ENVIRONMENTAL
CROSSROADS
I N L AT I N A M E R I C A
Between Managing and Transforming
Natural Resource Conflicts
Chapter I
ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
20
I.-
T H E D Y N A M I C N AT U R E
OF SOCIAL-ENVIROMENTAL
CO N F L I C T S T R A N S F O R M AT I O N
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
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The C&C Program experience.
L E S S O N S , A P P R O AC H E S , A N D C H A L L E N G E S
TO T R A N S F O R M I N G S O C I O - E N V I R O N M E N TA L
CO N F L I C T S I N L AT I N A M E R I C A :
T H E “C & C ” P R O G R A M E X P E R I E N C E
Iokiñe Rodríguez
Hernán Darío Correa
INTRODUCTION
More than ever before, socio-environmental conflicts are at the center of
Latin American global development agendas and re-articulation processes,
as well as of land and natural resource management. These conflicts are
characterized by their complexity, their varied subjects, and by the great
diversity of the stakeholders involved. Among the outstanding subjects
are pollution and deforestation problems, the impact of mega-projects
such as mining and hydroelectric exploitation, protected area access and
use, urban-rural planning and zoning, land access, ownership of traditional
lands, and fisheries management.
Almost without exception, they have to do with conflicts that involve
from government stakeholders, local communities and organizations,
indigenous populations, and national companies or transnational
organizations to non-governmental and academic organizations. The
commonality for them is the increase in the competition for natural
resource access and use in our region and the world at large.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
Although these conflicts destructive aspects are commonly dealt with,
there is growing interest in our region to explore and exploit their positive
potential as catalysts for building concerted public policies by searching for
common agendas that recognize our cultural diversity and help overcome
existing social inequalities.
A direct expression of this growing interest in non-violent solutions to socioenvironmental conflicts in the region is the “Conflict and Collaboration in
Natural Resource Management in Latin America and the Caribbean” (C&C)
Program. The C&C Program came about in 1999 as the result of a growing
concern of two organizations over emerging socio-environmental conflicts
in the region: the University for Peace (UPEACE) affiliated to the UN and
located in Costa Rica, and the International Development Research Center
(IDRC) from Canada.
One of the Program’s fundamental theses when it first came out was that
collaboration and the consolidation of a culture of dialogue between
stakeholders may promote concerted governable agendas for natural
resource use and sustainable management, and as a result, contribute to
resolving socio-environmental conflicts. When thinking about collaborative
approaches we had in mind widely used methods such as mediation,
negotiation, and reconciliation among the stakeholders, as well as,
municipal commissions, co-management committees, and participatory
problem analysis.
However, little was known about the concrete contribution of these
methods to socio-environmental conflict resolution and much less about
the factors that determine achievements and failures.
To address this concern, UPEACE and the IDRC launched a research grant
program for institutions and conservation practitioners interested in
documenting Latin American experiences in socio-environmental conflict
resolution where some type of collaborative process was being used. Two
calls for proposals were made in 2000 and another in 2002, through which
more than three hundred responses were received in all, of which thirty
were selected: 14 from the first call and 16 from the second.
The objective of the research project was to look for ways in which they
could contribute to systematizing concrete experiences in conflict
resolution that would help better understand the factors that contribute
to transition from an adversarial approach to one that was more
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The C&C Program experience.
collaborative. In addition to a description of conflicts and of the resolution
approaches and methods used, the purpose was to look for an analysis
and explanation of the effects of collaborative management on the quality
of life and equity in rural-urban populations, as well as the state of the
natural resources. Among the indicators of these types of impacts were the
satisfaction of the different stakeholders’ interests, the changes observed
in natural resources and how they were managed, and the transformations
in the power relations within and among the groups involved.
The purpose was to also analyze and explain the factors that determine the
efficiency of natural resource conflict collaborative management strategies
through a reflection on the role of institutions, involved organization
networks, the contexts where the strategies are developed (the capacity
of the different stakeholders, opportunities or barriers to local, regional,
and national policies or strategies, the economical situation in which
they occur, etc.), and the role of intermediary agents, i.e., the public nongovernmental stakeholders such as NGOs, consultants, labor and political
organizations, churches, etc.
This chapter presents a summary of the lessons that the thirty research
projects brought up in relation to these points. In doing so it attempts
to go beyond the sum of each project’s conclusions. In fact, the C&C
Program always sought to be something more than a financing office for
individual, isolated experiences: from its beginning, it proposed being a
space for collective reflection and construction on the issue of conflict and
collaboration in natural resource management, such that discussion on
the lessons learned and their overall relevance for the region has been the
responsibility and commitment of all the Program participants who have
been part of the collective effort to analyze each country’s reality from the
Latin American perspective.
Therefore, apart from each individual project’s conclusions, this discussion
on the lessons learned during the Program’s first five years seeks to:
- Generate final propositions for some common points.
- Identify affinities or differences in approaches; subject-matter,
conceptual, and methodological development work, and
conflict trends and dynamics.
- Identify analytical proposals to open up broader paradigms on
conflict characterization and their transformation approaches.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
- Provide useful, relevant information for future efforts on
communication between those interested and involved in the
subject of socio-environmental conflicts in the region.
As said before, one of the issues of most interest to the C&C Program since
its beginning was to better understand the role played by collaborative
processes in socio-environmental conflict resolution, and the factors that
determine their achievements and failures. Therefore, special attention will
be paid here to responding key questions such as the following:
- What types of approaches are being used in the region to peacefully
solve socio-environmental conflicts?
- What real role do collaborative approaches play in these processes?
- What determines the possibility of moving from adversarial
approaches to more collaborative ones?
- What are the challenges to collective and public policy formulation
that socio-environmental conflict transformation in Latin
America requires?
There is the belief that the diversity of the projects and the issues dealt
with by them may significantly contribute to providing a discussion
on the nature of socio-environmental conflicts in our region. Thus, in
addition to providing a panoramic view of the complexity and diversity
of the cases, this discussion may contribute to analyzing up to what point
the collaborative processes studied are accompanied by a detailed, indepth understanding of the causes for environmental conflicts and their
dynamics.
Likewise, precisely because the subject is complex and diverse, it is also
of interest to explore the conceptual approaches from which concrete
experiences are seen and evaluated. This may contribute to bridge the gap
in the topic of conceptualizing socio-environmental conflict resolution
adapted to our Latin American cultural, social, and political reality.
Additionally, a particular feature of the C&C Program has been the
emphasis placed on research that allows active participation by the conflict
stakeholders through action-research methodologies. Thus, an attempt
was made to favor proposals presented by some of the key conflict
stakeholders. In this way the Program, apart from helping to understand
the region’s concrete reality, would also contribute to conflict resolution
processes underway through strengthening the stakeholder analysis,
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The C&C Program experience.
reflection, dialogue and coordination processes. Therefore, another
important point in this chapter is to explore the role that action- research
may play as a methodological tool for resolving socio-environmental
conflicts.
All together, the discussion on the main lessons learned to date in the C&C
Program may help to establish a state of the art in socio-environmental
conflicts and their transformation in Latin America. Equally, it may help to
single out the dimensions of the challenge involved in strengthening the
experiences evaluated and in consolidating communications networks
among those parties working on the issue.
The writing of this chapter confronted a variety of challenges, among which
extracting joint lessons from a very varied, dynamic universe is one of the
greatest. Throughout this chapter and the book, the reader may witness
a range of tensions that exist among the projects, given the diversity of
conceptual and methodological approaches used, and the simultaneous
evolution of the different processes underway.
One of the tensions shown is the one existing among the projects in
relation to whether to systematize experiences or research them. While
some of them only chose the former, others opted for the latter, trying to
generate conclusive conceptual propositions about the subject. Linked to
this, there is another major tension between the emphasis on methodology
vs. conceptual frameworks, as options actually taken by different projects.
