Agro-extractivism and neoliberal conservation: campesino abandonment in the Boyacá páramos, Colombia

Abstract

Colombia is in the midst of an important shift: trying to balance its society and economy in the wake of the 2016 peace-agreement, with protection and restoration of important ecological regions. The mountainous Andean páramos ecosystem and paramuno/paramero campesinos of Boyacá have found themselves at the centre of some of these challenges. The páramos and their people – predominantly socio-economically precarious campesino farmers – are facing conservation policies to delimit, protect and control their livelihoods. Using a combination of qualitative methods, including interviews and participant-observation, to foreground campesinos' experiences, this paper explores the socio-environmental tensions emerging amidst this context of conservation. This paper argues that the delimitation process is constitutive of neoliberal conservation, which prioritises land sparing, ecosystem service payments and other ‘green business’. Furthermore, the delimitation process does not address the structural factors driving environmental degradation in the páramos, which is linked to an agro-extractivist model. Over recent decades, campesinos have been driven into increasingly agro-extractivist farming which encourages specialisation, monocropping, intensification, and dependence on external inputs. Spatially this has pushed them up to expand the agricultural frontier, as well as pushed them down within and out of the páramos and farming livelihoods. Now additionally squeezed by conservation restrictions, the delimitation is exacerbating historic inequality and mistrust. As a mountainous, small-scale farming case-study, in a conflict setting, this is a novel and unique addition to agro-extractivism research. Analysing the delimitation process through neoliberal conservation and agro-extractivism provides a systemic approach, which highlights the inconsistencies and contradictions of the policies promoted in the páramos. The paper thus demonstrates how the neoliberal conservation agenda is not only compatible with but integral to the agro-extractivist landscape, as it compensates for environmental spill-overs without questioning the prevailing market model. Rather than seek more socio-ecologically just farming practices, it opens new frontiers for capital and compromises socio-environmental peace.