¿LA MALDICIÓN DE LOS RECURSOS NATURALES? CONOCIMIENTO EXPERTO, POLÍTICA E INTERESES SECTORIALES EN EL DESARROLLO DE BIOCOMBUSTIBLES EN SUDAMÉRICA

The natural resource curse thesis coined by Auty (1993) remains up to date as the development strategies of most countries in the Global South continue to be directly tied to an intensive exploitation of natural resources. This is particularly evident within the biofuels sector where a growing external demand for this good, coming from industrialized economies, has led South American countries to become global biofuels providers even when the socio- economic sustainability of this development model is still at stake. Cooperative interactions between prominent biofuel producing countries such as Argentina, Brazil are framed under regional organizations that reflect a concert of like-minded governments that composed the so-called "new Latin American left". While an array of uncertainties monopolize the global debates around the sustainability of biofuels, policymakers in the region are turning to expert knowledge to overcome this limitation. Nonetheless, the contributions by experts for the development of sustainable biofuels in South America appears to be functional to specific 1