Governing after FARC: environmental peacebuilding in Caquetá, Colombia

ABSTRACT

We examine the environment as a mechanism for building substantial integration in Colombia. In environmental peacebuilding, substantial integration is a positive peace dimension characterized by trans-societal links that foster social cohesion. Employing data from the Amazonian Department of Caquetá, we argue that the Government of Colombia is pursuing a peacebuilding approach that impedes opportunities to forge an inclusive social order. Instead, it has forcibly integrated frontier communities to advance an extractive peace that perpetuates longstanding patterns of resource violence. This generates a negative peace or “antagonistic integration” wherein peacebuilding creates trans-societal links without reducing violent conflict or increasing social cohesion.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental peacebuilding
• substantial integration
• territorial peace
• deforestation
• Colombia
• Amazon

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge and thank our research participants, who shared their valuable time and insights with us. The experiences and knowledge of these social leaders directly shaped our research approach and findings. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for constructive comments that improved earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Human subjects research

This research project was reviewed and approved by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institutional Review Board (Protocol Number 19853). The researchers obtained verbal informed consent from research participants by asking them to participate in the study, reading a recruitment statement, and providing a written consent form containing all contact information for the PI, McKenzie Johnson, and the research team.

Notes

1 Mitchell (1991, 94) defines this as the political arrangements, processes, and practices that allow the state to appear as a ‘structure containing and giving order and meaning to people’s lives.’

2 A culture of legality is ‘the essential and indissoluble relationship between security and justice’ (DNP, 2019, 47).

3 Las Águilas Negras is a term used to describe paramilitary splinter groups.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program Grant from NASA [Award Number 80NSSC22K0469], a seed grant from the ACES Office of International Programs at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a seed grant from Vicerrectoría de Investigaciones at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Funders were not involved in the study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in writing the manuscript; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.

Notes on contributors

McKenzie F. Johnson

McKenzie Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Working at the nexus of environmental politics, human security, and environmental justice, her research examines the role of natural resources and environment in conflict and peacebuilding. She earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Policy from Duke University and an M.A. in Conservation Biology from Columbia University. She has obtained funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the United States Institute for Peace. Her work has been published in World Development, Global Environmental Change, Environmental Politics, International Affairs, and Global Environmental Politics, as well as other journals.

Luz A. Rodríguez

Luz Angela Rodríguez is Assistant Professor of Rural and Regional Development at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. Trained as an environmental economist, her current research focuses on collective action around natural resource management and environmental peacebuilding in rural Colombia. She earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Policy from Duke University and a master's in Environmental Economics and Natural Resources from Universidad de Los Andes. She has extensive experience conducting research in Colombia and Mexico. Her work has been published in World Development, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Ecology & Society, and Water Resources and Economics, as well as other journals.

Manuela Quijano Hoyos

Manuela Quijano Hoyos is an M.S. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She earned a graduate specialization in Environmental and Ecological Economics from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and graduated with a B.S. in Ecology from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. Her current research focuses on how conflict and peacebuilding shape patterns of land-cover and land-use change in Montes de María, Colombia. She has additionally conducted work on common pool resources management and issues related to payments for ecosystem services in Colombia and Mexico. Her work has been published in World Development.