Debating land degradation: strategy development for Bolivian mountain valleys

A debate on response strategies to rural poverty and land degradation has relevance for the core business of this journal. Based on extensive fieldwork in the mountain valleys of Chuquisaca, Bolivia, this paper discusses farming and migration in the region, and elaborates on the required components of a strategy to tackle land degradation. We argue that collective action at the micro–meso level is essential to lay the foundation for development activities and to reduce survival-driven migration rates. In order to actually change farmers into adaptive co-managers of their natural resources it is also necessary to create enabling conditions at meso-macro level. However, given the current context in Bolivia, the prospects for reducing land degradation are not goo