As global demand for minerals and energy grows, large scale mining and extraction of oil and natural gas are expanding rapidly worldwide and within Latin America. A potential source of national economic development, this expansion also brings new threats to natural environments and human well-being. This has prompted a spirited and sometime violent response from those most immediately affected, peasant and indigenous communities who worry about the implications of extraction for their livelihoods, water, access to land and ability to control the territories they claim as theirs. Transnational companies and governments alike have found themselves at loggerheads with these local interests and their national and international allies.This multidisciplinary book offers a comparative reading of these conflicts and the wider political economy of extractives in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, with analysis of individual case studies from the Andes, Amazon and Chaco. The book concludes that the reasons for conflict lie both in the region's history and in the positions assumed by government, companies and civil society actors.