Another latent tension exists between the two paradigms of dominant
conflict resolution: “conflict management,” which favors communication for
resolution, and “conflict transformation,” which addresses power relations
and proposes dealing with structural causes. In addition, some projects
emphasized studying collaborative conflict solutions, while others also
dealt with adversarial solutions as possible options to conflict resolution.
Lastly, we have the tension between the Program – as an institution that
defined a pre-established framework for the studies (the initial questions
sent in the announcement) – and the dynamics and processes inherent
to the conflicts being studied, which at required dealing with issues from
much broader points of view.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
More than being a problem in and of themselves, these tensions reflect
the wealth of approaches and experiences in Latin America when trying to
deal with such a complex issue.
Finally, readers should bear in mind that this document is not attempting
to evaluate the real impact of the experiences analyzed in the projects, but
rather to extract the raw lessons learned from the researchers’ final research
reports. Thus, it constitutes a first approach to the issue that could go into
more depth and surely be adjusted through more field-work in each of the
projects.
The first part of this chapter examines a series of elements in order to
have a panoramic view of the C&C Program: projects’ and research teams’
characteristics, types of conflicts studied, and main analytical perspectives
applied.
The second part discusses the results of the conflict resolution experiences,
based on a review of the strategies displayed in the conflicts, and an
analysis of the concrete effects they had in terms of transforming social,
legal, and environmental dynamics for each case.
Then the factors conditioning conflict transformation are analyzed, paying
special attention to the relationships between the stakeholders, the power
issues and the conflict scales. A working proposition for representing
and analyzing conflict transformation is presented in the last part of this
section.
The last section discusses the contributions and main lessons derived from
the research projects as such to give way, finally, to a series of conclusions.
The text is complemented with boxes, graphs, and tables with information
extracted and summarized from the proposals and/or the research reports.
The original texts may be seen in the Program’s web page: http://www.
upeace.org/cyc/.
A PANORAMIC VISION OF THE C&C PROGRAM
The C&C Program had a three-fold dimension: a) the one defined in
the calls for proposals that expressed the original effort by UPEACE
and the IDRC as the financing entities; b) the dimension of each of the
28
The C&C Program experience.
participating projects; and c) exchange among the researchers and the
Program’s Advisory Committee. These three dimensions determined
the characteristics of its basic components: a) the phases; b) the type of
research projects; c) the researchers who have taken part in the Program;
d) the types of conflicts they studied; and e) the conceptual approaches
used to analyze each of the experiences.
Program phases
The program’s two phases to date pertain to the two calls for proposals by
UPEACE and the IDRC, the first between 1999 and 2002 with a total of 14
projects financed, and the second between 2002 and 2004, with a total of
16 projects.
In each of these phases, UPEACE and the IDRC first defined a group of
issues or key questions, set forth in the introduction to this work, upon
which the researchers had to analyze their cases to be able to extract more
global lessons.
Phase 1 had few opportunities for exchange and interaction among the
Program participants, in fact, the researchers’ only meeting was at the
end of the phase, which was convened to discuss the projects’ results. The
possibilities of sharing preliminary results to get a better understanding
of the experiences and to guide the efforts of the project were limited to
advice received from the Steering Committee through e-mail and one visit
to the projects’ area.
An important lesson learned from the first phase was the methodological
weakness of many of the projects when researching environmental
conflicts, which to a certain degree limited the lessons that could be
obtained individually or as a group from the experiences studied. Therefore,
one of the elements introduced in the second phase was an initial
launch meeting with the project leaders in order to provide a common
methodological base for research and to ensure that all of them shared
the same language in the projects. This meeting took place in mid-October
2002 in Peru – where it was also decided to substitute the mechanism used
in phase 1 (assistance from the Steering Committee to the projects) for a
series of sub-regional meetings among similar initiatives.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
Thus, half way the second phase, three sub-regional meetings were held:
one about conflicts associated with indigenous problems, held in Pucón,
Chile; another on protected area conflicts held in Costa Rica; and a third
meeting on urban-rural conflicts, in Montevideo, Uruguay. An important
aspect of these meetings was the fact that the content and organization
was left in the hands of the project leaders instead of the Program
secretariat, thus providing an opportunity to define work dynamics
that would be an interesting and innovative combination of formal and
informal activities. This included visits to some of the protected areas and
socio-environmental conflict scenarios analyzed by the host groups.1
The projects
Thirty research projects were developed in 11 Latin American countries:
six in Perú, five in Chile, five in Bolivia, four in Colombia, three in Costa
Rica, two in Uruguay, and one in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panamá, and
Venezuela, respectively.
In a general sense, the projects sought three types of objectives: a)
identify and systematize socio-environmental conflicts and the alternative
management experiences; b) influence and/or transform environmental
and public policies; and c) strengthen and/or consolidate community and
public institutional development related to various issues such as local
government, social regulations and equity, participatory environmental
management, appropriate use of natural resources, protected area
management, and intercultural relationships (see the chart on general and
individual project objectives at the end of the book).
See Table 1 for a summary by phase. The titles of the group of projects are
presented in Chart 1.
1 Universidad de la Frontera, Temuco, Chile, in the first case; Coope Sol i Dar, in Costa Rica, in the second case; and CIEDUR, Montevideo, in the third case. The minutes and reports for the last two meetings
are available at the Program’s web page (www.upeace.org/cyc/), in the section on the second call for
proposals.
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The C&C Program experience.
Table 1.- Project location
COUNTRY
PHASE I
PHASE II
TOTAL
No.
No.
No.
2
1
2
1
2
0
0
1
3
1
1
14
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Ecuador
Guatemala
Panamá
Perú
Uruguay
Venezuela
Total
3
0
3
3
1
1
1
0
3
1
0
16
5
1
5
4
3
1
1
1
6
2
1
30
Map 1.- Number of projects by country
Projects:
NONE,
ONE,
TWO,
THREE,
FOUR,
FIVE,
SIX
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
Chart 1.- The projects and their respective countries
The efficiency of institutional agreements in natural resource
management. Conflict resolution in community mountain forest
management.
Environmental and socio-environmental conflict management
concerning the activity of petroleum companies in indigenous
territories. Study of the Yacuiba - Río Grande (GASYRG) gas pipeline
construction in the Guaraní and Weenhayek’s ancestral lands.
Bolivia
Natural resource of collective access institutions. Pasture space
management for seasonal migratory cattle in the municipality of
Cercado, Tarija.
The peasant irrigators of Chochabamba in the Water War. A social
pressure and negotiation experience.
Government, social movements, and water resources. Social pressure
and negotiations after the Cochabamba Water War.
Fishing agreements: an alternative for managing fishing resources.
Brazil
The historic evolution of alternative conflict management in relation to
possessing and using land and its natural resources in the Vallecaucano
Pacific, Colombia. Case study based on comparative analysis.
Between the global discourse on the “Biosphere Reserve” and the local
fishermen’s reality. A practical approach in the case of the Island of
Providencia and Santa Catalina.
Colombia
Nature, situation and perspectives of social conflict and of the
intercultural agreement surrounding the Manaure salt mines.
Conservation of biological and cultural diversity based on alternatives
for collaborative management of natural resources among indigenous
and non-indigenous peoples. First pilot case in Colombia.
The role of socio-environmental conflict in local management. Case
study on the communities of Bolsón and Ortega, in the Tempisque
watershed.
Costa Rica
From conflict to proposal. Community influence on environmental
policy formulation and analysis.
Collaborative management of the Marino Ballena National Park
as an alternative conflict management instrument: experience
systematization.
The lessons from the Bío Bío dams for alternative ethno-environmental
conflict management in the Mapuche territories in Chile.
Identification and systematization of conflicts and ways to solve
them by establishing and administering areas of management and
exploitation of sea bed resources in Chile. The case of Ritoque Beach
and the Concón outcrops in Region V.
Local, regional, sector, national, and international conflict
systematization and analysis in using the coastal zone and its resources
in Caleta Quintay, Region V, Chile.
