Extraction, Inequality and Indigenous Peoples: Insights from Bolivia1

Denise Humphreys Bebbington

Clark University

Introduction

For most of the last two hundred years, the Bolivian Chaco, approximately 140,000 square kilometers of sparsely populated dry forest, has existed at the physical and political margins of the nation state. Physically it constitutes Bolivia’s southern and eastern borders with Argentina and Paraguay and between 1932 and 35 was the site of a devastating war with Paraguay which ended in a dramatic reduction to Bolivia’s claims on the Chaco. Socio-politically, the Chaco has been home to indigenous populations, colonist ranchers and urban populations who have had little effective say in the governance of Bolivia’s state, economy or society. Notwithstanding modest oil extraction since the 1920’s, the Chaco has had a marginal presence in the Bolivian economy which historically has been otherwise dominated by highland agriculture and mining, and since the mid-20th century also by agricultural expansion and oil extraction in the rapidly growing department of Santa Cruz.

From the mid-1990s, all this began to change, in large measure because of a surge in global demand for a subset of the ecosystem services that the Chaco can provide. Rapid growth in hydrocarbons exploration in the Chaco has been quickly followed by the discovery of large quantities of natural gas, turning the region into a motor of national economic growth and, once again, a site of political disputes, though this time within Bolivia rather than with a neighboring country. These disputes occur between the departments of the Chaco and the national government, between lowland and highland indigenous groups, within indigenous groups in the Chaco, and within the departments of the Chaco (Chuquisaca and Tarija). In large measure, these disputes reflect differing conceptions regarding an appropriate governance of the Chaco’s ecosystem services as well as inequalities in the distribution of the benefits and costs that this governance might deliver. They also reflect the continuing effects of sedimented power relations that have long marginalized the Chaco and its inhabitants, in particular indigenous populations, within Bolivian politics.

These transformations in the Chaco are a direct consequence of changes in the global hydrocarbons production network. In particular they derive from rapidly increasing global demand for natural gas as a source of energy that is, moreover, deemed to be “clean.” This demand has increased the global valuation of the Chaco’s subsoil enormously. Meanwhile international technological changes have made it increasingly possible to find and extract this gas (Bridge, 2004). These global changes have interacted

1 This paper draws on research supported by the Ford Foundation as well as by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. I am grateful to the comments of two anonymous referees and the Editor, as well as to the more general insights of Kate Schreckenberg. As always I am grateful to Anthony Bebbington for his comments and support.

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with (and in many respects driven) changes in national institutional and regulatory arrangements in ways that further facilitate the extraction and export of this gas (Kaup, 2010).

In this article I explore how this shift in the global valuation of one particular ecosystem service has interacted with valuations of a range of other ecosystem services in the Chaco and with existing (“contextual”) relationships of inequality to produce new, and reinforce prior, patterns of inequality. My particular focus is on how these processes have unfolded in territories occupied by indigenous populations in the Chaco. The purpose of demonstrating these inequalities is not to argue that any globally driven shift in the value of ecosystem services is necessarily “a bad thing” but rather to suggest that it necessarily produces new inequalities that will often constitute sources of tension and social conflict. These outcomes therefore need to be anticipated, negotiated and managed.

The paper proceeds as follows. In the next section I elaborate a summary analytical framework. This framework links the introductory paper’s arguments regarding equity in ecosystem governance to the production of new inequalities that result from the intensified exploitation of specific ecosystem services. The third section provides some background to the Bolivian Chaco, focusing on histories of discrimination and exclusion of indigenous peoples and the emergence of a hydrocarbon economy. Following this I provide two summary analyses of the effects of hydrocarbon extraction and the accompanying distribution of benefits, compensation and decision making authority on the Guaraní of Yaku Igua and the Guaraní of Itika Guasu. While I also make reference to impacts on yet another indigenous population, the Weenhayek, space does not allow a detailed discussion (see Humphreys Bebbington and Bebbington, 2010). On the basis of these case studies, the conclusions draw out implications for our understanding of how ecosystem services intersect with inequality and for the challenges that this raises for resident populations, states and companies committed to the exploitation of these services. The conclusions are relevant not only to Bolivia and the larger Andes-Amazon-Chaco region but also to other territories affected by the targeted exploitation of ecosystem services.

