Abstract
This article describes and analyses an encounter in the Colombian Amazon between Indigenous practices and arrangements to manage their environment and the conservation policies of the State. Indigenous peoples understand their world as populated by powerful human and nonhuman beings; for them, the moral duty of achieving happiness and abundance for all implies sustaining reciprocal and respectful relations with these beings (including the State). In contrast Colombian environmental policy distinguishes between nature and culture, seeking to safeguard landscapes from human interference so that natural processes can unfold unhindered. In practice these partially connected, yet incommensurable worldviews make for a ‘perfect storm’ - opening opportunities for illegal mining. Drawing on recent fieldwork among the Andoke, an ethnic group well acquainted with extractivism in its different historical modalities and presently affronting the fallout of gold dredge mining we narrate how a parallel, non-state governance system makes it difficult for them to care for their land and entertain mutual and respectful relations with human and nonhuman beings (which we translate as ‘territorial health’). We conclude by arguing for the need to re-imagine environmental governance in ways that more closely engage with what we call pluriversal governance: a form of (environmental) governance that does ontological justice to those involved in the environmental conflict – including, crucially, Indigenous people.
Highlights
This article describes how gold dredge mining in the Colombian Amazon ensues from a failure of environmental governance
We ask? To answer the question it is useful to think of environmental governance not as a unitary process but rather as multiplicity (Briassoulis, 2019); that is, as a multitude of rivalling governance forms aiming to steer collective action
A first strand of governance arises from a naturalist, multiculturalist ontology focused on conservation; it is performed by the institutions of the Colombian State
Summary
These concepts are far from universal and, as some commentators have shown (Latour, 1993; Stengers, 2011; Viveiros de Castro, 1998), they operate on the basis of a ‘multiculturalist’ understanding of the world: the idea that there exists one single, power-laden reality (‘Nature’) that can be perceived differently from a variety of culturally situated perspectives – the Euro-American generally being considered the most ‘accurate’ one because of the (scientific) method it applies to the study of reality This is problematic in cases such as the one described above where the main ontological premises of environmental governance (Euro-American style) are not shared by the majority of on-theground actors. We end with a concluding discussion in which we present the reasons for both Indigenous and state-led environmental governance failure, and discuss the need for pluriversal governance – a form of governance that does ontological justice to Indigenous peoples’ way of understanding environmental problems
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