Cochabamba and climate anthropology (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Abstract

Following the collapse of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December 2009, Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, called for a World People's Conference on Climate Change. 35,000 people attended the conference in Cochabamba in April determined to keep climate politics on the global agenda. Nancy Lindisfarne writes about the growth of this international social movement with a keen eye to how anthropologists, and the discipline of anthropology as a whole, are responding practically and theoretically to the social consequences of climate change.

Divergent environmentalisms, conflicting counter-hegemonies: Lessons from the rights of nature movement

“…The UDRME was drafted in 2010 during the WPCCCRME, which took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and was convened by Bolivia's first Indigenous president, Evo Morales. The WPCCCRME was attended by approximately 35,000 people, of which roughly 25,000 were Bolivians, many of them Indigenous (Lindisfarne, 2010). However, this large and heterogenous group included a multitude of social movement actors and organisations, including environmentalists, rights activists, as well as a wide variety of Indigenous groups (Espinosa, 2014).…”

Emotional subjectivities and the trajectory of a Peruvian mining conflict

“…Stensrud, who has researched how climate change is affecting water resources and economic opportunities further south in the country, uses the term 'response' instead of 'adaption' or 'resilience' to conceptualise how people struggle for change in a changing climate (Stensrud, 2016). She notes that the previous terms have been criticised for their inadequacy in capturing the way people attempt to create alternative futures, rather than accepting or adjusting to external harms (Lindisfarne, 2010). This indicates the conflict cannot be viewed simplistically as a struggle over scarce resources, but also needs to be understood as 'the result of ongoing political struggles to maintain control over fluctuating resources in the future' (Turner, 2004, p. 879).…”

“…Processes of commensuration distort ideas of value: the village knew that a trade-off between incommensurable goods was taking place and so in some moments, there was a shift from the practical reasoning we see below towards the more abstract logic of the market. Between 2002 and 2012, Peru enjoyed growth rates of an average of 6.3% per year, a period sometimes termed the ‘the Peruvian Miracle’ (Mendoza, 2013). Their feelings of hopefulness that there might be some form of tangible investment by the mine relates to the changing political-economic context, their awareness of the value of gold and its role in increasing the wealth of the nation.…”

Dreams of growth and fear of water crisis: the ambivalence of “progress” in the Majes-Siguas Irrigation Project, Peru

“…The global discourse on climate change has turned increasingly to adaptation as a priority for research and policy (Crate and Nuttall, 2009: 9). However, several scholars have criticized the analytical use of the terms "adaptation" and "resilience" for being inadequate to explain how people struggle for change instead of just adjusting to external harms perceived as inevitable (Tsosie, 2007;Sejersen, 2009;Lindisfarne, 2010;Cassidy, 2012). Hence, I prefer to use "response" instead of "adaptation" in order to emphasize that human beings are not merely "adapting to" changes in the environment but have agency of their own, appropriating, engaging, and interacting with nature (Strang, 2004).…”