What is it about?
Natural resource exploration/exploitation comes with a number of "side effects" and impacts on local populations and indigenous peoples in particular. This paper examines inequalities that are produced in prior consultation processes in the Bolivian extractive sector.
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Why is it important?
This paper is unique as it builds on extensive ethnographic work and the observation of an entire consultation process rather than focussing on broader political developments only. The article thereby develops a legal-anthropological perspective. Inequalities between the players, but also within the communities are identified and discussed. The author trained local native speakers in her methodology so community members could be interviewed in Guaraní. Finally, concrete recommendations are developed in terms of mitigating inequalities that shall facilitate a human rights-prone agenda in consultation processes.
Perspectives
This publication is the result of extensive (12 months) ethnographic field work and combines international law in the field of indigenous peoples' rights in the extractive sector with local community experience and in-depth participants' views. The latter demonstrably shape the implementation of international legal provisions on prior consultation processes that apply where indigenous peoples are affected by exploratory or exploitative activities. For me this meant taking law out of the books and making personal suggestions on how the regime could be improved in order to mitigate inequalities on the ground.
Jessika Eichler
University of Essex
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in the Bolivian Lowlands, International Human Rights Law Review, July 2016, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/22131035-00501007.
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