Bill Mollison has said: “A crisis is brought on by people who don’t want to do something for themselves…and people who want to control others talk about Peak Oil and crisis because everyone else is panicking”.

This is a nice definition of crisis. Undoubtedly, crisis is a human-made phenomenon. In Bolivia, “crisis” is a constant state of affairs. Is the crisis over-blown, a manufactured and malformed instrument designed to control the population and empower the politicians? Probably. But the true nature of the crisis does not escape me.

Not long ago, Al Gore spoke of the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons as a result of climate change. Perhaps the word of the year for 2008 will be “climate refugee”. Doubtful that the climate refugees of the world exceed the war refugees, yet, but soon enough it will be difficult to tell the difference between one and the other.

In Bolivia, I don’t know if the mass migrants should be considered refugees or not. But the nature of the crisis is without question (yet hardly debated in the public sphere): the deterioration of the natural resource base. Erosion is perhaps the most critical and undiscussed problem facing the nation. It is a bitter topic indeed, because it is difficult to pinpoint the perpetrator. As Franklin D. Roosevelt so wisely said many years ago: A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.

And so, Bolivia is destroying itself, and not so slowly as we might believe. Healthy soils generate economic activity: they make possible a variety of management options, from beekeeping to mushroom farming and integrated agroforestry plantations. But, these activities also build healthy soils. So let me be clear: what Bolivia suffers from is a lack of resource management skills. Good management alone, and as Mollison suggests, a willingness to do something for oneself, will rebuild soils, productivity will sky-rocket, and local economies will be revitalized.