Water is an essential human need without which people cannot survive and strive for growth. The case of Bolivia is an example of how privatization of water supply can result in a major backlash and political unrest. The main issue lies in the fact that the government decided to make the given segment commercialized by selling it to a for-profit organization. In other words, the process led to a gradual rise in water prices, which put a great deal of stress on Bolivian people. It directly increased the category of people living in poverty and halted economic growth because citizens started to spend more on basic needs. The given critical assessment will primarily focus on bringing a new perspective to the issue from the standpoint of political ecology.
Although traditional ecology can explain the modern issues within the environment, it does not include political factors. Therefore, political ecology is a more useful approach to Bolivia’s water crisis because they are a wide range of parties involved with an array of interests. Marginalization takes place against the ordinary people of the nation, and control occurs at the water supply level. Environmental conflict is mainly fueled by the privatization of a water-supplying organization, and subjects are impoverished masses, where political actors include the government and related entities. Therefore, these are five major elements of political ecology, which categorize and identify the key features of any environmental crisis.
Engagement
The two ideas which are the most resonant and relevant to the topic are the structure of ecology-driver conflicts and elements of political ecology. They can be applied to the issue because Bolivia’s water problem is also comprised of these notions. It is stated that political ecology includes five key components, which are political objects and actors, environmental subjects and identities, conflict and exclusion, conservation and control, and degradation and marginalization (Robbins, 2019). The latter aspect involves Bolivian citizens, where water supply is controlled. The political actor is the government, and subjects are people vulnerable due to water access limitations. The conflicts are fueled by the fact that an organization on the matter is privatized, and thus, the public demands changes.
The environmental and water crisis in Bolivia is serious and global because it is a violation of human rights. However, its emergence is associated with the economic activities of entities under the jurisdiction of the state. All states, as well as stakeholders, are forced to determine their position, actions, or inaction in relation to environmental issues. Administrative control and government regulation of the use of natural resources are only the tips of the iceberg of conflicts of interest. This causes latent conflicts, aspirations for various forms of domination, leadership, political control, and order configuration. Theoretically and institutionally, such a phenomenon as environmental policy is being formed.
Along with the emergence and development of the environmental policy of individual states, there is an understanding that a systematic comprehension of political aspects is necessary. It is important to take into account the fact that this applies to the foundations of the environmental crisis and environmental policy, where this gives rise to political ecology. Often, however, it is precisely because of the political nature that the meaning, tasks, and understanding of the content of these areas remain unclear.
The concepts of ecology and politics have a wide variety of interpretations, are combined mechanically, and the result of their combination does not give new content. Building environmental policies on random grounds make them ineffective at best. Much more often, in the worst case, one person records the pressure of a political nature, both from external and internal structures. In this case, any vague environmental policies are used to their advantage. On the one hand, the threats and risks of a human-made nature, the load on the environment make the ecological crisis a global one. On the other hand, the global problem of the environmental concern is considered from the point of view of numerous actors with a different resource, institutional and communication bases. The art of political analysis is precisely in the ability to identify the unity of the particular and universal in the content of the problem.
In each era, the confrontation of political forces, expressing the essential contradiction of the period, seeks to end with the victory and supremacy of one of the parties to this conflict. Ideologically, this is interpreted as a struggle for the power of progressive forces against the forces of reaction. At the same time, the historical result of the battle between the parties is the resolution, the removal of contradictions. The structure and the liberation of society emerge from both this type of contradictions and their carriers. The essence of politics lies in the civilizational ethical contradiction, the content of which is the struggle of the polis civilization on the borders of the ancient world against barbarism. Political ecology is an example of opposition to a moral will that is born out of principle, which does not recognize identity as the morality of a public person. Political unities are divided into civilized and barbaric, and within agreements, people are divided into free and marginalized on a moral basis.
Reference
Robbins, P. (2019). Political ecology: A critical introduction (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.