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The C&C Program experience.
Chile
Indigenous development areas and resource control for the seaside:
conflict and collaboration in the Lafkenche territory, Chile.
Management strategies in the conflict between Los Pelambres mining
company and the local fisherman of Los Vilos and farmers in the Choapa
and Caimanes valleys in Region IV, Chile.
Chile
Systematization and adaptation of the participatory model and
indicator provision in administration and participatory management of
the Galápagos Islands Marine Reserve, Ecuador.
Ecuador
Managing socio-environmental conflicts from the Guatemalan
indigenous point of view. The case of seven Mayan communities and
the Mam and K’iche’ languages in the southwest of the Republic of
Guatemala.
Guatemala
Evaluation the use of community mapping on resolving land use
conflicts in the Filo del Tallo Hydrographic Reserve, Darién.
Panamá
Achievements and limitations of the Association for the Sustainable Use
of the Tola in Arequipa, Perú as a space for concerted decision making.
Conflict management and natural resources in a protected area. The
example of the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, Perú.
Alternative management for conflicts associated with soil use in the Río
Lurín watershed, Lima, Perú.
Perú
Encouraging peasant institutions to face social and inter-cultural
conflict in irrigation water management in the mountains of Perú.
Social and environmental impact of alternative conflict management for
natural resources in the Andean zone of Perú.
Being vigilant and building consensus for a better valley: a proposal
for concerted management of environmental conflicts in the Río Lurín
valley, Lima, Perú.
Participatory management in the rural area of Montevideo: Evaluation
and in-depth study of an innovative experience.
Uruguay
The Santa Lucia wetlands and their surroundings. The challenges to
managing an area with natural, production, and cultural values in the
metropolitan heart of Montevideo, Uruguay.
Conflict management in the natural resource conservation process in
the high watershed of the Yacambú River, Municipality of Andrés Eloy
Blanco in Lara State, Venezuela.
Venezuela
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
In an individual sense, the projects assumed various purposes:
a) Studying the conflicts and their management strategies based on issues
such as the influence of cultural, social, environmental, and national policy
matters, systematization of the environmental management history,
and alternate conflict management in regional and local sectors; interinstitutional collaboration; and conflict resolution systematization.
b) Evaluating environmental management.
c) Communicating and socializing the lessons derived from the research
and conflict resolution experiences among the stakeholders and in relation
to public opinion.
d) Theoretical, conceptual, and methodological developments from and
toward action-research in terms of social and environmental conflicts
related to issues such as participatory protected area management models;
social research applied to environmental management; instruments for
evaluating environmental and social impacts; preparing environmental
diagnostics and measuring biodiversity; building and validating
environmental conflict resolution and prediction tools; identifying
various cultural systems; identifying management principles and tools
from indigenous and peasant points of view; and some gender relation
dimensions.
e) Systematization of national experiences in relation to other Latin
American realities.2
Based on these proposals, the projects sought to contribute to resolving
or systematizing conflicts related to renewable natural resources such as
water, the soil, forests, marine fauna, wildlife, and salt, among others. They
also dealt with non-renewable resources such as oil, copper, and limestone
within various spatial units such as watersheds, wetlands, marine-coastal
and insular zones, high Andean zones, urban-rural zones, protected areas,
and ethnic territories (indigenous, Afro American, and Raizal). Some of the
projects dealt with these resources and spaces3 at the same time.
2 See the complete list of general and individual objectives in the Appendices.
3 The spatial unit concept in analysis is proposed in a descriptive sense and in the absence of more
exactness in the projects on ecosystems and landscapes as conflict scenarios or as an environmental
component thereof.
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The C&C Program experience.
Table 2.- Projects by spatial unit and natural resources involved
Resources Involved
Spatial Unit
Projects
Renewable
per
Spatial
Soil
Water Forest Marine
Unit
Fauna
Watershed
6
1
Coastal
or Insular
Marine Zone
10
1
Urban-Rural
Zone
4
1
High Andean
6
Zone
1
Non-Renewable
Wild
Life
Salt
1
Oil
Copper
3
7
1
1
3
Misc.
Lime
stone
1
2
1
2
2
1
2
Wetland
2
Protected
Area
8
1
2
Ethnic or
Traditional
Territory
8
1
1
1
5
1
4
1
The researchers
The thirty projects were formulated and executed by a total of 74
researchers – among them, 23 natural science professionals and 51 social
science professionals, broken out as follows: 15 engineers (11 agricultural
engineers, two fishing engineers, one forestry engineer, and one civil
engineer); 11 lawyers, nine anthropologists, eight sociologists, seven
biologists, seven educators, five economists, four social communicators,
two psychologists, two journalists, one political science specialist, one
philosopher, one geographer, and one zoological technician. They were
organized into interdisciplinary teams that had the direct participation of
18 members of the communities involved in the conflicts studied.
In general, a preponderance of social approaches was revealed and in each
disciplinary universe there was an interesting majority of engineers and
lawyers among the researchers, along with a combination of professions
that denoted the C&C Program’s multidisciplinary character.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
These researchers belong to 39 institutions, among which 25 are nongovernmental organizations (of them 12 are in coordination with grass
roots organizations and two with academic entities); seven are social
organizations; five are educational entities, and two are public territory
entities.4
The types of conflicts studied
The conflicts dealt with by the projects revolve around a series aspects: a) a
clash of interests in conserving, using and/or managing protected areas; b)
the use of specific natural resources such as the soil, water, forest, marine
fauna, wildlife, salt, etc.; c) Access to and control of productive spaces and
natural resources by local users or by large-scale resource development
and exploitation through mining, gas exploitation, water exploitation and
use, roadway construction, forest exploitation, industrial fishing, the sugar
industry, and salt exploitation projects; d) Land zoning, especially in the
urban-rural interface; and e) Possession, ownership and use of indigenous
lands and black communities.
Table 3.- Projects based on type of conflict studied
TYPE OF CONFLICT
Confrontation of interests about
conserving, using, and/or managing
protected areas.
Use specific natural resources such as the
soil, water, forests, marine fauna, wildlife,
salt, etc.
PROJECTS
Colombia: Indiwasi National Park and Old
Providence Biosphere Reserve
Costa Rica: Marino Ballena National Park
Ecuador: Galápagos Islands Marine Reserve
Panamá: Filo de Tallo Hydrographic Reserve
Perú: the Machu Pichu Protect Area
Uruguay: the Montevideo Wetlands.
Most of the projects.
4 Source: the C&C Program’s research projects, phases 1 and 2. The data may undergo adjustments
during more in-depth work, since evidently there were some changes in participants during the course
of some research projects; but they are being included because even in that case, it would give an idea
of the universe being dealt with.
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The C&C Program experience.
Access to and control of productive
spaces and natural resources,
a) by local users,
Perú: the Andean Zone; and Bolivia: Tarija.
b) by large-scale resource development
and exploitation projects through mining,
gas exploitation, water exploitation
and use, roadway construction, forest
exploitation, industrial fishing, the sugar
industry, and salt exploitation
Chile: Los Pelambres, Caleta Quintay and the
Bío Bío Dams
Bolivia: Weenhayek Territory and the Water
War
Perú: Arequipa
Ecuador: Galápagos
Costa Rica: the Tempisque Watershed
Colombia: the Manaure salt mines
Land zoning, especially in the urban-rural
interface; and watershed management.
Uruguay: the Montevideo Wetlands
Perú: the Río Lurín Watershed
Panamá: Managing the Filo de Tallo
Watershed
Venezuela: the Yacambú Watershed.
Possession, ownership and use of
indigenous lands and black communities.
Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile,
Guatemala and Panamá.
In certain cases, as may be seen throughout this analysis, some of these
subjects are combined in a single conflict.
