2005 Tinker Summer Research Report Catalina Garzón Environmental Science, Policy, and Management "Indigenous Environmental Planning and Participatory Conservation in Colombia: Challenges in the Management of Overlap Zones between Reservations and Protected Areas"

Potato harvest in Boyacá, Colombia. The presence of small-scale agricultural production within the boundaries of many of Colombia’s national parks is but one of many existing land uses that could come into conflict with state conservation priorities.

The reconciliation of indigenous rights and conservation agendas has become an issue of critical importance in many countries around the world, particularly given the implications of establishing protected areas in indigenous territories for both sovereignty and traditional resource management practices. Since the 1990s, indigenous communities in Colombia have been generating planning documents, known as Planes de Vida or Life Plans, promoting resource management and self-development priorities for their territories. One of the primary concerns identified in many of these documents is the management of reservation lands that overlap with protected areas in Colombia’s national parks system. Given that 33 of the 49 protected areas in Colombia’s national parks system overlap with indigenous territories, the management of overlap zones poses a significant co-management challenge for both tribal and park authorities.

A policy analysis of applicable environmental and conservation policies as well as Indian law in Colombia was conducted in order to determine whether tribal or park authorities hold legal primacy in the management of overlap zones between reservations and protected areas. Though Colombian conservation law states that there is no contradiction in establishing a protected area that overlaps with indigenous territories, in actuality the creation of national parks that coincide with reservations has raised a number of concerns for both tribal and park authorities. By and large, indigenous communities were not consulted prior to the creation of national parks in their territories, generating historical friction between tribal and park authorities that the Colombian Ministry of the Environment attempted to redress in 2002 through the adoption of a participatory conservation policy promoting the co-management of overlap zones between national parks and reservations. However, the uses of protected areas allowed by Colombian law (conservation, research, education, recreation, and restoration) do not encompass many indigenous resource use priorities, which may include the provision of livelihoods or small-scale self-development projects that violate legally permitted uses. Given that as legal entities both national parks and indigenous reservations hold a similar status in that they cannot transfer ownership or have their legality revoked, the implications for the co-management of overlap zones are not so easily resolved since, for example, indigenous peoples’ rights would be infringed upon if park authorities were to impose restrictions on traditional resource uses in order to fulfill their mandate of protecting a particular ecosystem.

The author (second from left) meets with members of the U’wa Tribal Council. One of the Council’s current priorities is to develop a management strategy for the 86,000 hectares of overlap between the U’wa reservation and El Cocuy National Park in Colombia’s eastern Andean region.

To understand how tribal and park authorities have dealt with potential management conflicts, five case studies were examined to assess co-management strategies in overlap zones between national parks and indigenous territories in Colombia: 1) Emberá Communities and Utría National Park (Pacific Chocó region); 2) Miraña Communities and Cahuinarí National Park (Amazonas region); 3) Ingano Communities and Alto Fragua-Indiwasi National Park (Caquetá region); 4) Arhuaco, Kogui, Kankuamo and Wiwa Communities and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park (Caribbean region); 5) U’wa Communities and El Cocuy National Park (Andean region). The case study analysis revealed that, though co-management has been increasingly promoted since the Ministry of the Environment adopted its participatory conservation policy (popularly known as Parques con la Gente, or Parks and People Together), relatively little documentation exists of the on-the-ground successes and challenges of implementing co-management agreements between tribal and park authorities. From the information available, it appears that reconciling divergent or conflicting priorities among tribal and park authorities, overcoming the historical mistrust of government officials on the part of indigenous communities, and addressing the intrusion of armed conflict into both protected areas and indigenous reservations are but a few of the challenges facing the actual implementation of co-management agreements.

In particular, the implications of the armed conflict for both conservation and indigenous rights in Colombia cannot be understated: In one of the case studies examined, the intrusion of armed conflict into an overlap zone prompted the virtual abandonment of a successful initiative involving the participatory management of fauna with Emberá communities at Utría National Park, and in the case of El Cocuy National Park the death of the park director at the hands of armed groups in 1989 is indicative of the severity of threats of violence faced by both tribal and park authorities. Furthermore, Colombia’s participatory conservation strategy appears to have lost ground recently under the administration of President Álvaro Uribe, whose counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics strategy includes the increased militarization of protected areas and proposed policies allowing aerial spraying within national parks to eradicate illicit crops – strategies that are controversial at best in many indigenous communities because they have been linked to human rights violations. These kinds of conflicts between the position of the presidential administration and that of many indigenous communities may place conservation officials and park authorities in an all the more difficult situation when attempting to advance co-management in collaboration with tribal authorities.

As cases such as these make apparent, viable peace-building strategies are as key to conservation as they are for indigenous rights in Colombia. Thus far, however, this issue remains largely absent from park management plans despite its centrality in many indigenous planning documents. Just as communities like the Ingano are proactively addressing indigenous conservation priorities by approaching conservation officials to establish new protected areas within reservations (as is the case with Alto Fragua-Indiwasi National Park in the Colombian Amazon), many indigenous communities are also attempting to proactively address the presence of armed conflict in the Planes de Vida developed for their own territories. The integration of a peace-building component into state conservation planning processes could represent a potential convergence of priorities between tribal and park authorities that would contribute to the advancement of a more effective participatory conservation strategy in Colombia.

 

Works Cited

Eduardo Uribe Botero, 2005, “The Policy for Social Participation in Conservation: A Case Study,” Documentos CEDE No. 5, Centro de Estudios Sobre Desarrollo Económico, Bogotá, Colombia.

Roque Roldán Ortega,2001, “Resguardos indígenas y parques naturales en Colombia: Una reflexión sobre la viabilidad o no de su coexistencia legal sobre un mismo espacio territorial,” CECOIN, Medellin, Colombia.

Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, 2001, “Política de participación social en la conservación,” Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, Unidad Administrativa Especial del Sistema de Parques Nacionales Naturales (UAESPNN), Bogotá, Colombia.

José Yunis Mebarak and Marcela Jiménez, 2000, “Naturaleza jurídica de las áreas del sistema de parques nacionales naturales de Colombia,” in Lecturas Sobre Derecho del Medio Ambiente, Tomo I, various authors, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.

Hernán Darío Correa, 2004, “La política de Parques con la Gente, el conflicto armado interno, y el gobierno de la ‘Seguridad Democrática,” in Guerra, Sociedad, y Medio Ambiente, edited by Martha Cárdenas and Manuel Rodríguez, Foro Nacional Ambiental, Bogotá, Colombia.