Converging Boundaries

Por Martin Garcia Cartagena, Gabriela Alonso Yáñez y Lily House-Peters

The diverse narratives brought to the reader through this book illustrate how power, conflict, and plurality come together in the practice of biodiversity conservation in multiple Latin American localities. The editors of this book attempted here to confront older conservation paradigms, which rest, problematically, upon self-evident conceptions

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: DIO Press Inc
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 11 sept 2023
• ISBN: 9781645042839

Vista previa del libro

Prólogo

Alexander Rincón Ruiz

En este libro la Latinoamérica diversa y compleja tiene como representantes tres territorios estructurados alrededor del agua: La cuenca del rio Coello en Colombia, La cuenca del Arroyo Solís Grande en Uruguay y la cuenca del río Maipo en Chile. A través de voces diversas, se presentan los conflictos, los diferentes lenguajes de valoración asociados a la gestión del territorio y como desde la base local se logran posibilidades hacia la sustentabilidad en contextos de poder asimétrico.

La región Latinoamericana ha estado marcada por visiones homogenizantes que tratan de ser impuestas en función a una idea de desarrollo excluyente. A lo largo de la historia éstas imposiciones han sido confrontadas y la región se ha resistido a simplificarse, y por el contrario ha logrado el surgimiento de arreglos colectivos que permiten posibilitar otros escenarios mas incluyentes y soberanos. En el actual contexto de crisis socioambiental es justamente esa diversidad la que constituye una base fundamental de resiliencia, generando diferentes posibilidades desde lo local y en territorio.

Los mercados globales y los modelos de conservación neoliberal siguen ejerciendo presión sobre territorios que presentan otras lógicas de bienestar, en regiones como el caso de Colombia donde la violencia y el asesinato de líderes sociales se asocian a lógicas extractivistas rampantes y despojadoras. Mas allá de los discursos de productividad y crecimiento, es fundamental pensar en la resiliencia socioecologica de los territorios, la cual tiene como base justamente la diversidad de las relaciones con el territorio que se presenta en América Latina. Los limites ecológicos son claros y se unen a los límites sociales, y una forma fundamental de respuesta es la organización social, la creación de redes, el surgimiento de arreglos colaborativos más allá de la competitividad y la eficiencia instrumental.

En el presente libro hay una posibilidad de leer los territorios de otras formas y escuchar de primera voz comunidad y academia posibilitando otras miradas que invitan a pensar en seguir haciendo apuestas a la construcción local y colaborativa. Ojala estos esfuerzos se conviertan cada vez más en política estructural para romper las lógicas de desarrollo que generalmente responden a lógicas de poder y el mantenimiento de desigualdades históricas.

Ante escenarios asociados a grandes asimetrías de poder que influyen en la política y la toma decisiones, centrada en el mantenimiento de estructuras insustentables en el largo plazo que ejercen presión a través de la violencia en zonas como Colombia, emergen procesos sociales que se mantienen a pesar de estas circunstancias, ¿Cómo lo hacen? ¿Qué ha posibilitado el mantenimiento del trabajo colectivo con resultados importantes en materia de sustentabilidad en contextos de grandes presiones sobre la naturaleza y las comunidades? En éste texto se ofrecen varias ideas del como en los tres casos de estudio se ha logran arreglos institucionales fundamentales, generados muchos de ellos desde la base social. De esta forma la capacidad organizativa de las bases en territorio ha generado grandes beneficios para toda la comunidad, sin embargo mas allá de una formula homogénea en los textos presentados se vislumbran principios comunes que trasciende principalmente en los textos escritos por miembros de las comunidades en el caso de Colombia: el amor por el territorio, al campo, a la naturaleza, una visión más relacional que utilitarista con su entorno, una visión compleja que parte de entenderse como parte de un sistema de vida que se debe cuidar, historias que muestran luchas y resistencias a lógicas de poder que conciben a la naturaleza como un recurso a capitalizar. Muchas de éstas narrativas son creadas por mujeres rurales más asociadas a una visión del cuidado de la vida y a la defensa del territorio.

