By Paul Hendricks
Grants Associate, Global Greengrants Fund
In the high plains of Bolivia, with its quarter million inhabitants, the city of Oruro embraces a relatively tranquil pace of life. The day-to-day is punctuated by an overwhelming sense of pride in community and close relationships. The streets of Oruro are filled with groups of people casually shopping or walking from work to home. Smells of chicken and quinoa flow from the numerous family-run restaurants, and the chatter of leisurely lunch conversations can be heard until the sun begins to set over the surrounding mountains.
Tucked within the center of this city is a collective of environmental groups who are faced with pressing threats to the region’s lands and resources. These issues demand that they work together to make a lasting difference for the surrounding ecosystems and livelihoods of their community. Each working with the support of Global Greengrants Fund, these three organizations, FOBOMADE Oruro, Colectivo Casa, and JUDNAVI, are located in a single building that serves as the focal point for environmental action in Oruro. While sharing physical resources and office space reduces overlap of excessive costs, it’s the dynamic of a centralized community of activists that seems to hold the most importance in the work of all three organizations. Staff and volunteers from each group regularly interact with each other, talk about issues and strategies, help with each others’ work, and socialize after work—sometimes staying hours in the office eating tamales or playing music.
A Multifaceted Lucha: Surrounding Injustice from Every Side
In many respects, the heightened environmental and social concerns in Oruro have necessitated the groups to work together. Mining projects are displacing indigenous communities and ruining watersheds and lakes. Government leaders are failing to enforce environmental regulation. Community members lack an understanding of proper sanitation and waste disposal practices. These interconnected challenges require a multifaceted lucha, or “fight,” to ensure a sustained future of social and environmental health.
For this reason, this community of environmentalists is working together. They’re creating awareness, assisting in the recognition of indigenous rights, conducting environmental assessments and reports, influencing public policy, mainstreaming environmental concerns in the media, and directly promoting alternative means of economic growth. Take for example the fight to improve water quality in the area:
JUDNAVI, a group of energetic youth, have been taking to the streets to raise awareness of the importance of clean water. They host concerts and festivals, celebrate “Water Day,” and advocate the government to enforce environmental regulation. Read more about what drives this inspiring youth group >>
Colectivo Casa is currently working with the University of Barcelona to conduct an in-depth and authoritative environmental impact statement on water quality and ecological health.
FOBOMADE Oruro is promoting the development of a Law of Prior Consent that would greatly increase the power of indigenous communities to have a voice in projects that would impact their surrounding water supplies.
Visiting the offices of this, as was stated numerous times, “environmental family,” I was amazed by their unique structure. Not only for the way in which this group of diverse people interacted with each other, but for the healthy model that this communal action presented for the environmental movement in Bolivia. Most likely a mix of cultural norms and necessary coordination, this community of action is building an environmental movement in Bolivia—starting in Oruro and hoping to expand to the borders of the country and beyond. Many of the results of their work are yet to be seen, but from the small successes and continued enthusiasm of our friends in Oruro we have hope. Their approach surrounds injustice from every side, and it can have lasting results in what many called “the fight for our future.”