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Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) took office in Bolivia in 2006, riding on the wave of fierce popular protests against previous, neoliberal regimes. Morales was depicted as the country's first indigenous president. His government promised a radical transformation of national politics and rebranded Bolivia as a "plurinational state". Under MAS, indigenous subjectivity has moved from a marginalized position to center stage, and become a key condition for political legitimacy. This development is reflected in environmental politics. In international forums, the Bolivian government has claimed to represent a green indigenous alternative, a "culture of life", as opposed to a Western, capitalist "culture of death". However, on home ground, critics have accused MAS of coopting aspects of indigenous identity for its own interests and not applying its green agenda within the national borders. The national economy is dependent on intense extraction and export of natural resources, a trend which has not diminished under Morales. Thus, the first Bolivian government to frame itself as indigenous now stands behind initiatives for resource extraction and infrastructural expansion. This raises questions about whose rights are privileged when different actors express conflicting claims based on indigeneity. In this thesis, two salient themes are explored: MAS' positioning in international climate change negotiations, and the conflict around the plans to construct a highway across the TIPNIS national park and indigenous territory. Drawing on poststructural and postcolonial feminist theory, I analyze intersecting processes of power in Bolivian environmental struggles by unwrapping two figurations: the endangered glacier and the ecological indigenous. These have become emblematic, and are mobilized by various actors for different purposes. Situating these figurations in national and international discourses, I show how they may shift in meaning and both reinforce and challenge relations of power. The research material was generated through ethnographic fieldwork and collection of written texts. Through this study of contemporary Bolivia, I shed light on how power dynamics play out in the framing of environmental problems and their solutions; questions which should be central to research on environmental issues in all contexts. ; Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) bildade regering i Bolivia 2006 med Evo Morales på presidentposten, framburna av folkliga protester mot tidigare, nyliberala regimer. Morales beskrivs ofta som landets första president med bakgrund i ursprungsbefolkningen. Hans regering utlovade en radikal omställning av den nationella politiken och tillkännagav att Bolivia nu är en "plurinationell stat". Under MAS har ursprungsfolkstillhörighet rört sig från en marginaliserad ställning till en central position i nationell politik, och blivit en viktig förutsättning för politisk legitimitet. Denna utveckling återspeglas i miljöpolitiken. I internationella sammanhang har den bolivianska regeringen intagit en radikal ståndpunkt och presenterat en alternativ modell för hållbarhet grundat i andinsk ursprungsfolkstradition, en " livets kultur" som ställs i motsats till en västerländsk, kapitalistisk "dödens kultur". Dock har kritiska röster i Bolivia anklagat MAS för att använda sig av aspekter av ursprungsfolkskultur som en strategi för att rättfärdiga sina egna politiska intressen, utan att tillämpa sina gröna ideal på nationell nivå. Bolivias ekonomi är beroende av utvinning och export av naturresurser, en trend som inte har minskat under Morales tid vid makten. Samtidigt som hans regering framhåller ursprungsfolks traditioner och rättigheter, står den bakom initiativ till ökad naturresursutvinning och storskaliga infrastrukturprojekt. Detta väcker frågor om vilka anspråk som är mest legitima och vilkas rättigheter som bör beaktas när olika aktörer uttrycker motstridiga krav i ursprungsbefolkningars namn. I denna avhandling utforskas två teman som dominerat miljöpolitiken i Bolivia på senare år: MAS ' positionering i internationella klimatförhandlingar, och konflikten kring planerna på att bygga en motorväg tvärs igenom TIPNIS, en nationalpark som styrs av tre ursprungsbefolkningsgrupper. Med utgångspunkt i poststrukturalistisk och postkolonial feministisk teori analyserar jag intersektionella maktrelationer i boliviansk miljöpolitik, genom att undersöka två figurationer: den utrotningshotade glaciären, och det ekologiska ursprungsfolkssubjektet. Dessa har blivit symboliskt viktiga, och har mobiliserats av en mängd olika aktörer för vitt skilda syften. Genom att situera dessa figurationer i nationella och internationella diskurser visar jag hur de skiftar i betydelse och hur de kan både förstärka och utmana rådande maktrelationer. Forskningsmaterialet baseras på etnografiskt fältarbete och insamling av skrivna texter. Genom denna studie av Bolivia under Morales, visar jag hur makt tar sig uttryck i formuleringen av miljöproblem och tänkta lösningar; frågor som har relevans för forskning om miljöfrågor även i andra sammanhang.

Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) took office in Bolivia in 2006, riding on the wave of fierce popular protests against previous, neoliberal regimes. Morales was depicted as the country's first indigenous president. His government promised a radical transformation of national politics and rebranded Bolivia as a "plurinational state". Under MAS, indigenous subjectivity has moved from a marginalized position to center stage, and become a key condition for political legitimacy. This development is reflected in environmental politics. In international forums, the Bolivian government has claimed to represent a green indigenous alternative, a "culture of life", as opposed to a Western, capitalist "culture of death". However, on home ground, critics have accused MAS of coopting aspects of indigenous identity for its own interests and not applying its green agenda within the national borders. The national economy is dependent on intense extraction and export of natural resources, a trend which has not diminished under Morales. Thus, the first Bolivian government to frame itself as indigenous now stands behind initiatives for resource extraction and infrastructural expansion. This raises questions about whose rights are privileged when different actors express conflicting claims based on indigeneity. In this thesis, two salient themes are explored: MAS' positioning in international climate change negotiations, and the conflict around the plans to construct a highway across the TIPNIS national park and indigenous territory. Drawing on poststructural and postcolonial feminist theory, I analyze intersecting processes of power in Bolivian environmental struggles by unwrapping two figurations: the endangered glacier and the ecological indigenous. These have become emblematic, and are mobilized by various actors for different purposes. Situating these figurations in national and international discourses, I show how they may shift in meaning and both reinforce and challenge relations of power. The research material was generated through ethnographic fieldwork and collection of written texts. Through this study of contemporary Bolivia, I shed light on how power dynamics play out in the framing of environmental problems and their solutions; questions which should be central to research on environmental issues in all contexts.

In this paper, I use the concept of discourse to reflect upon how varying understandings of climate change permeate a certain political arena: international development cooperation. Starting off in the international political context, I move on to focus on Swedish development cooperation politics in the area of climate change, which I argue is much in line with the dominant international discourse. Swedish politicians also like to depict Sweden as an important actor and a forerunner on climate and development. In the final parts I outline the political context and climate discourses in Bolivia, one of Sweden's partner countries for development cooperation and a country which has lately kept a high profile in international politics of climate change. I sketch out how the climate discourse promoted by the Bolivian government differs radically from the one brought forward by the Swedish development cooperation agency, and argue for further research on these matters to understand how these discourses are formed and reproduced, and what may be the effects when they collide in the context of development cooperation.

In December 2015 the United Nations held its Twenty-First climate change conference (COP21) in Paris. While political leaders convened to negotiate a new climate treaty, a diverse landscape of social movements, grassroots organizations, activists and artists assembled to mobilize public support for climate justice. In this paper we draw attention to one example of such non-traditional climate mobilization: Run for Your Life, organized by the Swedish theater company Riksteatern. Framed as a "climate performance," this initiative enrolled thousands of people to run distances in a relay race for climate justice, starting in Arctic Sweden and arriving in Paris on the first day of COP21. Public events were organized along the way, and the entire race was video recorded and broadcasted online. When signing up, runners were asked to submit their own climate story. Drawing on this archive of personal stories, we examine how Run for Your Life mobilized citizen engagement for climate justice. By paying attention to the multiple ways in which climate change is storied into people's lives, we seek to understand why citizens decide to take climate action and which subject positions are available to them in the broader environmental drama. While the scripting of climate change as a planetary emergency perpetuated by global injustices serves an important function in the politics of climate change, we argue that it is in situated stories of environmental connection that climate change gains personal meaning. Here, kinship and solidarity are articulated, opening up for progressive social change.

Intersectionality originates in feminist critical theory as a perspective for analyzing categories of difference and relations of power. In this article we explore how the categories of 'human' and 'nature' are made meaningful in relation to each other and assemble an intersectional analytical lens drawing on theories from the fields of ecofeminism, critical animal studies and posthumanism. A common theme in these fields is the dualistic construction and representation of humans and nature as separate entities and we study how such dualism plays out in relation to issues of knowledge and subjectivity. The analytical lens is engaged to explore the concepts of biodiversity and eco-system services, which have emerged as keywords for conceptualizing human-nature relations in environmental research and policy. We assess debates around the concepts of biodiversity and eco-system services in scholarly publications, and how these reflect, reinforce, or contest dualistic and hierarchical constructions of human-nature relations. We look for principal tendencies, as well as challenging perspectives and voices.

Investigations of the interconnectedness of climate change with human societies require profound analysis of relations among humans and between humans and nature, and the integration of insights from various academic fields. An intersectional approach, developed within critical feminist theory, is advantageous. An intersectional analysis of climate change illuminates how different individuals and groups relate differently to climate change, due to their situatedness in power structures based on context-specific and dynamic social categorisations. Intersectionality sketches out a pathway that stays clear of traps of essentialisation, enabling solidarity and agency across and beyond social categories. It can illustrate how power structures and categorisations may be reinforced, but also challenged and renegotiated, in realities of climate change. We engage with intersectionality as a tool for critical thinking, and provide a set of questions that may serve as sensitisers for intersectional analyses on climate change. Adapted from the source document.