Bolívie: země indigenního environmentalismu? Několik úvah nad paradoxy bolivijského politického projektu

The article ponders over the environmental paradoxes of the Bolivian political project. The government of Morales aspires to establish a system based on social justice, environmentally conscious politics and the respect for the indigenous populations of the country. The new Political Constitution was adopted that guarantees the political, cultural and territorial rights of the indigenous groups and delineates a well-developed framework of the environmental protection. As one of the first states of the world Bolivia admitted the legal status of nature and adopted „Law of Mother Earth“. However, to these legislative measures contrasts sharply the economic strategy of the country, based almost exclusively on mining, industrialization and commercialization of the natural resources. The government of Morales intensified the mining of the fossil fuels and prepares the way for a gigantic project of mining and processing of lithium on the Bolivian salt flats. Socio-ecological consequences of these activities might be catastrophic. We think that the ambivalent environmental attitude of the government of Morales is caused, primarily, by its effort to match up two inconsistent principles: on the one hand the anthropocentric concept of economic growth, modernity and progress and on the other the indigenous concept of „good life“ that became the official moral-ethical principle of the Bolivian state.