Environmental Governance in State-Society Relations: Critical lessons from rural Colombia

art by Lynn Finnegan (Ireland)

Luca Eufemia, Michelle Bonatti, Tatiana Rodriguez, Patricia Pérez, Katharina Löhr, Hector Morales-Muñoz, and Stefan Sieber (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, ZALF, and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin); Wilmer Herrera-Valencia (Misión Verde Amazonía)

Integrated, inclusive and possibly more institutionalized schemes of participation present innovative solutions to the daunting past, present and future socio-ecological conflicts in Colombia.

Context

In post-conflict, natural resource-dependent systems, implementing practices of environmental governance is key to sustainable development and peacebuilding.[i],[ii] Yet, strengthening relations between the state and rural spaces for participation, as well as for effective decision-making, implies decentralized democratic assets and incentives that are additionally challenged by COVID-19. An increasing body of literature shows that conflict-affected countries are most exposed to negative effects of the pandemic, by not only exacerbating vulnerabilities in health, economic, and democratic governance systems, but also by producing and reproducing old and new forms of violence.[iii],[iv],[v],[vi]

In Colombia, political instability and institutional violence are worsening the underlying causes of its internal conflict. This is particularly the case in rural contexts beset with land property insecurity and unequal land distribution, poor access to public services, broken decentralized systems, and high levels of corruption. Our hypothesis is that formal and informal community-based institutions can and must play an essential role in nurturing practices of environmental governance to mitigate and prevent socio-ecological conflicts and improve livelihoods.[vii] In this context, this contribution explores real scenarios of community-based environmental governance to ask what critical lessons and policy interventions can balance power dynamics at the interface of state-society relations. 

What’s been done

Our work builds on the Community-Based Governance Framework (CBG), an interdisciplinary method of political ecology designed to promote local voices.[viii] The CBG was tested in the context of the peace process in Colombia in the departments of Caquetá and Cesar. This led to a synthesis of collective problems and the development of joint solutions.[ix],[x] Over 120 locals contributed to this study’s research through a three-step approach integrating: a literature review (~20 science-based studies), two participatory workshops using the “World Café” methodology (~55 participants) to build trust, constructive dialogue, and collaborative learning,[xi] and individual semi-structured interviews (~40).

Our results show that spaces of decision-making and local participation such as the Local Municipal Rural Development Councils (CMDR) and the Community Action Boards (CAB), provide opportunities to strengthen both formal and informal power to balance power relations, holding the central government accountable by mobilizing local civil society agents to prevent/mitigate socio-ecological conflicts and strategically leverage central government authority to promote the right of locals to plan context-specific development strategies.

Yet, supporting such strategies for effective policy implementation remains a major challenge. Top-down regulations appear to be characterized by a misunderstanding (either direct or indirect) of local practice, rationale, and reality. In fact, one of the major challenges of Colombian decentralization is not the lack of legal basis for implementing reform, but rather the lack of capacity and resources of subnational governments and community-based institutions to implement existing policies.[xii] In this regard, CBG could serve as a decentralization instrument for environmental governance.

Looking ahead

Our results confirm academic insights on the significance of participatory-led approaches to socio-ecological conflict management, especially in natural resource-dependent systems.[xiii],[xiv],[xv] They advance the agenda by suggesting more integrated, inclusive and possibly more institutionalized schemes of participation. Decision makers at the national level should conduct bottom-up law-implementation initiatives that pay closer attention to local realities and solutions. Such process could generate financial and non-financial incentives for innovative solutions to the daunting socio-ecological conflicts. Policies and economic efforts should particularly target rural contexts, where peacebuilding processes are most at stake.[xvi]

The peace agreement signed in 2016 between the government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) revealed challenges, such as land rights and collective territories, that were previously obscured during the internal war. However, it also revealed lessons from the practice of bottom-up environmental governance in a country tackling multiple crises. Integrating dynamic analysis of how local formal and informal institutions respond to their realities and affect socio-ecological processes[xvii] could generate a policy conversation about polycentric environmental governance. Such a model entails constant collaboration between multiple governing and non-governing bodies (e.g., NGOs, associations etc.) at many scales to enforce context-specific policies within the environmental policy arena, thus achieving successful collective action in the face of change and crisis.[xviii],[xix] While more research and implementation are needed to scale up and transfer effective polycentricity, our comparative research represents a small step towards a more inclusive democratic environmental governance system.

