Social Dimensions of Risks Relating to Socio-Environmental Conflicts over Energy in Chile: “Trust” in the Castilla Thermoelectric Conflict

Abstract

Environmental risks related to thermoelectric projects in Chile have expanded and become more complex in recent years, giving rise to new social conflicts and dismissing the public and private institutional capacity to prevent, administrate and resolve them. Trust, understood as a configurative disposition of social relations, appears as a key factor for the challenges faced by the governance of risks and socio-environmental conflict. This article presents part of the results of a survey, specifically the analysis of the dimension of trust, with the purpose of establishing a relationship between individuals and variables through a symmetric biplot analysis. Three groups of individuals are identified, thus permitting us to characterize a specific profile for each case according to the role played by public and private institutions during the gestation, development, and conflict that arose around the Castilla Thermoelectric project in the Atacama Region of Chile. We highlight that the competence-ability and benevolent dimensions offer a greater variability for explaining the perception of trust in the Castilla conflict. In addition, the level of acceptability of the thermoelectric project is also related to the disposition to participate in social organizations and contentious collective actions.