Ecosystem services, inequity and inequality in the Chaco: A framework

The Chaco provides many different services, a subset of which are of particular relevance to this paper: the provision of subsoil (mineral) resources, the provision of water resources, the provision of fauna and flora for human consumption, and the provision of landscapes of meaning that are part of the constitution of territory. Several important considerations characterize these services. First, they are significant for different constituencies who value them in quite different ways. The provision of natural gas is of particular significance to international markets and to a national government anticipating tax and royalty revenue from its extraction. The provision of water is particularly important for resident populations, both rural and urban, while the provision of fauna (especially fish) and flora is of most importance for rural populations. Finally the provision of cultural meaning in the form of territory is significant for indigenous populations (Gustafson and Fabricant, 2011). Second, and closely related to the prior point, while different services are differentially significant to distinct populations, the “ownership” of the fruits of these services remains a point of uncertainty and dispute. Thus, while

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natural gas might be of primary interest to international and national agents who may acquire certain property rights in that gas, other actors might also make “ownership” claims on that gas and thus claims for a share in the financial benefits that its extraction generates. While international and national agents make such claims on the basis of property rights recognized by the central state, indigenous populations make claims based on historical and moral arguments linked to customary tenure, long term use, historical disadvantage and international conventions.

Third the realization2 of these services requires human manipulation. This is particularly so for natural gas extraction, but is also the case for territory in so far as the realization of territory requires governance practices that convey a sense of border management. Fourth, and in part because of this manipulation, these services may not easily co-exist – at a minimum the realization of one service may be deemed to put other services at risk. Thus the realization of territory might be deemed to risk the realization of extraction, while the realization of extraction might be deemed to threaten the provision of water, fauna and the maintenance of landscapes of cultural significance. While this need not mean that the realizations of these different services exist in structural contradiction to one another, it may mean that they co-exist in relations of mutual tension and restriction. These restrictions might involve reduced access to certain hydrocarbon reserves as a consequence of protecting areas that provide either water or cultural services; or conversely they may mean the loss of certain cultural and water provision services as a consequence of natural gas extraction. As a consequence of this mutual restriction, the joint realization of services will involve negotiation and calls for recognition of and compensation for what is lost.

What this simple conceptualization immediately makes clear is that the joint realization of different ecosystem services in the Chaco implies multiple forms of unevenness. There will be unevenness across space (not all spaces will produce water, gas, fauna etc. and those that do will be occupied by specific populations). There will be flows of benefits that are unevenly captured both across space and across social groups. Externalities and costs will be generated in ways that are not evenly distributed across space or social groups. Some of these costs will lead to flows of compensation that will also be uneven across space and most likely across social groups (and in many instances it may remain unclear who should be the legitimate beneficiaries of this compensation). The effort to intensify any one service will rework the existing patterns of benefits, costs and compensations in ways that are likely to create new uncertainties, tensions and disputes over the distribution of these same benefits, costs and compensations.

Furthermore, as different stakeholders (companies, state agencies, indigenous groups, farmers….) pursue the realization of these different ecosystem services, they do so under conditions of great asymmetries of power (and this is palpably so in conditions such as those characterizing the history of

2 The term “realization” rather than “exploitation” is used here because, while one might reasonably speak of the exploitation of hydrocarbon or water resources, one would not speak of the “exploitation” of territory. Rather, the provision of “territory” is a service that is latent within the Chaco ecosystem and can only be brought into being (be “realized”) through a combination of human action and meaning-making. I have therefore opted for the more encompassing term “realization” to refer to the generic sense in which humans – be they oil engineers or indigenous hunters – tease a service from the ecosystem through a combination of skill, authority and imagination.

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the Bolivian Chaco). These asymmetries are part of underlying relationships of inequity3 whose effect is that different stakeholders do not enjoy the same access to economic opportunity or political participation (World Bank, 2005; Bebbington et al., 2008).4 I use the term “inequity” to refer to this domain of underlying relationships, while “inequality” is used to refer to the uneven distributions of costs, benefits, gains and losses that derive from processes that are governed under such conditions of inequity. “Inequality” thus refers to the domain of outcomes in which there is uneven enjoyment of income streams, uneven exposure to environmental damage, or uneven success in securing rights or resource use and control. In what follows I am primarily concerned with these inequalities and will argue that, in a context of underlying inequity, the ecosystem services that are most likely to be realized are those pursued by more powerful actors and that this privileging of specific ecosystem services in turn generates new forms of inequality. This challenges us to ask how these inequalities might be managed and more importantly how underlying inequities might be offset such that the governance of ecosystem services generates fewer inequalities. I return to this question in the conclusions.

