Abstract

This paper is the result of a qualitative research conducted in 2014 under the Interdisciplinary Center for Social and Environmental Studies at the University of Chile (NIES) and with the support of Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR2). The research focused on the environmental problem from three social areas: public, private and expert knowledge. Three types of obstacles are identified, which difficult both the dialogue between actors and the addressing of socio-environmental problem, i.e. obstacles at the level of institutions and regulations; obstacles and actions at level of relations between actors; and obstacles that arise of the meanings assigned to the problem. In this paper the last two types are addressed from a systemic-constructivist perspective.