This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of popular environmental politics in the context of so-called sustainable mining development in Ecuador. Progressive governments in Latin America herald sustainable mining initiatives as the lynchpin to development capable of generating revenues to finance social welfare programs and protecting the environment. If this is so, my dissertation asks, then why has a proposed sustainable gold mine provoked such bitter opposition from dairy farmers in the parish of Victoria del Portete? My dissertation follows a group of indigenous and mestizo dairy farmers in the southern Ecuadorian Andes to understand why they oppose gold mining in their watershed and traces the cultural and political transformations that followed from their activism. I make four key arguments in this dissertation. First, I argue that sustainable mining plans place a premium on local water resources and have the effect of rearticulating local water disputes. Whereas owners of small and large dairy farms have historically disputed local access to water resources now they have created a unified movement against the proposed gold mine project. Second, I argue that knowledge practices and political discourses enabled farmers with varying claims to ethnic ancestry and socio-economic standing to establish connections with each other and with national indigenous leaders, Catholic priests, artists, and urban ecologists. Together they have formed a movement in defense of life. My analysis extends common understandings of the nature of human agency and political life by examining the role that non-human entities play in shaping contemporary environmental politics. Third, as a result of the mobilizations, new socio-environmental formations have emerged. The watershed has become a sacred place called Kimsacocha, which is venerated by farmers through new cultural practices as the source of life. Finally, the mobilizations in defense of life have re-centered indigeneity in unexpected ways. Farmers with and without indigenous ancestry as well as their urban allies are now claiming an indigenous identity. Unlike previous understandings of identity in the region, indigeneity does not denote a shared racial, cultural, or class position but refers to a particular way of understanding and relation to the environment. / text

This thesis is concerned with the demands that humans are placing on the planet. Such demands are interrogated in long-running debates about how to reconcile the tensions between development, as an immanent process of capitalist expansion (see Cowen & Shelton 1996), and the environment, taken broadly in reference to finite natural resources, landscapes and wildlife. As environmental issues become increasingly prominent in local struggles, national debates, and international policies and programmes, we need to be paying more attention to how they are produced and shaped by politics and power relations, as well as to the differences between how groups relate to their biophysical environments. In this thesis, I do this by investigating the political ecology of post-neoliberalism in Bolivia. The country has been heralded as one of the most radical political projects in Latin America and a reformed state is being implemented in the name of radical politics and revolution, appropriating discourses of indigeneity and social movements. Here, the state has blamed the global environmental crisis on the continuing dominance of capitalism and neoliberalism. This has been publically rejected by the state, whilst new ‘post-neoliberal’ forms of development and harmonious relationships between people and nature have been promoted. However, Bolivia’s post-neoliberal state project has become increasingly dependent on hydrocarbon extraction becoming the most natural resource-dependent country in the region. This has created new sites of contestation and conflict between citizens and the state, as well as complicating what the Bolivian case contributes to wider debates about development and the environment. In this project I research an ongoing conflict over the Isiboro Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS) concentrating on the key themes of development, environment and indigeneity. This political ecology of post-neoliberalism contributes both to our understanding of this emerging political project and to broader debates about human/nature relationships - by questioning the dynamics of fringe politics. This means questioning how the terms and content of ‘alternatives’ and ‘radical’ politics are set and how this in turn shapes the possibilities for transformative paths towards more sustainable human/nature relationships.

Over the past decade, South America has been undergoing many transformations, through which it has been experiencing rapid economic growth, has heightened its ability to act more autonomously from international influence on matters of decision-making, and in general is perceived to have become a more stable region in several aspects. In this outlook, South America is increasingly distinguishing itself from the rest of Latin America. South America has been seeking integration for more than two centuries, when independence from the colonizing powers marked the introduction of the notion of integration in the region. However, most observers would argue that until now, South America has not succeeded in achieving its integration aims. Today, however, a new form of regional integration is being introduced in South America, which is said to differ significantly from previous integration schemes. This time, integration is based on left governments, and thereby South America is thought to have entered a Post Neoliberal stage. Historical factors explain the need for a Post Neoliberal approach to government nowadays, as it may be the only sustainable way forward for the region's development. Post Neoliberalism is therefore at the core of new integration efforts. Particularly the recently established Unasur...

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