Conceptualized in the way just outlined, equity does not refer to a notion of fairness or justice, but is instead a condition that can be described in terms of how access to economic and political opportunities varies among individuals and social groups. My claim is that such differences in access are artifacts of uneven relationships of power that tend to reproduce themselves over time at national and sub national scales (Berdegué et al. 2012; Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012; Bourdieu 1977). Of course, different social groups have their own conceptions of equity and fairness, and mobilize these ideas in socio-environmental conflicts of the types described in the following sections. Such discursive mobilizations of “equity”, as well as the existence of culturally specific notions of equity, are important topics in themselves, but are separate from the framework proposed here.

Producing asymmetries: histories of indigenous exclusion and resource extraction in the Bolivian Chaco

Guaraní dispossession

While the Guaraní experience of colonial rule in the Chaco was anything but easy, the speed with which indigenous populations were expelled from and dispossessed of their ancestral lands hastened once Bolivia became an independent nation. In the eyes of the new Republic, lowland Indians were savages, wards of the State. The hacienda system expanded and consolidated as soldiers received large land grants in recognition for military service (Saignes 1990). Meanwhile the commercial boom in beef production drew ranchers from other parts of Bolivia to establish ranching estates. Indeed, the colonization of the Chaco under Republican rule used cattle as the means to lay claim to vast amounts of land and to establish new forms of subjugation of dispersed, highly-mobile Indian populations. Following the secularization of the Jesuit missions at the end of the eighteenth century, and with no

3 Such inherited asymmetries are what the introductory paper calls the “contextual inequity” in which ecosystem services are governed. 4 The discussion of equity here follows the World Development Report on Equity and Development (World Bank, 2005) which understands equity in terms of access to opportunities.

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institutional presence to counteract the power of ranching elites, the unfettered abuse of Indian labour became widespread (Anagasti 1992).

The state redoubled its efforts to pacify and colonize its eastern frontier through the use of systematic violence. In 1839 the Bolivian army launched an attack on Guaraní communities in the area of Chimeo in an effort to secure land for colonist families. With much of the Indian population decimated by disease, dispossessed of their territory and under constant attack by soldiers, those who survived either entered the haciendas or migrated to Argentina. Meanwhile the army established military outposts and the following decades of skirmishes between the Guaraníes and the Bolivian army ultimately reduced their number and territory. While some Guaraní communities were able to live as free communities by paying tribute to local landlords (Barrientos et al. 2005: 3) others withdrew deep into the Chaco forest. However, the War of the Chaco (1932-1935) effectively ended the mobile livelihoods of all ethnic groups.

While Bolivia’s 1952 revolution, and the Agrarian and Mining Reforms to which it gave rise, reduced social inequality in Bolivia, this was not the case in the Chaco. Indeed, in contrast to the break-up of the hacienda system in the highlands, agrarian reform in the Chaco produced a series of perverse impacts, among which were the further consolidation of the hacienda system and the continuation of egregious practices of forced labour. The Guaraníes became invisible as they were denied access to basic rights to land and citizenship; much less were they given the opportunity to restore ownership of their ancestral lands. While from the 1970s onwards the extreme exploitation and deprivation of rural Guaraní families was made increasingly visible through support from researchers and church-based non-governmental organizations, it took another three decades for the government to act definitively to legislate against these unlawful practices (Defensor del Pueblo 2007).

A hydrocarbon economy emerges

As Guaraní dispossession deepened during the twentieth century, another process unfolding in the Chaco was the emergence of a hydrocarbon economy. In the early 1900s, the Bolivian government awarded significant concessions to private investors for the purpose of exploring and producing oil. In 1921, Standard Oil of New Jersey acquired one of these concessions and began exploring for oil in a massive area of the Chaco stretching from the south of the Department of Santa Cruz to the south of Tarija. The first productive fields were established in Bermejo (Tarija), along the border with Argentina, followed by discoveries in Sanandita and Camatindi, the latter two located along the Serranía de Aguaragüe in the Chaco of Tarija.