Éstas visiones de base tienen una aproximación más compleja, colectiva y resiliente que las tradicionales visiones modernas que se niegan posibilitar transiciones mas justas desde lo local, pues estas se basan en la concentración, la homogenización y la exclusión. Un ejemplo más de ésta visión compleja se evidencia en lo expuesto en el trabajo sobre Laguna Garzón en Uruguay donde los autores expresan la diversidad de intereses, procesos sociales y económicos, así como la riqueza socio-cultural, donde en palabras de los mismos se menciona como científicos y otros actores sociales parecen coincidir en una visión holística geográfica y la funcionalidad ecosistémica. Esto también se complementa en escritos como el realizado por los grupo de mujeres de Las Quitanderas y JULANA para el caso de Uruguay y la propuesta de un área protegida, la cual tiene una base comunitaria y sin ir mas lejos también se asocian al texto escrito desde Chile donde sus autores exponen como las propuestas que surgen de los movimientos políticos independientes y del movimiento Indígena chileno desafían los principios hegemónicos que encuadran la relaciones con la naturaleza en la actual constitución y que están sustentados en el extractivismo y la explotación. En este orden de ideas, el mensaje dado por el capítulo menciona que el desafío que se gesta en el espacio político chileno se relaciona con el generar una visión y propuesta en la que los mecanismos para el uso de los recursos naturales reflejen la visión ecocéntrica.

En general éste es un libro que nos recuerda los caminos avanzados desde América Latina para construir posibilidades desde el sur que tienen como base el mantenimiento de la pluralidad como base para la resiliencia socioecológica, la defensa de territorio y la sustentabilidad como propósitos de largo plazo que requieren caminos de inclusión que se vienen dando, procesos que poco a poco se consolidad generando esperanza en el por venir.

CHAPTER 1

Introducción

Introduction

Martin Garcia Cartagena, Gabriela Alonso Yáñez, Lily House-Peters, & Sebastian Bonelli

Across Latin America, the ability of ecosystems to deliver the services that support life on the continent, and the planet more broadly, is being degraded—by the increasing scope and severity of accelerated biodiversity loss (Armesto et al., 2007), land use and land cover change (Salazar et al., 2015), social, economic, and environmental conflicts, and climate change impacts (IPCC, 2014). Recognizing the extent of the biodiversity crisis, the response over the last several decades has been a growing prioritization of ecosystem conservation across multiple scales of governance from the national to regional to local levels. At the global scale, nations across Latin America have become signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), spurring the development of country-level National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). This, in turn, has given rise to collaborative projects in scientific, policy, and activist communities interested in improving outcomes at the local-scale that foster the conservation and regeneration of nature. However, these types of initiatives are often underpinned by power dynamics, conflictive situations, and plural worldviews which shape the ways in which these initiatives unfold. This edited volume brings to the reader a series diverse latin american perspectives about the challenges and opportunities that power, conflict, and plurality of worldviews reprent in the process of shaping conservation or regeneration of nature in places of cultural, social, and natural significance.

The stories the reader will find in this book reflect ongoing local-scale conservation initiatives in three countries: Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay. The reason for this specific selection of countries is that this book has been written in the context of an international research project which aimed to elicit how different governance modalities (i.e.: adaptive governance, participatory governance, co-management, etc.) influence participation and knowledge integration in biodiversity conservation efforts across these three Latin American countries. More specifically, the research project focused on three case studies: the Maipo River watershed in Chile, the Coello River watershed in Colombia, and the lower Solis Grande watershed in Uruguay (Figura 1).

Figura 1. Map of each of the case study areas

In each of the three cases, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are significant challenges that threaten human well-being through the loss of critical local ecosystem service provisions upon which people depend. In Chile, the Maipo River watershed provides freshwater for several million people, more than a third of the total Chilean population, concentrated in Chile’s heavily urbanized capital city, Santiago de Chile. The Maipo watershed is threatened by climate change and ongoing anthropogenic actions leading to ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, placing freshwater provision under threat and spurring urban water insecurity. In Colombia, the Coello River watershed in Cajamarca is also under significant pressures, which are depleting the quantity and degrading the quality of water for domestic and agricultural consumption. In Uruguay, the Solis Grande Watershed was recently incorporated into the newly created Canelones Regional System of Environmental Protection Areas (Sistema Departamental de Areas de Protección Ambiental, SDAPA) but still faces significant conservation challenges, including exploitive and extractive productive practices, water and soil degradation, and loss of biodiversity.

