Climate of Change? Extractive Politics, Indigenous Environmental Governance and Climate Change in Ecuador and Bolivia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In recent weeks new tensions have flared in Ecuador and Bolivia in connection with government commitments to change the fiscal rules and benefits of the country´s hydrocarbon economy, and their inabilities to tolerate criticism on the same from non-governmental organizations and wider civil society. Seen from the position of many national indigenous, rights and environmental organizations in the two countries, their governments recent actions and reactions are at odds with legal and constitutional changes that formally recognize the need to balance economic development premised with the protection of the rights of nature both home and abroad. Indeed, whilst Bolivia has been most vocal in its emphasis on the need for a new model that defends mother earth at national conferences and international climate summits, both countries made great public spectacle in recent years of new laws and policy aimed at reclaiming an "indigenous" sensibility of harmony between humans and nature. In this panel we consider the dynamics of recent events and the apparent contradictions of current government action and law in Ecuador and Bolivia. In particular we consider why there now appears to be such a glaring gap between government statements outwardly posing action on climate and environmental change and their domestic actions to rapidly expand natural resource extraction. Put simply: why the political and economic "process of change" is no longer compatible with a politics responding to a concern with climate change? We furthermore consider the counter proposals and policies for environmental governance being proposed by indigenous and other civil society organizations. Aiming to understand the unfolding and complex dynamics of extractive and environmental politics in both contexts, we invite papers that confront stereotypes of political identity and action, and which explore current confrontations through different scales and frames of political ecological and economic research. This includes new empirical research confronting the political challenges of environmental and climatic change. It also includes new research considering the legitimacy of prior consultation and alternative mechanisms used to generate dialogue and communication between local communities and the stare regarding extraction and environmental management.

Sub Track

• Energy, Commodities and Development

Chair

• John Andrew McNeish, Norwegian University of Life Sciences/Chr. Michelsen Institute

Individual Presentations

• Between Justice and Extractivism: Lowland Social Movement Challenges to Bolivia’s New Development Plan - Nancy G Postero, University of California/San Diego; Nicole W Fabricant, Towson University

• Contested Impacts in a Climate of Uncertainty: Hydrocarbon Activities and Water Knowledge in Bolivia’s Chaco Area - Almut S Schilling-Vacaflor, GIGA German institute of Global and Area Studies

• In Search of Justice in the Bolivian Highlands: Understanding Indigenous Environmental Governance from below the threshold of “Community” - Amy M Kennemore, University of California/San Diego

• “The boomerang effect”. Analyzing the alternative political uses of spaces of participation created by the State in Ecuador: the case of Cascomi. - Luis Sánchez-Vázquez, Universidad de Granada

• Elite deliberation and the ethical dilemma of development in Ecuador - Rickard Lalander

Discussant

• Bret D Gustafson, Washington University/St. Louis