Événement en présentiel

Lieu : Salle S1, 2e étage, 28 rue des Saints-Pères - 75007 Paris

Cette séance est organisée dans le cadre du séminaire Extraire, échanger, empêcher. La mise en ressource des milieux en collaboration avec l'Atelier interdisciplinaire de recherches sur l'environnement (AIRE)

Intervenant :
Thomas Perreault, DellPlain Professor, Syracus University

This paper examines the recent drying of Lake Poopó, in the central Bolivian Altiplano. While numerous fishing cooperatives and indigenous campesino communities were negatively affected by the lake’s drying, arguably the greatest impact was experienced by the three communities of Urus indigenous peoples, located on the lake’s eastern shore. As a consequence of their historical marginalization – which began in the pre-Hispanic era, intensified during the Colonial period, and has continued into the present – Urus have virtually no land of their own and have historically depended on fishing, hunting and gathering in the lake and surrounding wetlands. With the drying of the lake, Urus communities have experienced high levels of out-migration and deepening immiseration. This paper examines the causes and consequences of the lake’s drying and considers the broader political economic context of regional socio-environmental transformation. While climate change undoubtedly plays a role in the lake’s drying, it has been exacerbated by large-scale water withdrawals for mining, agriculture, and urban uses. Thus, the power relations involved in contemporary patterns of resource use, in combination with regional environmental change, have combined to magnify the vulnerability of fragile ecosystems and already marginalized populations

Responsable scientifique : Sandrine Revet, Sciences Po-CERI

Organisation du séminaire : Pia Bailleul, Inés Calvo Valenzuela