However, across all these cases, conservation initiatives rooted in collaborative forms of governance are being developed to tackle these challenges. In the Maipo watershed, the ‘Maipo Water Fund’ (Fondo de Agua del Rio Maipo) has been implemented through the joint effort of multiple stakeholders to collaboratively manage the watershed. In the Coello River watershed in Colombia, a novel governance structure called ‘Citizen Action Deliberations’ (Conversatorios de Acción Ciudadana) provides a self-enabling and formalised space for residents of the area to come together to discuss the environmental challenges they face, and connect to local and central government to address them. In Uruguay, a new administrative category of Regional Protected Area has been established through a partnership of regional government and a joint management committee with strong representation and decision-making power of local communities, such as the stakeholders within the Solis Grande Watershed, over the design and implementation of environmental management plans for regional protected areas.

The stories showcased in this edited volume present a range of different storytelling styles (i.e.: verse, autobiography, academic, etc.) and represent contributions by diverse actors including, community members and environmental activists, as well as academics, all of whom are in one way or another intimately connected to the Coello river, the Maipo river, or the Solis Grande river, and the environmental initiatives that seek to conserve or restore the health of these unique ecosystems.

The unifying themes of the stories brought together in this book are two-fold. Firstly, the stories presented allow to construct a shared understanding of how pluralism, power, and conflict shape the ways in which diverse communities engage in productive, critical, transdisciplinary dialogue about multiple global environmental change issues such as food sovereignty, land-use change, territorial protection and resistance, forced displacements, water rights, and biodiversity loss. Secondly, the diversity of narrative styles and authors also allow the editors of this volume to explore de-centered publishing practices that can be used to complement traditional scientific ways of publishing. To begin, the reader will be guided through an explanation of why the three themes of power, conflict, and plurality were chosen. Then, the reader will be introduced to what de-centering traditional academic publishing practices means, and how this book provides a conduit to complement such types of praxis.

The three key themes explored throughout this book are the result of a community of practice collaboratory (CPC) (Alonso-Yanez et al., 2019) developed in Bogotá, Colombia, in February 2020 as part of the international research project funded by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research that frames the development of this book. CPC’s can be described as collective spaces designed to support and guide social learning processes that foster the integration of different bodies of knowledge. Knowledge integration across actors with diverse perspectives and value systems often presents a critical challenge to environmental governance at the local-scale (Tengö et al., 2017; Tengö et al., 2014). The February 2020 workshop was the first face-to-face workshop the research team developed with project partners from Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia. The CPC was meant to serve as an opportunity to showcase some of the key characteristics of each case study across the three countries, with the goal of finding specific ways to ground the research that recognized both the differences and similarities in the local contexts. The workshop was attended by a mix of relevant actors, including academics and practitioners. Due to the international, transdisciplinary composition of the workshop, social learning exercises were used to establish a common vocabulary and framework for all participants. The overview and details of each case study was presented by representatives of the local country research team. At the end of each presentation, workshop attendees were invited to write down five key words that characterized critical dynamics in the case study just presented. The key words that arose from the social learning exercise were then analysed through network analysis to calculate and visualize the networked linkages of concepts within and across the three case studies. The results showed that although there were several dynamics and concepts specific to each case study, three were consistently identified across the case studies: power, conflict, and plurality.

However, the results from the first social learning exercise required closer examination and further elaboration. The second social learning exercise instructed each attendee to write down how they would define each of the three concepts. The results of this second exercise demonstrated the diversity of interpretations of the concepts, and the different ways the concepts were being defined and observed by researchers and social actors in each case study. For example, power was articulated by some participants as ‘the capacity to include or exclude actors from resources and dialogue spaces’, yet by others power was defined as ‘tactics, processes, mechanisms, and dispositives’. Similarly, conflict was also described in multiple ways ranging from ‘opportunity to make transformation where the brave persist and where there is a uncertainty regarding its impacts or outcomes’ to ‘disagreement between the parts of a group that share a common context’. Finally, plurality was described as both ‘recognition and respect towards multiple ways of being in the world’, and ‘losing fear of controversy, diversity, and absence of consensus’ amongst other definitions. This exercise provided the basis to socialize and collectively discuss how each of these concepts was being conceived by the different attendees, and furthermore, how each of these concepts had different implications for each case study. Furthermore, the range of interpretations identified in the exercise reflects the conceptual diversity found in the broader canon of environmental governance scholarship.