These discoveries – the consequence of a global revaluation of Chaco ecology - positioned Tarija as an early source of financial rents for the national economy (Lema 2008). They also shifted the balance of power within the Chaco, and made the region interesting to a wider range of actors. Indeed, the Chaco War was purportedly fought over the region’s hydrocarbons reserves. In the aftermath of the war, Bolivia experienced significant political instability together with the rise of a set of new political actors and coalitions with nationalist-patriotic proclivities. A military coup soon overthrew a government that was seen as corrupt and in the pocket of foreign oil firms and moved to create a National Hydrocarbons

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Agency (YPFB - Yacimientos Petrolíferas Fiscales de Bolivia). Standard Oil was eventually expelled from Bolivia for its perceived “anti-Bolivian behaviour and flagrant fiscal fraud” (Fernández Terán 2009: 33). From 1937 until the mid 1950s YPFB went on to drill some 45 wells at different sites in the Chaco. In the process, oil production became part of the Chaco landscape and heritage, establishing itself alongside the large cattle estates and military outposts and spawning an economic boom that over time drew large numbers of mostly highland campesino migrants in search of land and economic opportunity.

Following policy reforms and privatizations in the early 1990s, another hydrocarbon boom became part of the Chaco landscape, this time around natural gas. These policy changes unleashed an intense rush to explore, a process in which Latin American oil and gas firms (Petrobras and Pluspetrol) competed aggressively with international oil firms (Repsol, British Gas, Amoco-British Petroleum, Total ELF). A series of very large discoveries of gas in the Chaco (including Latin America’s second largest field) triggered international attention. For much of Bolivia, the image of a remote, backward and marginal Chaco was rapidly transformed into an apparition of abundance and of riches in the desert. Indeed in 2000, and literally overnight, Bolivians awoke, to discover that their gas reserves had jumped from 5tcf5 to 48tcf and that Bolivia occupied 2nd place in gas reserves in South America after Venezuela. These reserves were estimated to be worth US$70 billion at the time (Pulso Seminario, 2004). Departmental and national authorities sought to maximize their share in this gas boom, as of course did the Brazilian, Spanish, British and other companies involved in these investments. Memories of the Chaco War also spurred other actors to feel they had a right to share in the fruits of the subsoil. For instance, many contemporary highland social organizations (whose members’ ancestors had fought and died in the War of the Chaco) argued that because it had been their forebears’ blood that had been spilt to protect Bolivia’s oil, they too had rights in this very particular fruit of the Chaco.

The global valuation and discovery of natural gas has, then, brought a series of new demands on the Chaco. These demands come from actors who control considerably more capacities and political leverage than do the Guaraní, and are focused on exploiting those reserves located in the very same spaces that provide other ecosystem services to Guaraní groups. At the same time, indigenous groups have been using a combination of national legislation, political negotiation and mobilization as a strategy for reconstituting these spaces as the territories of which they had been dispossessed in the past. In some instances, they have succeeded in created so-called Tierras Comunitarias de Orígen (TCOs) as a precursor to such territorial reconstitution, while in others their demands are still in process. In the following section I discuss two cases in which hydrocarbon expansion and such efforts to reconstitute territory have been occurring in the same spaces as those in which different actors seek to secure access to the services provided by the Chaco.

Gas, indigenous territory and new inequalities in the Chaco

Campo Margarita and the Guaraníes of Itika Guasu

5 trillion cubic feet.

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The first case is that of the TCO Itika Guasu, and the Guaraní communities impacted by hydrocarbons operations of the mega Campo Margarita gas field. The APG Itika Guasu (The Guaraní Assembly of Itika Guasu), is the representative organization of the 35 Guaraní communities located in the Provinces of O’Connor and Gran Chaco in the Department of Tarija. It has been engaged in a longstanding conflict with Spanish company REPSOL and government authorities over the expansion of the hydrocarbon frontier into the subsoil of ancestral lands. After the discovery of enormous gas reserves in the Campo Margarita field, Guaraní leaders found themselves in a complex and increasingly difficult position as they sought to negotiate with oil and gas firms, the central state, and departmental and municipal authorities as well as to navigate the politics of a highly mobilised social movement seeking to (re) nationalize the hydrocarbons sector (Perreault 2008).

The APG Itika Guasu was created in 1989 after a delegation of Guaraní representatives, attending a national congress of the CSTUCB in Tarija revealed the plight of dozens of indigenous Guaraní families living under conditions of empatronamiento (forced labour) on a hacienda in the Chaco. Leaders had heard on the radio about the congress and hoped to find other social organisations that could help them gain their freedom from the patrón. An NGO representative present at that congress commented that after the Guaraní intervention:

“we stopped being a research NGO and began to dedicate our work to the defense of human rights among indigenous populations and began working only with indigenous groups and no other sectors. The Guaraní leaders told us: free us from the haciendas, we want to recover our ancestral territory, our own territory. They didn’t talk about land, they spoke only of territory.”