The project’s analytical perspectives: Visions and conceptual
approaches
As may be assumed and expected, within the C&C Program there is a huge
diversity of conceptual approaches to the Program’s basic components
(“conflict, collaboration, natural resources, Latin America”) that are grouped
into two descriptive subjects: a) Definition of conflicts as such, and within
them, environmental conflicts, how they are handled and transformed;
and b) The structural aspects of conflicts, such as society itself, culture and
nature, the government and the public, development, and history.
a) Approaches to defining, managing, and transforming conflicts.
In this summary, it is interesting to point out the broad range of approaches
based on two broad views of conflicts: communications dimensions versus
power relations and conflict management versus transformation.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
The first view is centered on the “interests” of stakeholders involved in a
given conflict, and on the type of relationship they develop according to
their willingness to communicate in a conflict scenario.
The other perspective centered around power issues proposes: “The
conflicts and consensus building (…) are above all expressions of power
relations, instead of the result of applying rational conflict resolution
mechanisms or deploying actions based on a communications rationality.’”
And that is because “the political system itself is an adversarial and not
consensual scenario”, due to the type of dominant state, (related) to global
capitalism.”5
As has been said, both perspectives mark the extremes of a broad range of
basic approaches to conflicts, wherein and in some cases, those extremes
in fact are combined depending on the times and scenarios where they
are found and the emphasis of each research, as may be seen throughout
this work.
In the extremes of the proposed ranges, there is a sort of opposition
between managing and transforming conflicts: First of all, many projects
are oriented toward the functional resolution perspective based on
seeking collaboration among the stakeholders (“conflict as something
functional in development”) going from being adversarial to collaborative.
The idea of “collaborative socio-environmental conflict management”
is associated with this, such as “building a joint decision-making process
among the conflict stakeholders who commit themselves to, are involved
in, and participate in solving their problems.”6
And even when many projects evolve into “alternative conflict
management” (ACM), some are not able to go beyond their functional
sense as shown in the following definition: “(ACM) is a process through
which the stakeholders involved in a conflict seek alternative ways to the
legal route without seeking to resolve critical confrontation situations
among the stakeholders. With that aim, they create social relationships
that enable to balance the different interests involved in natural resource
management.”7
5
Cfr. Final project report on the Cochabamba Water War, where the viewpoints are defined and
some critical reflections are projected.
6 The Tempisque Watershed Project, Costa Rica.
7 Mesoamerican network of socio-environmental conflicts, cited by Cecilia Martínez in the final report on the Tempisque Watershed Project, Costa Rica.
38
The C&C Program experience.
The concept of conflict transformation, on the other hand, in many
projects, implicitly and in practice, combines communicative or functional
resolution with power elements that are in play in the relationship
between the stakeholders and the political and social systems. Some of
these aspects are set forth in the last part of this document.8
Within these extremes, inside the Program there are many definitions
about social and socio-environmental or environmental conflict, also
within a broad range of concepts, some of which are set forth through this
book.
The Montevideo rural area project highlights six fundamental characteristics
of social conflict: “it is a process; its development is temporary; when it
takes place in the public arena it involves collective actions by groups of
people; it originates due to differences in values, perceptions or meanings
that the stakeholders have in relation to actions or circumstances that
affect them; it implies dynamics involving opposition, controversy,
dispute, or protest among the stakeholders; and there is a recognition
of the opposing stakeholders that goes beyond whether their claims are
considered legitimate or that they should be attended to.”
Socio-environmental conflict, on the other hand, is understood as focused
“simply around using natural resources;” and environmental conflict
as “manifestations of social and economic problems due to opposing
interests between the natural and social world and therefore, it calls for an
interdisciplinary and multi-sector perspective to take care of it.9
Most of the projects assume that conflicts are situations that “have
negative repercussions but that may have a value as a catalyst for positive
social changes,”10. Their management is largely seen as a “potential modifier
to social capital, as it is an important way to build, strengthen, weaken,
or destroy relationships;” and they propose transforming them through
collaborative and/or preventive action.
b) Approaches to history, society, the state, culture, nature and
development.
In each of these broad conflict conceptualizations, we can evidently derive
approaches to “the public” and “the state” that could be more thoroughly
8 Cfr. farther on in the report, the section on “a way to represent conflict transformation.”
9 Water War Project, Cochabamba, Bolivia.
10 Machu Pichu Project expression, taken from Buckles, 2000.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
analyzed through a special research project. The Program, being based in
work by definition applied and of a relatively short term with emphasis
on systematizing experiences above academic or conceptual research,
provides little space for such debate.
Nonetheless, some (few) projects had a historical perspective in their study
of conflicts in light of the impact caused by cultural, political, institutional,
and environmental frameworks.
The CEREC (the Manaure Salt Mines Project, Colombia), for example, tries to
trace some social transition and national re-composition historic elements
in a conflict over salt extraction and commercialization. The conflict analysis
approach is located “between social action (reconfiguration through stages
or moments based on the stakeholders’ actions and reactions) and the
social structure (economic and socio-cultural),” more specifically “tensions
revolving around exclusion, inclusion, and inter-ethnic relations between
an indigenous people and regional and national society.”
The Indiwasi Project (Colombia), for its part, reconstructs the long process
of internal indigenous consensus building in the Amazon piedmont based
on the coordination with the national parks entity in Colombia, which gave
rise to the collaborative creation of a “national indigenous park.”
On the other hand, in general there exists a set of projects with a broad
range of approaches to society running from those pertaining to classic
sociology, characterized by the study of order and a direct correlation
between economics and politics, to a critical theory about globalized
society, the modern hegemonies and empire, neo-liberalism and
worldwide social resistance; going on to comprehensive focuses on society,
culture and nature pertaining to complex environmental thought.
With regard to the new critical theories, and at one extreme of the range
of approaches mentioned, the Water War Project in Cochabamba lays the
groundwork within the Program for a vision of political power “as factors
and devices” instead of instruments or institutions in and of themselves,
from the perspective of exercising power such as bio-power, following the
approaches of authors such as Foucault, and the contemporary Marxists
such as Toni Negri.11
11 “Bio-power thus refers to a situation in which the production and reproduction power of life itself
is directly in play (Hardt & Negri).” This predicament arose from the debate on the character of water as
a “resource or part of life,” within the social movement in Cochabamba, the “Water War.”.
40
The C&C Program experience.
Indirectly related to this conceptual context, other projects emphasize
issues such as “unequal ecological distribution” (Martínez Alier 1995),
generated by structural adjustment in Latin America, which “is
consolidating the creation of plural autonomous socio-environmental
movements reconfiguring the Latin American political culture.”
In regard to the complex vision derived from the environmental
approach, several projects are associated directly or indirectly with
“critical development anthropology,” which approaches conflict analysis
through culture and the “power asymmetries” between the global/local
relationships and among local stakeholders, and considers the environment
as a universe with boundaries that have been culturally framed.
Finally, the concept of development needs to be emphasized. Development
is seen by most of the projects as sustainable development in its broadest
sense (“ecological sustainability, growth, and equity’), in integral
relationship with issues such as social participation and democratization12.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION EXPERIENCES: STRATEGIES, EFFECTS
AND CONDITIONS FACTORS FOR TRANSFORMATION
Conflict resolution strategies evaluated
As was mentioned in the introduction, when the C&C Program was
originally conceived, there was talk of collaborative conflict resolution
processes in the sense of alternative confrontation methods (violence or
lawsuits), such as negotiation, reconciliation, arbitration, and mediation, or
new institutional arrangements that made it possible to jointly build visions
and consensual solutions for natural resource management. This conflict
resolution conception was strongly influenced by Alternative Conflict
Management (ACM) thought, which arose originally in the United States
in the mid-70’s as a way to solve labor conflicts. Since the 90’s it has had
increasing influence in the environmental management field. However, the
30 C&C research projects make us clearly see that this view of collaborative
conflict resolution does not reflect the broad range of strategies that are
being put into practice in the region to deal with and try to resolve socioenvironmental conflicts.