Power, in particular, has been the focus of intense theorization, leading to various interpretations. For example, some scholars utilize a framing of power as something that can be wielded over others. The power over framing considers power through lenses of coercion and manipulation (Partzsch, 2017), where power is thing-like, something that can be wielded, exercised, or imposed over others to control their views and actions. In this definition, power operates as a resource that can be, and often is, asymmetric and inequitably distributed among different social actors and groups. Social theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu have developed the theoretical foundations for such a conceptualisation. Alternatively, a more relational theorization of power, sometimes understood as power with, focuses on the operation of power through relationships. In this framing, power is characterized as emergent and contingent, arising from and being mobilized through social processes, such as learning and cooperation, and may lead to forms of empowerment and mutual benefit, beyond relations of domination, subordination and control over others (Allen, 2014; Ahlborg and Nightingale, 2018). This relational understanding of power is closer to the conceptualization of capillary power by theorist and historian Michel Foucault, which is also commonly cited in the environmental governance literature. Foucault’s constitutive understanding of power recognizes that power and knowledge systems are deeply entangled, the role of discourse in constructing power relations, and that the diffuse nature of power is pervasive in the politics of everyday life (Van Assche et al., 2017).

The concept of conflict generally has a more agreed upon interpretation in the environmental governance literature as a situation arising out of incompatible interests (Von der Dunk et al. 2011), though the processes and outcomes related to the conflict can differ widely from destructive conflict with negative outcomes to productive conflict with the potential to generate collaboration, redistribution of power or resources, or other more positive outcomes. Environmental conflict often arises over the unequal distribution of natural resource abundance and scarcity, the presence of unequal relations among social actors and/or institutions, and the different forms of material and symbolic value given to natural resources (Peluso and Watts, 2001).

The treatment of the third concept, plurality, in the existing literature focuses on the diversity and heterogeneity of knowledge and value systems across different social actors and resource users. Recognizing the existence of both ontological plurality (diversity in ways of existing in the world) and epistemic plurality (diversity of ways of knowing the world), collaborative forms of environmental governance must be able to accommodate equitable representation of diverse knowledges and value systems, and provide spaces of dialogue and seats at the table for social actors representing all facets of this plurality (Kovacs and Pataki, 2016).

As a result of the workshop discussions these terms were framed as ‘boundary objects’ due to the plural ways in which they can be constructed. Boundary objects have been used as conceptual analytical notion to explore the intersection of social worlds within arenas of concern, and are an increasingly common conceptual tool employed in transdisciplinary research to facilitate communication, cooperation, and collaboration in diverse team settings. A boundary object is an analytical concept of those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them (Star and Griesemer, 1989 p. 393). The concept of boundary object is a key notion that helps explain knowledge co-production and the multifaceted interactions among scientific groups working with other social communities because it allows actors with divergent goals to maximize both the autonomy and communication between worlds and for different worlds to maintain enough autonomy in parallel work situations (Star & Griesemer, 1989). So, framed as boundary objects, the concepts power, conflict, and plurality were used as the key terms for contributing authors of this book to explore in relation to conservation or regeneration of nature efforts. And, in addition, the idea of exploring these terms through the multiple perspectives that characterise boundary objects requires an approach that challenges power asymmetries that otherwise might hinder the sharing of different forms of knowledge.

Thus, a de-centered authorship approach was employed, but what does ‘de-centered’ actually mean? This question is often explored by sociologists of science, who take as their principal concern the examination of science and technology in society, and the ways through which the production of science and technology become interlaced with social norms and hierarchies, and with the development of power asymmetries (Jasanoff, 2015a, b; Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). In particular, some scholars have been interested in the study of scientific practice, what scientists actually do and the engagement of scientists with other social groups. Contemporary science and technology scholars have followed this line of analysis by exploring how participants from different social groups collectively construct knowledge and work together in areas of mutual interest. These interactions of multiple social groups bring diversity, negotiations, disputes and disparate power as a central interest for understanding knowledge co-production and transdisciplinary work in diverse settings. These social dynamics that underpin the scientific praxis also extend to publishing.