Over the past twenty years, the Guaraníes of Itika Guasu have freed themselves from discriminatory labour practices and have organized themselves into communities reviving traditional practices and combining them with more modern forms of organisation and representation. Each community constitutes a Capitanía (Captaincy, the traditional authority in Guarani culture) which is articulated spatially at the level of the TCO (the Guaraní Council of Itika Guasu), the departmental level (The Council of Guaraní Captains of Tarija) and at the national level (The National Guaraní Assembly). The territorial demand of the TCO Itika Guasu consists of some 293,584 hectares. Though the state has acknowledged this demand, only about 95,000 hectares (as of 2009) have been successfully titled with the remaining territory pending title by the Land Reform Office (INRA) in Tarija. In this period of organizational and territorial consolidation, during the decade of the 1990s, the TCO Itika Guasu faced two major challenges to its territorial project: the proposed Caipipendi Hydroelectric complex (1995) on the Pilcomayo River that would cut through the heart of the TCO, and the discovery of important hydrocarbon reserves. In the first instance, the hydroelectric scheme proposed flooding 13 of the 36 Guaraní communities and then relocating them to other parts of the TCO with the bulk of project benefits accruing to commercial farmers in the Province of Salta in Argentina. In response, campaigners from Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina were able to launch a successful international campaign to defeat the proposed scheme. However in the second instance, local actors came to the view that complete resistance to the presence of hydrocarbon companies that had discovered sizeable gas reserves was not a politically viable option.

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For Miguel Castro, founder and former Director of the NGO CER-DET, and who has accompanied the organizational consolidation of indigenous groups in the Chaco Tarijeño over two decades, the conflict with the oil and gas companies began the moment the Guaraníes perceived social and environmental impacts of hydrocarbon activity in their territory. Initially, the Guaraníes were opposed to any drilling within their TCO and initiated negotiations with sub departmental and municipal authorities with a view to requesting both greater information about existing gas concessions as well as details about the proposed extractive projects of gas firms within the TCO. The Guaraníes also insisted that an evaluation of environmental impacts caused by exploratory activities be carried out. The (initial) strategy of the APG Itika Guasu was to express their complete opposition to exploratory activity which they considered incompatible with traditional ways of life, in particular their use of territory and natural resources (Castro 2004:121)

Texas-based based oil and gas company, MAXUS Energy Corporation, initiated exploratory activities in the TCO in 1997. Maxus, then a subsidiary of REPSOL YPF (itself the result of a merger between REPSOL [Spain] and YPF [Argentina]), had not conducted a consultation with the APG Itika Guasu despite the fact that Bolivia was a signatory to the ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and passed a law (Ley 1257) requiring consultation with affected communities. While the Bolivian government had failed to enact enabling legislation to operationalize both the ILO 169 and its own law regarding consultation, many international mining and hydrocarbon companies operating in Bolivia and elsewhere in the Andean region had already begun to carry out public consultation processes in order to avoid conflicts with local populations. However, as this was the beginning of Bolivia’s “gas boom” and because MAXUS was a junior company it appears that little effort was made to undertake consultative mechanisms with indigenous leaders and provide additional environmental and social safeguards. Instead MAXUS operated with a more common approach adopted by many oil and gas firms, offering an ad hoc array of small projects and in-kind donations in order to gain community acceptance.

The APG Itika Guasu soon found themselves with few allies. Because of the potential wealth of the Campo Margarita gas field, a cash-strapped government labeled it a project of “national public interest” – a means of sidestepping any legal obstacles arising from the field’s overlap with a recognized indigenous territory. The Bolivian government projected its future income on the basis of financial resource flows stemming from gas to be extracted in and around the TCO Itika Guasu. By 2001, the Guaraní faced increasing criticism from the local and regional press and from departmental government authorities in Tarija. This led Guaraní leaders to drop their opposition to the project and agree to enter into negotiations for compensation with REPSOL YPF, now the operator of the Campo Margarita gas field and partner of a wider consortium (“Pacific LNG”) that sought to link this field to a series of other gas investments in South America. A number of factors played into this decision, among them: the enormous importance of the reserves and the level of public support for extracting gas; the perceived inevitability of the project; the success of other TCOs in negotiating compensation and right of way payments from hydrocarbon companies; and the emergence of younger leaders who were keen to access employment opportunities and who had skills and experience in non-indigenous society.

