Paper short abstract:

I will discuss with reference to the TIPNIS crisis how indigenous territorial sovereignty comes into conflict with developmental initiatives and resource extraction in contemporary Bolivia, exploring how underlying concepts of indigeneity and colonialism influence national environmental debate.

Paper long abstract:

Bolivian negotiators have played a vocal role in international climate summits, and indigenous rights and environmental issues would seem to go hand in hand in the discourse of the current MAS administration through concepts like the pachamama. President Evo Morales has however been accused by the country's indigenous leaders of promulgating a 'double discourse' on the environment, especially in the wake of the Tipnis crisis, in which a road building initiative came into conflict with the territorial claims of indigenous peoples. They claimed the road would further the 'colonisation' of their territory by highland coca- farmers. The road was also contested by indigenous social movements, asserting a vision of territoriality based on indigenous control, and resulting in environmental sustainability.

Morales called the People's World Conference on Climate Change (PWCCC) in Cochabamba in April 2010, in response to the 'weakness' of international climate agreements. Repeatedly emphasised at the PWCCC was the 'climate debt' which developed nations owe to the third world as the cost of having 'colonised' much of the 'carbon space' available in the atmosphere. Complex interweaving notions of colonialism and indigeneity seem to haunt debate and state strategy on the environment, evoking agentive landscapes of indigenous territoriality, and international development models. I will analyse state strategy and national debate on the environment as it navigates these underlying currents.