Discusión: Territorial Frictions and Integration Gaps
The critical synthesis of regional scholarship underscores that contemporary transition pathways across Argentine Patagonia reproduce entrenched historical asymmetries rather than dismantling extractive relations. Scholarly examinations of unconventional fossil fuel frontiers illustrate how industrial enclosures systematically clash with indigenous land tenure, generating persistent legal disputes and spatial contestation for communities such as Lof Kaxipayiñ and Lof Fvta Xayen (Trentini et al., 2024). Concurrently, empirical investigations into regional renewable installations demonstrate that emerging green infrastructure, including small-scale hydropower on the Nahueve River, remains deeply entangled with extractivist territorialities, prompting socio-environmental assemblies to advance counter-hegemonic frameworks prioritizing hydro-social cycles and grassroots community self-determination (Hadad et al., 2024). Despite these valuable empirical contributions, a significant research gap persists regarding the institutional mechanisms capable of reconciling national decarbonization targets with decentralized territorial sovereignty. Existing literature predominantly analyzes hydrocarbon extractivism and green hydrogen initiatives as isolated technological sectors, thereby obscuring how shared logistics, energy grids, and finite hydrological basins create compounding cumulative pressures on rural and indigenous populations. Furthermore, a primary methodological and empirical limitation of the present study stems from its geographic focus on Neuquén, which potentially restricts the generalizability of findings to neighboring Patagonian jurisdictions governed by divergent provincial water rights regimes and administrative frameworks. In addition, the volatility of regional energy policies complicates the long-term projection of stakeholder outcomes. Addressing these critical empirical constraints requires integrated socio-technical governance models that formally acknowledge local territorial claims.