science-policy interface have been addressed. Should a newcrisis happen – and most experts say it will – what new discourseswill be raised to legitimize policy solutions?

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tom Perreault, my advisor in the geogra-phy department at Syracuse University, for his comments, supportand interest in my research. Also, I want to express my apprecia-tion for Jennifer Ashley, Emily Billo, Claudia Ash and Patricio Pli-scoff, who helped me in many ways with this manuscript.Finally, to Patricio, Maira and Javiera, for being there through thewhole process of dissertation.

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