Buen Vivir

Historical development

The ideas belong to the Andean peoples. Indigenous movements that grew from the 1980s gave them political form, Ecuador’s CONAIE above all.

In the constitutional assemblies of 2007–09 in Ecuador and Bolivia, Indigenous delegates worked with ecologists such as Alberto Acosta, who presided over Ecuador’s assembly, and critics of development such as Eduardo Gudynas to make Buen Vivir a constitutional principle. Article 71 of Ecuador’s constitution gave nature “the right to integral respect for its existence.”

The governments of Rafael Correa and Evo Morales that followed spoke of Buen Vivir while expanding oil drilling and mining. This opened a sharp split. On one side was a reading that served state-led development. On the other was the ecological and Indigenous reading of Acosta, Gudynas and the movements. Outside the Andes, degrowth, post-development and decolonial thinkers have adopted Buen Vivir as an alternative to growth that comes from the global South.

Principal claims

• Wellbeing lies in relationships, in harmony with community, ancestors and nature. Owning more goods does not provide it.
• Nature, Pachamama, is a subject. It has rights, and people have duties toward it.
• Development understood as growth was imposed by colonialism. There are many ways of living well and no single path of progress.
• Economies should be mixed, communal and reciprocal, and aimed at having enough.
• Indigenous and peasant communities need their territories and their own government to live well.
• Extracting nature’s resources for export cannot be squared with Buen Vivir.

Policy implications

Supporters want the rights of nature in constitutions and law, communal land and territorial autonomy, and solidarity economies. They want limits on extraction and a way out of it. Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT proposal, to leave oil in the ground, is the best-known example. They also back agroecology and food sovereignty, policy judged by wellbeing instead of GDP, and states that are intercultural and recognise many nations within them.

Internal disagreements

The main dispute is between two readings. The Indigenous and ecological reading rejects extraction and a state built around growth. The “socialist Buen Vivir” of the Correa and Morales governments used the idea to justify state-run extraction that paid for redistribution. Other debates concern whether Buen Vivir can be carried outside the Andes, how to balance communal and individual rights, and how it relates to Western ecological thought.

Criticisms and controversies

Critics argue that state appropriation has drained the idea of meaning and that it romanticises Indigenous life. They say its rejection of development offers little to poor people who want a better material life, and that the rights of nature have been weakly enforced. Some Indigenous critics object to non-Indigenous theorists turning it into a universal doctrine.

Supporters point to its continuing strength in Indigenous movements and campaigns against extraction, and to its influence on rights-of-nature law around the world.

Relationships to other traditions

Buen Vivir is a central point of reference for the decolonial family of traditions. It informs opposition to extraction and food sovereignty, rests on Indigenous environmental sovereignty, and meets degrowth and post-development on common ground. Its rights of nature connect it to ecocentrism. It opposes the growth model of sustainable development, and extraction under governments of any political colour.