For over a decade the APG Itika Guasu had little success as it sought to resolve issues of territorial recognition and compensation for the social and environmental damages incurred during the

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exploration and extraction of gas. Despite receiving signals from the Morales/MAS government that it would enter into discussions with REPSOL-YPF to resolve Itika Guasu’s outstanding claims, there was little progress in resolving the conflict until 2011. The MAS government maintained a position similar to that of its predecessors, invoking the notion of strategic national interest. Indeed, in response to one Guaraní blockade of a local bridge during 2006, the Morales government went so far as to call in the military to ensure that gas field operations were not interrupted. Frustrated with the lack of progress in engaging the MAS government directly, the APG leadership opted to use the boomerang strategy (Keck and Sikkink 1998) by working with European NGOs and transnational networks to pursue legal action in Spain and through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This strategy, which the Guaraní leadership pursued until recently, was roundly denounced by Vice President Garcia Linera who questioned the intromission of foreign interests in internal affairs (García Linera 2011: 11). In response the Itika Guasu leadership indicated that they would not allow further hydrocarbon activity within the TCO until the government intervened in the conflict and contributed to a resolution of pending demands.

In 2011, leaders of the APG Itika Guasu announced the successful negotiation of a compensation agreement with REPSOL in the amount of US$14.8 million, an unprecedented amount for Bolivian indigenous groups, and the creation of an Investment Fund for Itika Guasu (AINI 2011). While the terms of the settlement are not public and APG Itika Guasu leaders refuse to comment on the deal other than to say it is a just one, there are indications that resources have been unequally distributed both among communities as well as among leadership and base organizations.

Extraction and the TCO Yaku Igua

The TCO Yaku Igua, represented by the Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní Yaku Igua, is comprised of dispersed rural communities as well as more urbanized settlements of Guaraní in the Province of Gran Chaco. Founded in 2000 and based in the city of Yacuiba, the APG Yaku Igua has faced significant obstacles to obtaining legal title to the territory it claims. Petitions from the TCO Yaku Igua for territory have languished. Their initial request for 300,000 hectares – part of which overlay the boundaries of the National Park (PN) Serranía Aguaragüe - has been reduced to 70,000 hectares and even this request has met with strong opposition from an alliance of campesino groups and ranchers. To date, only 300 hectares have been titled to just one indigenous community in 2001 following a violent confrontation between ranchers, indigenous Guaraní and landless migrant farmers that resulted in the death of six farmers (Mendoza et al. 2003).

As part of a strategy to exercise greater territorial control, in December 2008 the Council of Guaraní Captains of Tarija (CCGT) and the Servicio Nacional de Áreas Protegidas (SERNAP, National Office for Protected Areas) signed an agreement to jointly administer the National Park Serranía de Aguaragüe, an area that the APG Yacuiba considers to be part of its ancestral lands. The PN Serranía de Aguaragüe runs from the Department of Tarija’s northern border with Chuquisaca to its southern border with Argentina. Covering 118,307 hectares it comprises a park area and a buffer zone. The dense vegetation of the Serranía de Aguaragüe’s slopes captures humidity, channeling moisture toward the Chaco plain and the Rio Pilcomayo and supplying water to the three municipalities of the Province of Gran Chaco. Thirty-

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three Guaraní and a small number of Weenhayek families live in and around the buffer zone with a total population of approximately 5,500 inhabitants.

