Doce años de soledad de los derechos de la Madre Tierra en Bolivia

Abstract

In 2010, Bolivia granted collective rights to nature as Mother Earth, including the right to the preservation of its integrity and its restoration. In doing so, it was at the forefront of a growing global movement to transform legal systems following a new ecocentric vision. However, these innovations had a bumpy and conflicting trajectory. In a dispute over the meaning and scope of these new rights, the government of Evo Morales, during his first term (2006-2009), imposed a limited and instrumental interpretation of this new ideology. The two laws passed, Law 71 of 2010 and Law 300 of 2012, fell short of the original proposal of an alliance of indigenous actors and had limited impact in the face of a series of legislative packages promoting natural resource extraction and megaprojects. Once again, claims based on legal approaches have left very limited practical results for indigenous peoples. Lacking effective legal instruments to protect their territories, many social and indigenous organizations increasingly resort to protest and resistance actions based on ecocentric approaches. The struggles for the enforcement of the rights of Mother Earth refer to unresolved tensions in the construction of intercultural models of development and provide valuable reflections on the potential of this new institution to rethink the relationship between State, society, and nature.