Traditionally, academic publication is dominated by scientific, and more often than not from senior scientist level authorships. This often results in the marginalisation of a varied range of social actors (i.e., community members, practitioners, indigenous peoples, NGO’s, and early career academics) from authorship acknowledgment structures (Steelman et al., 2021). This presents a problem because this practice tends to solidify the centralisation of scientific claims to knowledge while displacing other social actors from the field of knowledge creation which hinders the possibility of finding real world, implementable solutions to the wicked and super wicked problems faced across the entire planet (Alonso-Yanez et al., 2019). This book enables an equitable claim to the knowledge production through a de-centering approach, to offer social actors beyond academia a channel through which their knowledge can be shared. By this, we, the editors, are acknowledging that the traditional praxis of academic publishing is underpinned by power relations that tend to centralise power in scientists as authors, whilst also marginalising local protagonists from authorship arrangements. So, to decentralise academic publishing practices, the editors actively sought written contributions from academics as well as from local community leaders, NGO members, and political activists from across the three contributing countries. As a result, this book presents an equitable assemblage of a mix of narratives characterised by different styles of writing, topics, perspectives, and experience, informed by different bodies of knowledge from across multiple Latin American social-ecological landscapes, in a way that challenges traditional academic publishing practices within the field of environmental governance research and socioecology. A synthesis of these varied contributions will be outlined in the following paragraphs.

From Colombia, a total of 19 contributions were developed by a wide range of authors. The reader will find a broad range of narratives and narrative styles that range from autobiographic narratives, to historic analysis of multiple themes. For example, some of the themes approached by the Colombian contributors are on power, plurality and conflict surrounding local efforts to enhance food security and agroecological practices to restore natural environments through the use of traditional knowledge and practice such as the narratives contributed by Aurora Martinez and Jefferson Valendia. Other contributions were written to narrate the self-discovery of natural environments and the violent land displacement, loss and inequality that characterised the early nineties in the rural Colombian district of Rovira such as the one authored by Jesus Moreno. Other authors such as Teresa Castiblanco, Fabiola Perez, Audora Perez, Liliana Santa Maria, and Elisabeth Muñoz chose to focus their contributions on their own experiences and knowledge on the role of women as community leaders and environmental activists in Cajamarca. Authors such as Marlene Librado, Isabel Llanos, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, and Baudilio Cardozo focused their writing on the different challenges that communities have faced when opposing large scale opencast mining in the higher Coello river watershed to protect sub Andean forests and Andean paramo environments. Environmental education efforts and their role in the conservation and regeneration of nature are also addressed in the contributions developed by Alberto Góngora and María Lozano. Finally, the importance of traditional ways of knowing and collective action to construct a more equitable and inclusive territory in the Tolima region are uniquely described by Bolney Lopez, Paola Lopez, Alcira Tavera and Lexa Tavera. These contributions were all developed by residents, community members and leaders of the broader Tolima region in Colombia through a series of creative expression workshops facilitated in July 2021. Finally, Mónica Clavijo presents an academic styled narrative that describes the governance arrangement constructed through the ‘Citizen Action Deliberations’ (Conversatorios de Acción Ciudadana) and the ‘Follow-up committee’ (Comité de Seguimiento) established in the early 2000s across multiple districts that compose the Coello River watershed (Tolima, Colombia).

The Uruguayan contributions also came from a broad range of authors such as undergraduate students, NGO staff, community leaders, as well as early career and senior academics. Carina Erchini is an archaeologist from the Uruguayan National Anthropology Museum and provides an overview of how different bodies of knowledge were integrated in developing an archaeological patrimony diagnosis for a newly established protected area for the Arroyo Solis Grande mid-watershed. The text co-authored by NGO representatives Magdalena Carabio and Cristhian Clavijo, and academic Gonzalo Cortes-Capano provides an outlook of the drivers that motivate diverse stakeholders to overcome conflictive relationships and take part of a national program of wildlife refuges led by the authoring NGO called ‘Wildlife’. A group of undergraduate students from the University of the Republic’s ‘Environmental Management’ program also developed a written contribution led by Sebastian Del Rio, Aldana Machain, and Mateo Peña. These students assisted in the participatory process of creation of the protected area for the Arroyo Solis Grande mid-watershed and the chapter narrates their own experience of engagement with a diversity of residents of the protected area in this process. A more traditional academic account is presented through the narrative developed by D’Ambrosio et al. Here, the authors present the results of a diagnosis of natural and cultural goods present in the Protected Area of Laguna Garzón developed to inform the management of this area. This contribution reflects on the importance of including plural ways of identifying and valuing natural and cultural goods in protected areas. In addition, the text written by representatives of the group of women called Las Quitanderas and NGO ‘JULANA’ (Playing in Nature – Jugando en la Naturaleza) showcases their perspectives on the conflicts