Both parties agreed to a plan to promote and support the conservation of the national park and protected area and to defend it from threats including creeping slash and burn agriculture in the buffer zone, illegal logging and hydrocarbon development. However, before becoming a protected area in 2000, the Serranía de Aguaragüe had already been categorized by the government as a ‘traditional hydrocarbons area’ in 1996. A national park had, then, been superimposed on an area set aside for hydrocarbon development in a space that the Guaraní had long considered their territory. No attempts were made to clarify which rights were to be prioritized. Indeed, prior to signing the co-administration agreement with SERNAP in late 2008, leaders of the APG Yaku Igua and the CCGT were informed that the firm Eastern Petrogas Ltd, would be conducting exploratory activities in and around the abandoned Sanandita oil field which lies within the area claimed by the TCO Yaku Igua as well as within the buffer zone of the PN Serranía de Aguaragüe. Subsequently, the CCGT and the APG Yaku Igua discovered two more proposed hydrocarbon projects affecting the PN Serranía de Aguaragüe. The first involved a proposal to expand the San Antonio field, operated by the Brazilian company Petrobras, while the second proposed exploratory work in the Aguaragüe Block by the newly formed Petroandina (a joint risk venture between YPFB and PDVSA of Venezuela). Insofar as the reconstitution of YPFB reflects the Bolivian government’s overall strategy to exert greater control over the hydrocarbon production chain and reassert its sovereignty over natural resources, the implication is that this sovereignty is going to be exercised over PN Serranía de Aguaragüe and the distribution of ecosystem services that it provides.

The CCGT and APG Yaku Igua were in a difficult position. Resisting these two projects could generate unwanted backlash given their strategic importance, the direct involvement of YPFB, the country’s urgent need to increase hydrocarbon production and the public’s limited receptiveness to social and environmental arguments. On the other hand, taken as a whole, the three proposals constituted a serious threat to the park, the region’s water resources and the CCGT’s objectives of controlling the territory and developing alternative economic strategies, such as eco-cultural tourism and payment for ecological services agreements. Furthermore, the CCGT and the APG Yaku Igua only learned of the pending Petrobras and Petroandina projects from SERNAP; that is, neither the state-owned YPFB nor the Ministry of Hydrocarbons followed the legal requirement to provide information and consultative processes for indigenous peoples.

In response, the CCGT requested an urgent meeting with officials from the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and YPFB. Tellingly, the meeting revealed the continuing invisibility of the Guaraní in certain domains of national political life, as the representatives of YPFB and the Ministry of Hydrocarbons did not know that the CCGT and SERNAP were co-administering the PN Serranía de Aguaragüe, that the TCO Yaku Igua had a pending territorial claim nor that there were indigenous-campesino communities in the area. The Guaraní insisted that any remedial work to be carried out would have to include the participation and authorization of Guaraní representatives. This position represented the Guaraní desire to exercise greater participation and oversight of actions that had been promised but not undertaken by YPFB in an area under their administration, as well as to establish their new role in decision-making and policy-making regarding hydrocarbon development more generally. The representative of YPFB said, however,

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that while her agency had money to explore for hydrocarbons, there were no funds to remediate past contamination. Only in 2011 did YPFB finally begin remediation activities and then only after the APG Yaku Igua organized a series of marches and strikes protesting (and successfully delaying) plans for new gas projects in the region.

Conclusions

Growing efforts on the part of international companies and the central state to extract gas from the Bolivian Chaco have occurred in a context of longstanding asymmetries of power. These relationships disadvantage indigenous populations both within the Chaco and in their relation to other actors in Bolivia (especially the central state and highland populations), and have gone a long way in structuring the contemporary governance of ecosystem services and in determining which of these services have been prioritized. As a consequence of such asymmetries, Guaraní and Weenhayek populations have been severely restricted in their access to the formal political decision making processes that structure ecosystem governance, as well as to the economic opportunities opened up by that governance. The paper highlights important instances of these inequities of opportunity: hydrocarbon companies’ property rights have taken priority over indigenous claims to territory and land; indigenous populations have not had access to the information that states and companies control regarding natural gas extraction, even when this extraction occurs in spaces occupied and used by indigenous people; and in negotiations over benefit sharing and compensation, companies have had privileged access to economically significant information regarding the subsoil. Government and company determination to explore for and extract natural gas has given rise to a series of procedural inequities (made possible by the power of these actors), especially around the processes of prior consultation, the monitoring and remediation of environmental damage, and in the management of compensation funds. These procedural inequities have greatly reduced the ability of indigenous groups to extend their territorial claims and effective control over their territories, and have also undermined certain gains made in the past.

