Pollution scenarios: Engaging with Indigenous enviromental management in the Bolivian lowlands

The relentless proliferation of pollution in indigenous territories is a critical problem aggravating the exclusion and poverty conditions of Indigenous peoples. In response, there has been growing attention to the situation of communities exposed to industrial pollution.

Paradoxically, this has gone hand in hand with the scholarly disregard for the concomitant proliferation of domestic pollution in communities with no industrial activities but under colonial pressures. This study addresses this gap by exploring the case of Guarani communities in Bolivia.

It does so applying a collaborative approach that confronts asymmetries between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges and practices that contribute to the colonial enunciation, subalternation, and disruption of local sustainable lifeways.

The aim is twofold: to provide a profound understanding of Indigenous discursive and practical approaches to pollution within present colonial contexts, and to determine the epistemological and social potential of collaborative research in relation to pollution issues.

Theoretically situated at the intersection of political ontology and decolonial theory, this study proposes the use of ethnographic and Indigenous research-based methods.

Apart from advancing ongoing debates on decolonial collaboration and pollution within Indigenous contexts, the study contributes to generating a more balanced production, circulation, and use of research.