My book this week “Whispering in the Giant's Ear” asks one of my fundamental questions about
development: how can we improve living standards without
environmental degradation? How can we minimize inequality without
pushing people down the destructive path of overconsumption laid out
by the flailing growth of the West. Some partial answers to these
question may lie with indigenous peoples around the world, who often
hold a less extractionary view of nature. Crushing poverty suits them
no more than anyone else, but as shown in Bolivia, they may not be
willing to destroy their forests for a job at Burger King.
The Bolivian forest
Bolivia is a country divided by history
and ecology. An indigenous majority historically dominated
economically and socially by a white minority descended from Spanish
colonists, while the rich natural gas resources of the country are
concentrated in a small area leading to fierce battles over how the
wealth should be used. And this complicated web of wealth and
identity is woven around one of the richest natural resources of our
world – the Amazon rainforest. The lungs of our earth and home to
10% of the known species on our planet, this territory is a contested
ground between loggers, ranchers, conservationists, and indigenous
people for whom the forest is a last refuge of a dissipating way of
life. William Powers lived in
Bolivia a Development officer working in a Amazon-based advocacy
organization focused on environmental protection and equipping the
local people with the tools to protect their lands. His
self-critical take on development and struggles with the ethics of
compromise resonated deeply with me (do you take money for
Environmental protection from BP to polish their corporate image? How
can you help people without eroding their autonomy? Do you help
build the paths of globalization to isolated people to increase their
yearly income?) though like any good observer of the world, he left
me with more questions than answers.
The Bolivian landscape is one of incredible diversity. As well as rainforests, there are vast and beautiful salt flats.
In some ways the indigenous people he
set out to help wanted the impossible: equitable distribution of
natural resource wealth, and jobs without environmental degradation.
This is a paradox in standard development discourse, but Powers
questions the assumption that has long directed our steps towards
poverty reduction: that Environmental protection is a 'full stomach
problem'. That you have to bring people out of poverty before seeking
to protect the world they inhabit. If this is so, he asks, why does
Bolivia as one of the poorest countries in the world have some of the
most progressive logging laws? From his friends in the indigenous
community he learned that people and nature do not have to be
competing forces – that people can find value in something beyond
dollars. That livelihoods can be made among the trees, not on top of
their graves. Of course, it is reductive to describe indigenous
people as angels – there were many motivations for protecting land
rights, not all of them environmentally minded. He struggled to leave
the saints of his movement room to be human. But ultimately, it
seems, he learned the power of people who learn their own influence.
He lived in Bolivia while indigenous protests paralyzed the country
behind road blocks, while people kept up to the protests despite
bullets raining from helicopters, when finally they deposed the white
kleptocracy which had held a stranglehold over the country for
generations. Now, Bolivia has its first indigenous leader, Evo
Morales. He too is human, not a saint, but his assent to the
presidency represents a shift in Bolivia's history. That at last the
indigenous people may again hold sway over the land that was once
theirs. For all of our sakes, I hope they keep it.
Indigenous people's protests.
Evo Morales, the first Indigenous president of Bolivia
For more thinking:
For anyone interested in South America,
Indigenous people's rights, or simply good cinema I thoroughly
recommend 'Even the Rain', a deeply self-reflexive 'movie within a movie' set in
Bolivia during indigenous uprising over the unfettered spread of
profiteering capitalism in their country. It asks tremendously
important questions about white saviorism and responsibility, as well
as being just a fantastic film in general.
Reading about Bolivia paired well with
the last book I finished, “This Changes Everything” Naomi Klein's
magnum opus on capitalism and climate change. She, too, focuses on
indigenous people's rights as key to protecting the environment. I
think this book should be required reading for everyone who
participates in the capitalist system, as it is raises important
issues about how our economic system interacts with our environmental
ones and our role in saving or destroying our world.
And as always, BBC provides a more decent overview than I for the curious:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1210487.stm
No comments:
Post a Comment