The forms of ecosystem service governance that have resulted from such relationships have introduced new economic activities, socio-environmental hazards and impacts that risk the secure access of both indigenous and urban populations to other ecosystem services, above all those related to water. They have also introduced the use of financial compensation in which one sort of ecosystem service is preferred over others, and the loss of other services is then monetized. These changes have generated new inequalities both between indigenous populations and other stakeholders as well as among indigenous people themselves. Again, the cases discussed have revealed several such inequalities. The most obvious inequalities relate to receipt of the income generated by natural gas. Even when a $14.8 million compensation fund for the Guaraní of Itika Guasu may look large, it is still miniscule compared with the flows controlled by companies and the central state. Resident indigenous populations have also been subject to new environmental impacts and risks that are not experienced by other groups who do not depend so directly on local ecosystem services. The distribution of funds through indigenous development projects and similar compensation instruments generates further inequalities. The Weenhayek of the Pilcomayo (Humphreys Bebbington and Bebbington, 2010), and the Guaraní of Yaku Igua have secured much less compensation than the Guaraní of Itika Guasu, and within each of these

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populations, some leaders and families have secured greater shares of compensation than have others. Perhaps most seriously, by distributing compensation through indigenous organizations, governments and companies have weakened the very indigenous organizations which have been such a critical channel through which indigenous populations have otherwise been able to offset some of the inequality with which they have had to live in the past.

While all forms of development produce new inequalities, I argue that the extent of inequality in the Chaco has been aggravated by recent efforts to establish compensation schemes without acknowledging such longstanding asymmetries of power (c.f. Berdegué et al., 2012). This implies that any effort to reduce inequality of outcomes produced by the governance of ecosystem services should pay primary attention to reducing these asymmetries and the consequent inequities in access to economic and political opportunity, rather than deal with particular inequalities on a case by case basis. This would mean paying less attention to seeking particular forms of compensation, or particular remediation of environmental damage (important as these are), and instead focusing on efforts to offset asymmetries. Indeed, this has been the strategy of some church and non-governmental organizations who over the last two decades have sought to strengthen social organization, leadership and technical capacities among the Guaraní and Weenhayek. The cases suggest that this capacity strengthening has gone some way in reducing asymmetries and increasing opportunities – indicators of this include the success of some groups in securing TCOs, in negotiating at least some benefits from hydrocarbon companies and in establishing some protection for critical ecosystem services. However, the underlying asymmetries remain.

The experiences of these indigenous groups have relevance beyond the Bolivian Chaco. Rural communities around the world face similar challenges linked to the exploration and extraction of minerals and hydrocarbons resources and the privileging of extractive agendas over other ecosystem governance options (Beck et al. 2010; Finer et al. 2008; Kirsch 2006; Sibaud, 2012). This is especially problematic for indigenous and traditional communities that might have gained some degree of legal recognition in recent years but whose territories hold hydrocarbon and mineral resources that national and international actors deem too valuable to leave underground. The insertion of these territories into international mineral and hydrocarbon markets places new demands on ecosystems and communities, and introduces new asymmetries into social relationships. Communities must negotiate with oil and gas companies, with central and sub national levels of government, as well as between and within indigenous organizations themselves. These processes have often been accompanied by an explosive rise of conflict and social mobilization around natural resource extraction.6 The implication is that much attention needs to be paid to enhancing this capacity to negotiate – for instance, through information provision, leadership training, organizational strengthening and the development of relationships to other actors who can provide specialized support (e.g. lawyers who can help advise on territorial claims or the evaluation of environmental impact assessments).

6 For just two networks of researchers now tracking these processes see: http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_78VD3R_Eng, and http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/andes/

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The cases reveal several other patterns that have more general (if not universal) relevance. First, in pursuing the expansion of extractive industries – or indeed of any strategy that prioritizes the capital intensive exploitation of a particular ecosystem service - the central state can easily foster the creation of new inequalities in the territories affected by this exploitation. A priori, this seems more likely to occur when exploitation is carried out in a context of deeply-rooted inequities. Second, while communities might initially be attracted by offers of employment and community development, when later they become aware of the new inequalities and environmental impacts produced by these projects, their position may become more critical. In this process, the state and extractive industry view community claims of environmental and social harm with suspicion, while for their part communities see the state and companies as partners aligned against the community. This exacerbates communities’ sense that the state will not protect the rights and interests of indigenous peoples.

Indeed, another and final lesson from these cases is the importance of avoiding such a breakdown of mutual trust among communities, the state and companies around ecosystem governance – and the ease with which such breakdowns can occur, especially in a context of long-standing asymmetries and inequities. The cases offer no simple remedy to this problem, though they do suggest the importance of recognizing and understanding such asymmetries prior to the onset of new forms of resource exploitation, and of reducing inequities in access to political decision making, to information and to economic opportunity before new forms of ecosystem governance begin rather than after the fact.

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