Participation, planning and natural resources in Bolivia: from fiction to practice?

In this paper, we focus on participation in the main planning documents produced in Bolivia in the first decade of the 2000s: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the National Development Plan (PND). We analyze how these planning instruments have been able to capture popular participation through diverse mechanisms and how these practices fit in the current mainstream participation discourse. Special attention is paid to natural resources because of the predominant role they have in the Bolivian economy and because of their substantial contribution to the state budget. The Bolivian experience shows an apparent paradox: while the process leading to the PRSP followed participatory guidelines and the PND did not, the resulting PRSP failed to include the most pressing demands of social movements, while the PND succeeded in including them. This case shows how the articulation of political processes escapes simplistic characterizations and the application of ‘out of the textbook’ participation might result in highly exclusionary outcomes. It also shows that the voice of social movements can take unexpected paths and have a profound influence on political events that go well beyond the possibility of standardized participatory processes

Forest management in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua : reform failures?

In this study we contrast forestry reforms and their stated objectives against the state of the forestry sector in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua. Once we look at the policy failures that underlie the gap between policy objectives and the state of forestry, we find that stated policies are not implemented and their design is marked by intrinsic flaws. We conclude that there is a reform failure matched by a failure to reform. The Poverty Reduction Strategies of the three countries followed -- and possibly reinforced -- existing policy trends but they were unable to solve implementation problems and lack of coherence that mark the policies of the sector

Land Reform in Bolivia: a forestry policy?

SUMMARY In this paper we analyze the Bolivian land reform within the general context of land reforms and then we look at how the Bolivian case could be better understood as a forest reform. First we discuss the ‘standard’ conditions for a successful land reform. Second we highlight that ‘special’ conditions apply to Bolivia. Next, we provide a synthesis of the discussion of the Bolivian government –in light of the points highlighted above– and show how the focus of the national authorities is centred on the standard conditions of land reform and how the issue of forest management is being neglected. We find that if land reform is carried out neglecting the forestry issue it might not solve the structural inequalities that characterize the Bolivian countryside and it is going to contribute to the problem of deforestation

Fusion complex formation protects synaptobrevin against proteolysis by tetanus toxin light chain

AbstractThe clostridial neurotoxin, tetanus toxin, is a Zn2+-dependent protease which inhibits neurotransmitter exocytosis by selective cleavage of the synaptic vesicle protein, synaptobrevin. Synaptobrevin is thought to serve as a receptor for two neuronal plasma membrane proteins, syntaxin and SNAP-25, which in the presence of non-hydrolyzable ATP analogs form a 20 S fusion complex with the soluble fusion proteins NSF and α-SNAP. Here we show that synaptobrevin, when in this 20 S complex, or its 7 S precursor, is protected against proteolysis by the enzymatically active tetanus toxin light chain. Our data define distinct pools of synaptobrevin, which provide markers of different steps of vesicle/plasma membrane interaction

Imaginaries of development through extraction

This article offers a reading of the ideas expressed in Walter Solón Romero Gonzales’ mural, the ‘History of Bolivian Petroleum’ from 1956, and juxtaposes these ideas to the current public discourse that emerges from speeches of high officials and from policy documents of President Evo Morales’ government. The objective is to investigate the understanding of the role natural resources vis-à-vis development in Bolivia at these two points in time and show the striking resonance between ideas depicted in the mural more than half a century ago and ideas expressed in contemporary official discourses. These ideas concern the foundational elements of a development model that envisions a central role for natural resources, and especially hydrocarbons, in the development of the country. The elements of this model, that include a prominent role of the state in the extraction of natural resources, expansive social policies, strategies to diversify the economy, neatly overlap with the central tenets of the neoextractivist model. It transpires that the novelty of neoextractivism can be fundamentally questioned. This model also provides the rationale justifying the promotion of extractive activities ‘at all costs’ in Bolivia and beyond. However, history has shown that it produces fantasies of development rather than actual development

Community-Based Environmental Monitoring in The Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon

GIScience, drones, smartphones and bespoke apps are being deployed in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon by community members living next to oil installations to produce evidence on the impacts of the oil industry. The activity is a result of a project combining citizen science, scholarly activism, indigenous and mestizo mobilization. The project, which started in 2011 and is still ongoing, brings together social movements, academics and some (mostly local) government authorities. The evidence produced has been used for campaigning at various levels. Taken together, the tools and strategies deployed are instruments in the David and Goliath slow struggle for environmental justice

Caught between necessity and feasibility

Dependence on biomass, especially wood, to meet domestic energy needs raises several socio-environmental concerns. In contrast, cattle manure, which may be used to generate biogas, is considered a cleaner and cheaper source of energy. Despite the existence of several initiatives to promote biogas, systematic analyses of the effects of such initiatives are limited. This paper provides such an analysis. We use data from rural Rwanda to examine the effects of access to bio digesters on energy-related expenditures and consumption of traditional fuels. We find that participation in Rwanda’s National Domestic Biogas Programme leads to substantial reductions in firewood use and yields large savings. However, a cost-benefit analysis reveals that the attractiveness of participating in the biogas programme is hampered by a long payback period