12 The Caleta Quintay Project in Chile, the Rural Montevideo Project in Uruguay, the Fishermen Resource Project in Brazil, the Tempisque Watershed Project iin Costa Rica, and the Bío-Bío Dam project in
Chile.
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Figure 1.- Summary of conflict resolution strategies evaluated
Explicit Conflict and in an Improvement Process:
Mutual Understanding / Recognition of Others
Shared and/or Articulated Strategiess
• New institutional arrangments
• Promoting interlocution
Dialog & coordination
• Projects/development plans and conservation
• Land/environmental management policies
• Agreement negotiation
Conflict Evolution
• Litigation
• Strengthening local organizations
• Social mobilization: complaints
communication campaigns, lobbying,
social alliances
• Strengthening interpersonal relationships
• Participatory research
• Building long-term visions
•Institutions/customary arrangements
• Compensation
• Civil disobedience
• Dialog facilitation
• Repression
Averserial
Strategies
• Inquiry
• Information
Unilateral Strategies
Collaborative
Strategies
Latent Conflict / Confrontation
Denial of others / unilateral power actions
Source: Created by the authors.
As illustrated in the figure, a major part of the projects evaluated conflict
resolution strategies that fall within the notion that the C&C Program had
about “collaborative or alternative management of conflict resolution,” i.e.,
agreements, new institutional arrangements, and negotiation processes
that facilitate dialogue and coordination. However, an equally large
part evaluated other types of strategies that do not match this notion
at all, such as local and customary institutional arrangements that have
tended to receive little attention in the socio-environmental conflict
literature. Instead, others evaluated the effectiveness of development
and conservation projects and plans and new environmental/territorial
management and zoning policies. A smaller number evaluated strategies
that are rarely taken into account in the conflict resolution field, but which
are of vital importance for the cultural survival of indigenous, black, and
peasant populations, such as building and clarifying long-term local
visions.
But perhaps the most significant is the following: although most of
the projects focused their research on collaborative conflict resolution
strategies, a good part did not limit themselves to that and included other
types of strategies that are commonly rated as adversarial, such as social
mobilization, civil disobedience, and litigation. These projects make it
clear that being adversarial cannot be completely ruled out of the conflict
42
The C&C Program experience.
resolution dynamics in our region. On the contrary, they frequently fulfill
a major role in balancing power relations among stakeholders such that
the way to dialogue and coordination can be opened up. Therefore, the
term adversarial is included here in a merely descriptive sense about the
strategy’s punctual forms and does not resolve the issue of its possible
legitimacy.13
Within what is adversarial, some projects showed that repression is
frequently used as a coercive conflict resolution strategy. This is something
familiar within our countries’ realities, where within the life of a conflict
and the search for consensual and collaborative solutions, oftentimes this
is the way the state responds to legitimate non-violent actions that involve
protests and social vindication.
Figure 1, therefore, seeks to illustrate how diverse the conflict resolution
experiences evaluated by the projects are, from an extreme where the
conflict is still at the latent or confrontational level, where resolution
strategies usually are unilateral; to the other extreme where paths are
built to go beyond shared and/or articulated strategies. However, conflict
evolution as a function of the strategies used is not really such a linear
progression as is proposed here.
In effect, in many of the cases there is a much more dynamic cross-over
interaction among the adversarial and collaborative strategies. In a large
number of the cases, the strategies mentioned in second place arose after
some of a conflict’s stakeholders used adversarial strategies at some point
in the life of the conflict, but this does not mean that conflict progression
from confrontation to progress always occurred. In some cases, what
was observed was a pulling back where collaborative strategies became
adversarial due to the resistance by some stakeholders to settling on just,
equitable solutions. In the conflict transformation dynamic representation
instrument, proposed later on, an attempt is made to pick up this aspect as
essential to the analysis.
Finally, strategy dynamics and implementation vary largely depending
on the stakeholders who develop and encourage them. To that end,
Table 4 provides a more detailed itemization of the conflict resolution
strategies developed by the different stakeholders in the set of projects.
Among them there can be seen, for example, a marked trend by state
13 Cfr. farther on the section on this subject.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
stakeholders to center their efforts on developing strategies that favor
more efficient, orderly and in some cases equitable environmental and
territorial management. This is reflected in actions such as creating
environmental/territorial zoning plans, new protected areas, usr rights to
local stakeholders and, to a lesser degree, the formulation of new policies
such as environmental service payments in the case of Costa Rica or new
institutional guidelines such as the Parks with People Policy in Colombia.
Likewise, there is a marked trend among state stakeholders to implement
strategies that “in theory” seek to encourage shared decisions on
environmental management being made through mechanisms such
as new institutional arrangements (committees, councils, coordinators,
workstations), co-management plans, strengthening local organization,
or encouraging and supporting new local interlocutors; but in practice
most of the cases such shared decision making does not go beyond a
symbolic effort to develop more participatory and inclusive environmental
management processes. This is illustrated by the Marino Ballena National
Park in Costa Rica and the Los Pelaumbres Mining Company in Chile. The
latter is a sample of a manipulative, co-option, and local fragmentation
strategy (See Chart 3).
This denotes the double role that the state often plays in socioenvironmental conflicts: at times they are the cause and at other times they
are the regulators or arbitrators. Therefore, as some cases demonstrate, in a
single conflict these stakeholders may go from using adversarial strategies
such as ignoring, prolonging, or suppressing the conflict to coordinating
instances of interlocution, dialogue, consultation, and coordination, or to
encouraging shared decision-making and vice versa.
The state’s dual role in socio-environmental conflicts is at times the result of
pressure from economic sectors or alliances developed between political
and economic sectors. These sectors make it impossible for there to exist
a coherent, consistent position on the state’s part while implementing
environmental policies or executing development projects. This was
well illustrated in the few projects that closely evaluated the strategies
developed by the entrepreneurial sector during conflicts (See Table 4).
These strategies allowed to see that more than seeking to resolve conflicts
in a collaborative and consensual fashion, the companies tend to do so in
an adversarial fashion through pressure on the state, making use of press
campaigns, lobbying, and even corruption, or in relation to communities,
with strategies that include ignoring the conflict, misinformation, or no
44
The C&C Program experience.
information at the local level about their plans, co-opting or dividing
the local leaders to achieve their objectives. The efforts to develop ways
mutually agreed upon through dialogue also are in general measured by
achieving or attaining their objectives and interest, more than seeking fair,
culturally adequate, equitable, and sustainable solutions.
Table 4.- State and entrepreneurial conflict resolution strategies
STAKEHOLDERS
STRATEGY
ACTION
CASES
State
Ignore the conflict
Do not inform, misinform, or do not
respond to requests for dialogue/
information
3
Prolong the
conflict/wear out the
opponent
Create a legally incongruent situation
1
Suppress the conflict
Repression, detention of leaders
2
Coordinate instances
of interlocution,
dialogue,
consultation,
agreement
Informational meetings
Consultation meetings
Meetings with the parties
Agreements
Negotiations
1
2
2
6
3
Encourage shared
decision making
New institutional arrangements
(commissions, councils, coordinators,
workstations)
Co-management plans
Encourage and support new local
interlocutors
Organizational strengthening
7
Strengthen, create
links with groups
with similar visions/
interests
Company-state, state-community,
and company-state-community
alliances
1
Define and/or
propose regulatory
framework
transformation
Environmental rules and regulations
New laws
Economic sanctions
2
Formulate new
environmental
and territorial
management policies
Environmental service payments
Protected area creation
Use rights
New institutional guidelines
Environmental/territorial zoning
plans
1
Develop socioenvironmental
programs
Sustainable development, technical
and conservation assistance, social
and community assistance, local
development projects
4
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2
2
3
6
1
3
2
1
5
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
STAKEHOLDERS
STRATEGY
ACTION
CASES
Companies
Toward the state:
Public pressure
Lobbying
Press campaigns
1
1
Seek direct
arrangements
without public
mediation
Corruption
1
Pay for
environmental
compensation
Support creating new protected
areas
1
Toward communities: No information, misinformation.
