Bolivia grants "Earth Rights" to Nature

[applejuice]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

But much of the world has been overconsuming at the same time. It's all about treading lightly, which is easier if one has a new mindset about the natural world they depend on.

On a side note, what is your opinion of uncontacted tribes? Should they be left alone or civilized? Because many could still be living in the effected areas? Or what us your opinion of the Belo Monte Dam?

Fortunately or unfortunately, we don't belong to that much of the world that consumes a lot of natural resources.
Concerning isolated tribes, a part of me wishes them to conserve their way of life, their traditions. After all, it's their life. On the other hand, when I see them, I see a lot of people living in infra-human life conditions. They are plagued with decease, lack of medicines, lack of food, almost an animal state. I think that if they were given the choice of a "civilized" life, most will adopt it and a fraction will reject it. That seems to be the way of progress.

Originally Posted by Raiden

Yay!

One of my favorite aquarium fish are native to Bolivia.

I'm aware of the poverty issue, but that's a whole 'nother ball game...

Just developing in a country isn't really a solution to poverty, either. It solves the issue temporarily, and then when the population explodes again, everyone falls under the poverty line, and you're left with poverty and environmental devastation.

Sometimes I almost think that places like Bolivia just won't work for large populations of capitalistic humans, and the only real solution would be to move everybody to specific human-only settlements that are very dense and compacted, and limit the populations of them to keep poverty and disease away.

We also think like that, given our current authorities, but we were doing big advances in Human Development until 2003, when Sanchez de Lozada was forced to leave the country and a kind of anarchy ruled until Morales took the presidency in 2006. From there, the country went down in all its indicators. I like to think that, given our small population and our enormous resources, all of us bolivians should be living a more than decent life. But populism is not compatible with intelligence and common sense.