Environmental issues have become increasingly salient in contemporary political competition, reshaping party agendas, policy debates, and state priorities across democratic systems. Yet support for environmental protection remains politically contested, particularly in regions where economic growth continues to depend heavily on extractive activities and commodity exports. This tension is especially pronounced in Latin America, where legislators must navigate a persistent trade-off between ecological sustainability and short-term economic imperatives.

This paper examines the determinants of parliamentarians’ preferences regarding the environment–growth trade-off in Latin America, with particular attention to the role of ideological orientation and temporal variation. Drawing on survey data from the PELA-USAL database, the study analyzes whether legislators’ self-placement on the left-right ideological scale helps explain greater support for environmental protection over economic growth, and whether these preferences vary over time as environmental issues gain political salience in the region. The paper also considers how the temporal dimension may capture broader shifts associated with changing public agendas, commodity cycles, and the diffusion of global environmental norms.

By focusing on legislators rather than voters, the study contributes to the literature on elite preferences, representation, and environmental politics in Latin America. More broadly, it seeks to clarify whether support for environmentalism in the region is primarily structured by ideological conflict or whether it is conditioned by evolving political and economic contexts. In doing so, the paper offers new evidence on how Latin American political elites understand and prioritize one of the central dilemmas of contemporary policymaking.