Ignore the conflict
2
Divide the
community
Co-opt the leaders
3
Seek direct
arrangements
without public
mediation
Direct payment of indemnifications
and compensation
Support community actions
2
Seek agreement
Hire mediators
Propose signing agreements
2
1
Promote
participation
Support for new interlocutors
Hold informational meetings
1
1
2
In contrast, in the projects that evaluated strategies developed by local
organizations and communities, social mobilization strategies, customary
or traditional conflict resolution mechanisms, and clarifying and building
local long-term visions dominated (See Table 5).
This set of strategies evidences the need for more attention to be paid to
local perspectives and the forms of social organization in environmental
planning, as well as executing development policies indicating the need
that the community and local stakeholders have for internal strengthening
to face solving conflicts with third parties.
Interestingly, in some cases, the requirement for more respect for local
issues is not merely rhetorical, since some strategies involve clear proposals
about modifying legal frameworks and public policies to achieve this
change in environmental planning and development policies, which
includes formulating new regulations (as is the case with the Cochabamba
Water War); creating new protected areas where the respect for the local
cultural dimension is proposed as the center (see the Alto Fragua Indiwasi
National Indigenous Park Case); new management plans formulated
46
The C&C Program experience.
in conjunction with grass roots stakeholders, and implementing the
instances that enables for there to be a more equitable power distribution
in decision-making such as co-management or co-government (Old
Providence Biosphere Reserve, Alto Fragua Indiwasi National Indigenous
Parks, and the Parks in Costa Rica. See Chart 3).
This need to legitimize and strengthen local capacity in conflict resolution
processes may explain why, in turn, the strategies developed by NGOs
mostly are centered around strengthening grass roots stakeholders
through actions such as participatory resource use mapping, local
organization support, communications strategy development, legal
advice, and conflict management. Likewise, as some cases illustrate, this is
reflected in the fact that the NGOs also turn at times to strategies such as
social mobilization to achieve a new balance in power relations.
However, it is clear in the C&C Program universe, that the NGOs also have
played an important role as conflict mediators among stakeholders,
which is reflected in the large number of projects that evaluated their
contribution to building dialogue and consensus processes through
participatory analyses of stakeholders, visions, perceptions and interests,
and dialogue and agreement meetings and workshops (See Table 5).
A good part of these processes occurred during the course of research
as part of the action-research strategies developed by the teams, as
is illustrated by the Asociación Calas experience in Guatemala, where
a meeting between indigenous authorities and officials about their
environmental management legal-norm systems was facilitated (See
Chart 3). This way, the research methodology itself became the subject of
analysis by a major part of the studies discussed herein (for more details,
see later on in this document).
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
Table 5.- Local non-governmental conflict resolution strategies
STAKEHOLDER
STRATEGY
ACTIONS
Local
Communities &
Orgs.
Use customary
mechanisms
Governed by norms, rules, and
social networks
Governed by traditional community
institutions
Consultations
Community meetings
Ceremonies and rituals
Agreements
3
Create new community institutions
3
Create links with
Social, political, academic alliances
groups with similar
interests and visions
3
Civil disobedience
Protests
Close roadways
4
3
Social mobilization
Request information
Press campaigns
Signature collecting
Lobbying
Complaints
Marches
Territorial right/uses and custom
vindication
1
4
1
4
1
4
6
Clarify visions and
build perspectives
from afar
Develop life plans, local
development plans, productive
alternatives, sustainable
development
6
Supported by the
public legal system
File lawsuits
3
Propose new
environmental
and territorial
management laws
and policies
New regulations
Protected areas
Management plans
Instances of participation, comanagement, co-government
2
2
2
3
Supported by
new participatory
methodologies
Community self-mapping
1
Participate in public
agreements
Workstations, commissions,
committees, councils
Agreements
Negotiations
3
Call open town councils to meeting
1
Strengthening local
organization
Propose dialogue
48
The C&C Program experience.
CASES
4
1
1
1
3
2
2
STAKEHOLDER
STRATEGY
ACTIONS
Non-Governmental Orgs.
Strengthen local
stakeholders
Participatory mapping
Training
Support for local organization
Communications strategies
Legal advice
Conflict management advisory
services
2
3
4
2
2
2
Recover local knowledge
Biological-intercultural research
Participatory diagnostics
1
1
1
Propose legal
changes
Revise municipal ordinances
1
Build dialogue and
consensus
Participatory analysis of
stakeholders, visions, perceptions,
and interests
Dialogue and agreement meetings
and workshops
6
Social mobilization
Lobbying
Public complaints
Communications campaigns
3
1
2
Strengthen links
with groups with
similar interests and
visions
National and/or international
alliances and networks
2
Propose public
agreements
Workstations, commissions,
committees
Negotiations
2
Intercultural dialogue (equitable
relationships, ethical agreements,
cultivate relationships of trust and
respect)
1
Research
Strengthen
interpersonal
relationships
CASES
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1
49
ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
Chart 3.- Some conflict resolution strategies and mechanisms
evaluated by the projects
ENCOURAGING SHARED DECISION MAKING – STATE STAKEHOLDER
INITIATIVES
The Marino Ballena National Park Co-Management Committee, Costa Rica.
A new institutional arrangement created in May 2002 by the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINAE)
along with some local stakeholders whose purpose is to open communications channels among
civil society stakeholders and the governmental apparatus and thus reduce the strong local
rejection that caused the National Park when created in 1997. To date, the committee has not
operated constantly and has not contributed to reducing the existing conflicts in the area.
Among the factors that explain the failure of this conflict resolution strategy are the strong internal
divisions among its members, the lack of will and conviction to make the committee work, the
marginalization of important local sectors such as women and local community representatives, and
the serious conceptual deficiencies about the co-management concept.
The Parallel Neighborhood Boards - The Los Pelambres Case, Chile.
One of the varied strategies used by the Los Pelambres Mining Company – and appraised by public
environmental institutions as a group – during the well-known conflict that occurred in 2003
with peasant communities, due to the construction of a copper tailing mega-dump. The “Parallel
Neighborhood Boards” were created to position a local support group and validate a citizen
participation process that would make it possible to formulate a series of agreements to begin work.
This strategy also sought to create an interlocutor as an alternative to the “Pupío Valley Defense
Committee and Board of Neighbors No. 4 (both in Caimanees) as a block opposing the project. This
strategy ended up co-opting a series of local leaders and significantly fractioning the community,
favorable for validating and final approval for the much questioned project.
MODIFYING LEGAL FRAMEWORKS AND PUBLIC POLICIES – LOCAL
STAKEHOLDER INITIATIVES
Proposal to Modify the Potable Water and Sanitation System Law to Ensure the Protection of
Uses and Customs. The Water War Case, Bolivia.
A strategy deployed by a group of social organizations (primarily peasants who practice irrigation in
Cochabamba) in August 2000, caused by assigning the potable water and sewer system concession
to the Aguas del Tunari international consortium (approved by the parliament) of the Potable Water
and Sanitation System Law without consulting the community.
The proposed modification to the law came about after an intense mobilization process, including
a national peasant blockade that forced the government to sign an agreement and sit down at the
dialogue table to discuss a series of by-laws to the law that made it possible to privatize the water
and placed the water management systems’ uses and customs in danger.
The initiative was approved and the contract with the Aguas del Tunari international consortium
was also rescinded.
50
The C&C Program experience.
A National Indigenous Park: Nukanchipa Alpa Indiwasi- Our Land, House of the Sun,
Colombia.