[i] Eufemia, L., Bonatti, M. and Sieber, S. (2019) Community Based Governance Manual. Müncheberg, Germany: Leibniz‐Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research.

[ii]Morales-Muñoz, H., Löhr, K., Bonatti, M., Eufemia, L. and Sieber, S. (2021) ‘Assessing impacts of environmental peacebuilding in Caquetá, Colombia: a multistakeholder perspective’, International Affairs, 97(1), 179-199.

[iii] Eufemia, L., Lozano, C., Rodriguez, T., Del Rio, M., Morales-Muñoz, H., Bonatti, M., Sieber, S. and Löhr, K. (2020) ‘Peacebuilding in times of COVID-19: risk-adapted strategies of cooperation and development projects’, Zeitschrift für Friedens-und Konfliktforschung, 1-17.

[iv] Gutiérrez-Romero, R. (2020) ‘Conflict in Africa during COVID-19: social distancing, food vulnerability and welfare response’, Food Vulnerability and Welfare Response

[v] Ide, T. (2021) ‘COVID-19 and armed conflict’, World Development 140:105355.

[vi] UNDP (2020)  Tailoring the socioeconomic response to COVID-19 in peacebuilding contexts (//www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/speeches/2020/ambassadorial-level-meeting-of-the-PBC.html)

viiEufemia, L., Lozano, C., Rodriguez, T., Del Rio, M., Morales-Muñoz, H., Bonatti, M., Sieber, S. and Löhr, K. (2020) ‘Peacebuilding in times of COVID-19: risk-adapted strategies of cooperation and development projects‘, Zeitschrift für Friedens-und Konfliktforschung, 1-17.

[viii] Gutiérrez-Romero, R. (2020) ‘Conflict in Africa during COVID-19: social distancing, food vulnerability and welfare response’, Food Vulnerability and Welfare Response

[ix] Ide, T. (2021) ‘COVID-19 and armed conflict’, World Development 140:105355.

xUNDP (2020) Tailoring the socioeconomic response to COVID-19 in peacebuilding contexts (//www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-

centre/speeches/2020/ambassadorial-level-meeting-of-the-PBC.html)

[xi] Fouché, C. and Light, G. (2011) ‘An Invitation to Dialogue: ‘The World Café’In Social Work Research’, Qualitative Social Work, 10(1):28-48.

[xii] Allain-Dupré, D., I. Chatry and A. Moisio (2020) ‘Asymmetric decentralisation: Trends, challenges and policy Implications’, OECD Regional Development Papers, No. 10, OECD Publishing: Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/0898887a-en.

[xiii] Lührs, N., Jager, N. W., Challies, E., and Newig, J. (2018) ‘How participatory should environmental governance be? Testing the applicability of the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model in public environmental decision-making’, Environmental management, 61(2): 249-262.

[xiv] Rhoades, R. E., and Nazarea, V. (2006) ‘Reconciling local and global agendas in sustainable development: Participatory research with indigenous Andean communities’, Journal of Mountain Science, 3(4): 334-346.

[xv] Redpath, S. M., Young, J., Evely, A., Adams, W. M., Sutherland, W. J., Whitehouse, A., Amar, A., Lambert, R.A., Linnell, J.D.C., Watt, A. and Gutierrez, R. J. (2013) ‘Understanding and managing conservation conflicts’, Trends in ecology & evolution, 28(2):100-109.

[xvi] Eufemia, L. (2020)

[xvii] Andersson, K. P. and Ostrom, E. (2008) ‘Analyzing decentralized resource regimes from a polycentric perspective’, Policy sciences, 41(1):71-93. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-007-9055-6

[xviii] Carlisle, K. and Gruby, R. L. (2019) ‘Polycentric systems of governance: A theoretical model for the commons’, Policy Studies Journal, 47(4): 927-952.

[xix] Lubell, M. and Morrison, T. H. (2021) ‘Institutional navigation for polycentric sustainability governance’, Nature Sustainability, 1-8.