Rethinking the link between consultation and conflict: lessons from Bolivia's gas sector

Abstract

This article sheds light on 26 consultations in Bolivia's gas sector (2007–2012) and challenges simplified conceptions of prior consultation as a tool for conflict prevention and resolution. It shows that consultations do not only appease, but also exacerbate conflicts, as they are used for negotiating broader grievances. The study further argues that, in the short term, narrow consultations repress conflicts by limiting opportunities to mobilise against extractive projects. It also reveals that the degree of conflict and prevention potential of consultations varies according to the affected groups and highlights the ambiguous effects of the entanglement of consultations and compensations.

Résumé

Cet article, qui analyse les 26 consultations qui ont eu lieu entre 2007 et 2012 en Bolivie sur le secteur gazier, remet en question l'idée simpliste que la consultation est en soi un outil de prévention et de résolution des conflits. En effet, si les consultations peuvent apaiser les conflits, elles peuvent également les aggraver, notamment quand elles sont utilisées pour régler des doléances d'une portée plus large. L’étude soutient qu’à court terme les consultations répriment les conflits en limitant les possibilités de mobilisation contre les projets d'extraction, que leur fonction préventive varie selon les groupes touchés et que l'enchevêtrement de la consultation et des formes de compensations a des effets ambigus.

Keywords:

• extractive industry
• indigenous peoples
• prior consultation
• socio-environmental conflicts
• Bolivia

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to Varinia Rodas and Omar Quiroga for helping me obtain access to the documents from the Bolivian Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy that were used for this study. I also want to thank Marco Aparicio, Matthias Basedau, Riccarda Flemmer, Annegret Mähler, Isabella Radhuber, Michael Schilling and Olivier Vogel for their very helpful comments on a previous version of this article. Moreover, I am grateful to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the German Foundation for Peace Research for its generous support of the fieldwork I undertook to collect the article's data.

Notes

1. On prior consultation in Colombia, see Rodríguez Garavito and Orduz Salinas (2012) and Amparo Rodríguez (2011).

2. The Supreme Decree (Decreto Supremo, DS) 29033, “Reglamento de consulta y participación para actividades hidrocarburíferas” (Regulating the norm for consultation and participation in hydrocarbon activities), dated 16 February 2007, is available at http://www.democraticdialoguenetwork.org/logistics/documents.pl?c=6;files_id=1277

3. Peru is the only Latin American country with a general law on prior consultation to date, but it is strongly contested (Schilling-Vacaflor and Flemmer 2013). Other countries in the region (Chile, Colombia and Ecuador) have issued decrees for regulating consultations, but these have been rejected by the respective domestic indigenous organisations.

4. These MHE reports are internal ministry documents, which have not yet been published and are not openly accessible. The MHE consultation team kindly allowed the author of this article to make copies from these reports and to use them for her investigations.

5. The distinction between indigenous and peasant communities is a difficult one to make and is closely related to Bolivia's history. It was, especially, the indigenous communities that lived within latifundios who founded peasant unions after the agrarian reform of 1952 (see Rivera Cusicanqui 2003). Highland and valley Aymara and Quechua populations identify themselves to a greater extent as being peasants, while lowland minorities generally consider themselves indigenous peoples.

6. The only exception is the recent consultation undertaken regarding the planned highway through the National Park and Indigenous Territory of Isiboro Securé (TIPNIS), which was the result of the many months of protests, struggles and litigation that took place in 2011 and 2012.

7. For example, article 15.2 of ILO C169 states about resource exploration or exploitation on indigenous lands: “The peoples concerned shall wherever possible participate in the benefits of such activities, and shall receive fair compensation for any damages which they may sustain as a result of such activities”.

8. The information about Bolivia's population and ethnic groups that appears in this paragraph comes from the 2012 national census, available online at http://www.ine.gob.bo

9. All of the interviews cited in this article were carried out by the author. The author translated the quoted passages into English.

10. Supreme Decree 29574 modifies and complements the decree regulating the norm for consultation and participation in hydrocarbon activities (SD 29033); SD 29574, dated 21 May 2008 is available at http://www.lexivox.org/norms/BO-DS-29574.xhtml

11. Data submitted by the MHE consultation team.

12. For more profound discussions about factors that explain the existence and non-existence of outright rejection of extraction projects, see McAdam et al. (2010).

13. Nelson Bartolo, head of the APG natural resources and environment arm, stated that “all the reports and complaints that we [the socio-environmental monitors] lodged with government agencies fell on deaf ears” (Latin American Press, 23 October 2011).

14. This agreement was celebrated by the APG Itika Guasu and their sympathisers because of the relatively large amount of money granted to the indigenous communities involved. Other compensation payments handed over to the indigenous groups affected by gas projects ranged between USD50,000 and 2 million.

15. However, it is worth mentioning that some consultations also had a positive effect in that the communities themselves collected and disseminated detailed information about their territories and ways of life, which they submitted to state entities and corporations. They also gained additional knowledge about hydrocarbon activities in general and the specific projects affecting them in particular (see Humphreys Bebbington 2012, 60).

16. Encuentro Nacional de Secretarios de RRNN de las organizaciones indígenas originarias campesinas del país. Resoluciones del encuentro (La Paz, 8 July 2009). Available at http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia.php?identificador=2147483917739&id=1

Additional information

Biographical note

Almut Schilling-Vacaflor is a sociologist and anthropologist and is currently a research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. She leads the project “Prior Consultation and Conflict Transformation: A Comparative Study of Bolivia and Peru”, financed by the German Foundation for Peace Research. Her main fields of study are the Andes, indigenous peoples, law and society, participation, resource governance and constitutional change.