Globalization and the changing institution for sustainability: The case of the Salmon farming industry in Chile

The recent expansion of global demand for natural resources has created a production boom in countries endowed with natural resources. Increasing global trade and investment - globalization - offer an important opportunity for developing countries as the global flow of commodities often accompany knowledge and information to increase productivity to facilitate economic development. This positive feature of globalization has some serious drawbacks when the country is not equipped with an institution to ensure environmental sustainability. This paper sought to demonstrate this through the examination of the Chilean salmon farming case. The Chilean salmon farming industry has grown dramatically since the mid 1980s to become the number two exporter of farmed salmon in the world after Norway. The sector, however, suffered a decline in production volume due to the sanitary crisis in 2007. The case also tries to capture the on-going efforts made by the government to strengthen the institution to prevent further occurrences of environmental and sanitary crises.