(Environmental) infrastructures

Environmental regulations are making infrastructure to converge towards an accompaniment with the nature functions, following economic means and ends. The continuous emergence of new landscapes is being conducted in accordance to the mechanisms of capital reproduction. This socio-spatial system operates across scales where society perceptions and concerns about the condition of the nature, are institutionalized by regulations implemented through the same range of scales.

Those normative environmental framework apply to activities that seek to obtain resources from nature. The object of these rules is the infrastructure planning, construction, operation and decommission. The type of infrastructure does not matter and ranges from mining and oil facilities to parks and restored wetlands. Under this classification all of these can be considered environmental infrastructure, as they constitute the bridge that society employs to get the natural resources or ecosystem services as they are called now.

valoracion Ministerial level regulation on environmental impact valoration (Source: Diario Oficial El Peruano)

The economic construction of environment

Since the 1990, the Peruvian state has been including all initiatives of landscape transformation made by public and private institutions under its normative control. This process continues on now, following international standards, which are validated against local conditions. The Ministry of Environment is in charge of this task since its creation in 2008.

The concept of sustainability has been hovering over all those legislation and rules, but it has required more clarification through meaningful indicators. It is where the economic nature emerges, as these indicators generaly result in valuation of the ecosystem services. Economic valuation is key in conducting the resource extraction initiatives towards an institutionalized environmental character. Thus, environmental regulation is accomodating all kinds of infrastructure towards a blending with ecosystem functions, but still following free market rationale.