Exploring indigenous peoples' participation within climate solutions through indigeneity narratives: a comparison between Peru and Bolivia

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In the global search for alternative development models that are less environmentallydestructive, the incorporation of indigenous peoples' knowledge, sustainable livelihoods, andtheir ideas of well-being have become commonplace in the crafting of climate solutions.Despite this recent trend to include indigenous people's knowledge, the decision-makingcapacities of indigenous representatives have remained weak, as they are mostly accordedonly an observer status (Comberti et. al, 2019.) How can we grasp this contradictoryinclusion? To understand how dominant climate development institutions (Somerville, 2021,Vergara Camus, 2021) delimit the incorporation of indigenous peoples in practice, we need torecognize which narratives of indigeneity are being used and which effects they have onclimate policy. Considering there is no common conceptualization of indigenous peoples'attributes (Canessa, 2018; Radcliffe, 2015, Perreault and Green, 2013), it is noticeable thatwhile indigenous peoples stress legitimacy on forest management and their indigenousdevelopment model (known as Buen Vivir), dominant market-based solutions representindigenous people merely as containers of useful knowledge and local stakeholders, usuallyignoring issues of territorial rights and land distribution (Kodiveri, 2021; Borras and Franco,2018; Franco and Borras, 2021, Fairhead et. al, 2012). I argue that the study of these differentcontents of indigeneity allows us to understand the political and cultural tensions within thecollective making of climate solutions. I propose to extend the context-specific andcomparative approaches of studies of indigenous mobilization and social movement theory tothe studies of the integration of indigenous knowledge into "Western" environmental policies(Hui, 2020) that have a tendency to use abstract, mostly local, and indigenous-isolatedapproaches (Petzold et. al, 2020; See Dietz, 2013; Ulloa, 2011, 2012) Moreover, it is also arelevant contribution for climate justice movement studies, that had engaged with internaldifferences of the movement (Della Porta and Sparks, 2013, Dietz and Garrelts, 2013), butfocusing mostly on NGOs and urban social movements (Claeys and Delgado, 2016) with a fewexceptions considering the Bolivian case (Fabricant and Hicks, 2016; Hicks, 2013; Aguirre andCopper, 2010). I will present a comparative approach between the advocacy practices of twoindigenous members of the climate justice movement in Peru and Bolivia because the scopeof negotiation inside climate discussions of each indigenous people (Comberti et. al, 2019) andtheir concepts of indigeneity can vary greatly (Gudynas, 2011) depending on the historicalrelationship with their national governments. These two countries, considered priorities toglobal conservation goals (Dinerstein et. al, 2020) show two different poles of developmentand indigeneity debates: Bolivia's post-development and appropriation of indigeneity by theState, and Peru's extreme neoliberalism, where indigenous autonomy is constructed on themargins of the State. The research will draw on data from multi-scale ethnography, interviews,and qualitative cartography, in order to understand how indigeneity and developmentnarratives unfold in the discussion around REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation andforest degradation) projects and hydropower energy, as well as in the indigenous proposals ofclimate solutions through autonomy and Buen Vivir concepts. Finally, this research offers thepossibility to present academically-informed critiques to failures inside participatorymechanisms of climate governance. Without a substantial involvement of organized civilsociety in climate solutions, we face the risk of continuing superficial top-down policies thatend up excluding the most affected population of the escalating climate crisis.