A strategy requested and promoted by one of the indigenous peoples of the yagé culture: the Inga
del Caquetá people as a way to confront the loss of their lands, culture and traditions, as well as
to confront the pressure from the current development model, illicit crops, and war. The national
park was declared on February 25, 2002, and in addition to biological conservation, it seeks cultural
protection, particularly for the yagé culture, one of the best conserved shamanistic traditions in
the world. A central part of this biological and cultural conservation model is its innovative form
of management and administration: co-government among indigenous authorities (represented
by the Asociación de Cabildos Inga) and Colombian government authorities (represented by the
Special Administrative Unit of the National Natural Park System). The two parties are considered to
be public entities with equal powers to make decisions and take administrative and management
actions.
The Sustainable Fishing Development Management Committee, the Old Providence Biosphere
Reserve, Colombia.
A conflict resolution strategy defined and put into practice in 2003 by the Old Providence and
Santa Catalina Island Fishers’ Cooperative to face a series of policies and actions that environmental
authorities in the Biosphere Reserve tried to execute that affect their interests in relation to fishing
resources. The committee was thought of as a formal space for communications, inter-institutional
coordination, participation, agreement, and joint management by the local community and the
variety of public institutions that are involved in managing the reserve. During its short existence,
it has helped to jointly define solution proposals for the primary fishing resource management
problems and has become a recognized space that is valid and worthy of being taken into account
in the island’s fishing-environmental processes. In addition, it has provided legitimacy and
recognition to the local knowledge about environmental management processes.
STRENGTHENING LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS – NGO INITIATIVES
Participatory Maps, Training, and Organizational Support: Components of a Strategy to
Oversee and Reach Agreements about Conserving the Lurín Valley, Lima, Perú.
Some of the varied actions developed by the Oficina de Asesoría y Consultoría Ambiental (OACA)
in consortium with the Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental (SPDA) as part of a set of social
participation activities that seek to strengthen agreement mechanisms for preventive conflict
management in the Lurín River Valley, produced by the out-of-bounds expansion of the urban zones
into the rural zones. The participatory maps, which seek to identify the local vision of natural and
cultural resources and their main conflicts, contributed to beginning a dialogue and collaboration
processes among the local stakeholders (mostly among the grass roots social organizations).
In turn, they set the bases for training programs on citizen environmental vigilance that arose
because of the interest generated in strengthening local organizational capacity to respect the local
environmental visions and interest in municipal planning and zoning.
BUILDING DIALOGUE AND CONSENSUS – NGOS INITIATED
Encounters Between Indigenous and Public Authorities on Environmental Use and Zoning,
Guatemala.
A process initiated by the Centro de Acción Legal, Ambiental y Social de Guatemala (CALAS) to
strengthen an understanding between two environmental use and zoning standards and legal
systems. The encounters were preceded by a series of participatory workshops with the Maya K’iche’
and Mam people about their customary conflict resolution methods. The information collected was
used as input to provide knowledge to the public authorities about the bases of the indigenous
environmental management cultural and standards system. The meetings between indigenous
authorities and officials resulted in the signing of the Declaratory Agreement of Santa Lucía, by
means of which the Indigenous Peoples and Civil Society Coordination Unit was created, which
seeks to attend to matters relative to respecting and recognizing the customary indigenous law in
reference to natural resource use and utilization.
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The effect of the experiences
A joint analysis of the 30 research projects makes it possible to visualize
that, despite the broad range of approaches and conflict management
strategies deployed in the region, their concrete contribution in terms of
building and consolidating a culture of peace and agreement in land and
natural resource management and administration in the long term is still
very limited.
We can see this if we do a detailed analysis of what is just and sustainable in
relation to the agreements and arrangements reached by the stakeholders
by using the following indicators: satisfying the interests of the different
stakeholders, changes in the state of natural resources and how they are
managed; modifying the power relations; recognizing cultural diversity;
and knowledge, dialogue, and negotiation.
a) Satisfying the interest of the different stakeholders.
When studying and understanding socio-environmental conflicts and
how they are managed, in general a great deal of emphasis is placed on
stakeholder analysis,14 to find out the variety of stakeholders involved in
a conflict and their respective interests and visions. Less attention has
been paid to getting to know how the conflict resolution strategies and
mechanisms that have been put into practice satisfy that diversity of
interests. This is the central point to this section, based on the results of the
Program’s 30 research projects.
The C&C Program’ universe of projects reveals a partial achievement of the
conflict resolution mechanisms toward satisfying the diverse interests of
the stakeholders in any given conflict. Barely 50% of the projects found
that the experiences assessed had been able to place strategies into
practice that represented, or at least attempted to provide, a response to
that variety of interests. In general terms, this was achieved in two distinct
dimensions: a) public institutionalization of collective interests (the
objective or tangible dimension); and/or b) a change in the stakeholders’
situation (the subjective or intangible dimension).
The former refers to experiences where an attempt was made to satisfy
the interests of the different stakeholders through enacting new
environmental management laws, regulations, figures, plans, or programs,
or new participatory instances for conflict/environmental management.
14 Known also as stakeholders.
52
The C&C Program experience.
Examples are the modification to the Potable Water and Sanitary Service
Law in the Water War case in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the creation of the Lapa
Verde Commission in Costa Rica; and the declaration of two wetlands as
private reserves in the Tempisque Watershed, Costa Rica, produced by local
conflict management.
The changes in the stakeholders’ situation, in turn, refers instead to
experiences where the main attention was paid to achieving a better
representation of the stakeholders’ own interests, based on modifying
their interpersonal relationships. This was carried out in different ways,
including building shared visions and/or perceptions about resources,
land, and their uses; discussion and analysis of the cause of the conflicts
among the stakeholders; the definition of negotiation principles; building
trust; and/or opening new dialogue spaces.
In general terms, these different processes contributed to a better
understanding among the stakeholders and to a reduction in the degree
of conflict among them. In some cases it made it possible to even
transcend public institutionalization of articulated interests, thus creating
opportunities to build mutually agreeable public policies.15 Interestingly,
there were other cases where instead it went from a situation where public
mechanisms for collective interest articulation existed to an in-depth
study of satisfying interests among stakeholders through more subjective
or intangible interpersonal dimensions (the Santa Lucía Wetlands Case,
Uruguay).
Likewise, there were other cases that just stayed within the subjective
dimensions, without evidencing any significant objective or tangible
progress that modified the stakeholders’ situation in the long term (Machu
Pichu, Perú; and Filo del Tallo, Panamá). In them, satisfying the interests of
the different stakeholders was more vulnerable than in the cases where
institutionalization of the interests in play was produced.
However, public institutionalization of collective interests does not
necessarily mean definitive or effective real satisfaction of the interested
parties. A large number of the projects evaluated experiences that instead
showed a major pull back in momentarily achieved agreements, through
non-compliance with the laws or agreements (the Manaure salt mines,
Colombia, the Galápagos National Park, Ecuador; and the Los Pelambres
Mining Company, Chile).
15 The Valle Verde Case, Perú; and the Maya Community Project, Guatemala.
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Involved are cases which, instead of satisfying collective interests, imposed
satisfying particular interests or sectors in the medium and long term.
Something similar occurred in other cases where the public mechanisms
for satisfying collective interests put into practice had been unilateral
impositions by some of the stakeholders and, therefore, only represented
their interests and visions. This is reflected by implementing manipulated
institutional arrangements (the Marino Ballena National Park, Costa Rica),
enacting environmental regulations or policies that were not brought up
and discussed with the different stakeholders (the Río Yacambú Watershed,
Venezuela), or that did not take into account the principles of social equity
when conceived or implemented (Sea Bed Resources, Chile). In these
cases, in addition to a cyclical reproduction of conflicts, strong rejection
was reported, as well as feelings of frustration and mistrust in relation to
the agency managing the conflicts on the part of those stakeholders that
were excluded.
