Indigenous Environmental Governance: Struggles and Strategies for Safeguarding the Future

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Indigenous peoples are widely recognized as having borne the brunt of natural resource extraction in Latin America. Economic development built on resource extraction has exacerbated racial inequalities, fomented socio-environmental conflict, and contributed to the degradation of land and territories indigenous communities depend on for their livelihoods. In this panel, however, we propose that an exclusive focus on environmental impacts and inequalities blinds us to the agency of indigenous peoples and value of their environmental practices. Rather than reinforcing a one dimensional stereotype of indigenous peoples reacting to changing circumstances through acts of militancy, we demonstrate through empirical cases how indigenous peoples in Latin American respond proactively to multiple threats through the harnessing of legal and political mechanisms. Drawing on comparative case studies across the region, this panel critically considers the possibility and content of what might be termed "indigenous environmental governance". More specifically, the papers ask: (1) How do indigenous people respond proactively to multiple threats through the harnessing of legal and political mechanisms; (2) How do they seek to bridge traditional knowledge and practice with new scientific understandings and tools and methodologies in their attempts to explore alternative ideas of development and asserting paths to socio- ecological balance? (3) When and why does the integration of indigenous knowledge and practices contribute to environmental sustainability and justice? In a time of climate change and environmental degradation, the different papers will make a vital contribution to the empirical and theoretical understanding of indigenous environmental practices and knowledge.

Sub Track

• Afro-Latin/Indigenous Peoples

Session Organizer

• Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Stockholm University

Chair

• Nancy G Postero, University of California/San Diego

Individual Presentations

• Indigenous Environmental Governance: A Literature Review and Research Agenda - Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Stockholm University

• After the Map? Ethnicity, Territory, and Indigenous Governance in Eastern Nicaragua - Joseph H Bryan, University of Colorado/Boulder

• Autonomy and Then What? The Dilemmas of Resource Governance In Bolivia’s First Autonomous Indigenous Municipality - Nancy G Postero, University of California/San Diego

• Do Indigenous Peoples Govern The Environment? - John Andrew McNeish, Norwegian University of Life Sciences