The Democracy Center has a long history of publishing investigations and articles aimed at helping activists understand complex issues. As we take citizen action on the climate crisis it is especially important that we inform ourselves with the facts. Here we offer a set of reports and articles aimed to help climate activists be as informed as they are passionate.
Democracy Center Reports on the Climate Crisis
New!
Off the Market: Bolivian Forests and Struggles Over Climate Change
The Democracy Center’s report ‘Off the Market’ connects the dots between the global debate over forest protection and the complex realities on the ground in Bolivia.
It begins with a clear and accessible explanation of the issues on an international level, and then captures many differing voices in Bolivia – community leaders in the Amazon basin, government officials, farmers, social movement leaders, and others. It moves from the halls of global institutions to the floor of the forests themselves.
Read more and download the report.
Bolivia and its Lithium
Underneath Bolivia’s glimmering Salar de Uyuni lies the world’s largest supply of lithium, the metal that promises to change transportation as we know it. Governments and the auto industry are investing big so that some day soon electric car owners will be able to fill up their car’s battery at an electrical socket instead of filling up their tank at a pump. As the global North looks to electric cars as one of the solutions to our growing consumption of pollution-causing fossil fuels, this report from 2010 analyses the challenges Bolivia faces in trying to escape its historic ‘resource curse’, including the very real and serious environmental impacts exploitation of lithium could have inside Bolivia.
A Visit to the Cemetery of Glaciers
In 2010 Democracy Center researchers visited the area around Chacaltaya. Once home to the world’s highest ski resort, Chacaltaya’s life-giving glacier has disappeared in just a few short years. In this video you can hear from the residents of Khapi, one of the communities in the vicinity threatened by the loss of their main source of water.
More Climate Reporting from the Democracy Center
Protests in the US and Bolivia target ‘progressive’ presidents on the environment (Jim Shultz, Sept 12 2011 – also published on Yes! and Alternet)
Latin America finds a voice on climate change (NACLA, Jim Shultz, July 2010)
Reports from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, April 2010:
- In search of a strategy: a climate summit comes to Bolivia (by Jim Shultz, May 28 2010)
- Bolivia’s Climate Summit: The People’s Agreement (Elizabeth Cooper, April 29 2010)
- People’s Summit on Climate Change: Day Two (Democracy Center staff, April 20 2010)
- People’s Summit on Climate Change: Day One (Democracy Center staff, April 19 2010)
- A Climate Change Summit Comes to Bolivia (Democracy Center staff, April 16 2010)
A visit to the cemetery of glaciers (Democracy Center staff, Dec 11 2009)
Bolivia – Ecological Paradise (Jim Shultz, Dec 9 2009)
Climate Reporting from Across the Web
Useful climate reporting and content aggregation sites:
Center for Investigative Reporting
