The power of biojustice environmentalism in the Global South: insights from the politics of reducing single-use plastics in Guatemala

Guatemala is severely polluted with plastic waste, with open burning, illegal dumping, and leaking landfills causing widespread harms. What actions, this article asks, are local people taking to reduce this pollution? What, more broadly, does this suggest for the power of grassroots environmentalism to influence plastics governance in Guatemala? Drawing on fieldwork in 2023 and 2024, our study finds that local efforts to eliminate single-use plastics have been surging across Guatemala since 2016. Formidable political and industry forces, however, are limiting the scaling up of these efforts. This article, the first to investigate the politics of reducing single-use plastic waste in Guatemala, deepens the understanding of the agency and power of local people in the Global South to shape environmental governance while emphasizing the importance of accounting for the political and economic forces thwarting the scaling up of community actions.