Interestingly, the projects help visualize that the cases with significant
progress in terms of institutionalizing mechanisms that sought to satisfy
and represent the interests in play in the conflicts, were those where there
had previously existed strong grass roots pressure for opting for greater
public participation spaces (the Water War, Bolivia); and a prior process
of building visions of the future locally (Alto Indiwasi National Park,
Colombia); or the participation of an intermediary stakeholder (an NGO or
academia) for a relatively prolonged time (the Valle Verde Case, Perú).
b) The state of natural resources and how they are managed
The relatively recentness of most of the experiences evaluated does
not help to draw very definitive conclusions about the effect of conflict
resolution strategies on the state of natural resources and how they
are managed. However, some general indicators exist to infer probable
improvements or deterioration in some cases related to institutional
changes, attitudes and sensitivities about the issue, and the ecosystem
quality.
In relation to the institutional indicator, some projects reported major
progress in terms of land zoning in areas where there are ecosystems or
implied resources, either through new plans or assuming appropriate
zoning criteria, greater environmental regulation legitimacy as protected
areas, and new articulation spaces for previously antagonistic stakeholders
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The C&C Program experience.
that individually, or as a group, could contribute in the medium to long
term to an improvement in the state of the natural resources in the
evaluated cases.
Other projects realized that there was a change in attitudes and sensitivity
toward the environmental issue that could have a favorable effect on the
natural resource quality in processes longer than included in the projects.
An example of that was recorded in relation to the efforts made to analyze
environmental problems jointly, the ascertainment of greater public
sensitivity in relation to environmental issues, the expression of explicit
willingness to conserve natural resources on the part of some leaders and
decision makers, and the positioning of new grass roots organizations
that were strengthened and capable of exercising pressure in favor of
protecting the environment.
The effect of the experiences on ecosystem quality is only clearly reflected
in those cases where the conflict resolution strategies, instead of being
solutions, caused the conflicts to worsen. Involved are cases where a clash
of visions of the development model occurred as a product of installing
mega-projects, development plans, tourism activities, etc., or where no fair,
equitable and sustainable consensus was reached to decrease the pressure
on the environment and to organize its use. In these processes, as may
be foreseen, ecosystem and resource destruction increased, along with
disorganized and in some cases, clandestine use of resources and negative
environmental management.16
c) A change in power relations
In general, balance in the group of projects is precarious in relation
to transforming the dominant power schemes, although dynamic
modifications were produced in the power relations in almost all the cases.
In fact, the periods systematized are very brief for drawing categorical
conclusions and therefore the balance may be favored by those C&C
Program projects that have been involved longer in the areas being
studied or that have a stronger link and a longer period of time in the place
of conflict. Without a doubt, in general one of the more notable aspects in
terms of dynamic modifications in power relations is the process of making
16 The Yacambú Hydrographic Watershed Projects, Venezuela; Seabed Resource Management, Chile;
Machu Pichu NP, Perú; the Los Pelambres Mining Company, Chile; unique, exceptional coastal lagoons
of the Manaure salt mines, Colombia.
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the traditionally excluded stakeholders in Latin America visible, included,
and legitimized. This is especially true of indigenous people, peasants, and
Afro American communities, as shown in the projects on the Water War in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, the Manaure salt mines, and the Indiwasi and Pacífico
Vallecaucano National Indigenous Park in Colombia, among others.
To that end, some indicators of these transformations would be, in the
case of indigenous people, re-establishing traditional community or
ethnic authorities as interlocutors for collective decisions, coordinating
the indigenous organization with the territorial police, revaluing the
indigenous rules on cohabitation, applying the way of thinking based on
their own culture in relation to the actions and strategies to follow.
In some cases, as with the Indiwasi and the Colombian Vallecaucano
Pacific, this was complemented by help from non-indigenous counselors
without any imposition of criteria and procedures. This allowed for gradual
normal trust relationships to develop in the processes and equitable
work relations with the non-indigenous stakeholders, which later eased
approaches to others, as well synergies involving legal progress with
neighboring communities.
In some of the projects developed in rural contexts, for their part, certain
local stakeholders were empowered to go from being conflict spectators
to taking leading roles in environmental management through new
collective diagnostic and reflection spaces. This promotes developing
an integral vision of the environment and the culture and strengthens
the citizens’ commitment to their setting; as well as new community
institutional arrangements that facilitate facing conflicts with third parties
with a greater balance of power.
In some inter-institutional contexts actions occurred involving pressure
and communications campaigns that provided incentives for creating new
institutional arrangements to be solved during conflicts.
This way, in several of the cases there were clear moments when the power
relations were modified enabling some progress in communications,
agreement making, and dialogue, but did not attain substantive changes
in the relationships between stakeholders or help resolve the deep causes
for conflicts, due to the resistance and maneuvering by those stakeholders
with greater power resources in order not to concede their interests.
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The C&C Program experience.
Therefore, some initiatives proposed recommendations to ensure a
balance of power among the stakeholders when managing conflicts, such
as placing “governance” indicators into practice (legitimacy and voice,
justice, results information and verification, compliance with degree of
enforcement, a sense of direction [the Marino Ballena National Park Case,
Costa Rica]); or thinking about offsetting power devices that help weak
stakeholders to deploy effective strategies to achieve their objectives,
whether in the form of social pressure or negotiations (See the Crespo
article, Chapter 3 of this volume).
d) Recognition of cultural diversity
Until a relatively short time ago, the issue of recognizing cultural
diversity was practically absent from the conventional conflict resolution
approaches. Instead universalistic approaches and methods that intended
to be applied in all contexts ruled, and to a great degree still do. They
ignored the differences in language, communications codes, time flow and
perception, institutional arrangements, standards and legal systems, and
local conflict resolution practices. However, during the last decade, major
efforts have been made to recognize cultural diversity, as a central issue in
conflict resolution practices involving ethnic groups.17
Therefore, we were interested here in exploring how and how far the
experiences evaluated took the intercultural dimension into account. A first
relevant issue lies in the fact that the group of research projects showed a
marked absence of attention to the issues within the context of mestizo
(people of mixed indigenous and Caucasian ethnicities) and urban and
rural societies since recognizing cultural diversity seems to be considered
to be mostly an indigenous issue. Therefore, with the exception of some
cases that involved indigenous populations, most of the experiences did
not reflect any special treatment of the subject.
There were even cases that involved indigenous communities where longterm ethnocentric visions were reaffirmed in the state policies that impede
special treatment for the cultural diversity issue (the Bío Bío Dam Case,
Chile), which indicates that in the socio-environmental conflict resolution
field, the challenge to building intercultural public policies still is huge.
17 As may be remembered, within the Project’s projects there are several that involve these groups:
Mapuches, in Chile; Guaraní and Weenhayek, in Bolivia; Aymara, in Arequipa, and Quechua, in Cuzco,
Perú; Inga, Afro-Colombian of the Pacific, Wayuu, and Raizales of San Andrés and Providencia, in Colombia; Tule, in Panamá; Guaymíes, in Costa Rica; and Mayas (Ma’m and Quiché), in Guatemala. Cfr. Chart 1.
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Dealing with intercultural matters was reflected in those experiences
that took into account or promoted matters such as legally adopting
principles or definitions about cultural diversity; public adopting of local
ethical codes; recognizing their own ethno-organizational forms; and
respecting local time flow and dimensions within the agreement making
or interlocution processes.
In terms of ensuring long-term recognition of cultural diversity and the
rights of indigenous people or ethnically differentiated societies, the most
important effect of some of the conflict resolution experiences evaluated
was legal adoption of cultural diversity principles, such as recognizing legal
pluralism and special jurisdictions for indigenous or black populations.
An example of this is the encounters promoted by the Centro de Acción
Legal, Ambiental y Social (CALAS) of Guatemala between indigenous
authorities from the Maya Ki´che and Mam indigenous people and official
environmental management authorities. The most significant result was
the signing of the Santa Lucía Declaratory Agreement, by means of which
the Indigenous Peoples and Civil Society Coordination Unit was created,
which seeks to take care of the matters related thereto and recognizing
the customary indigenous right to use and utilize natural resources. This
way, they were able to go from a situation with a total disregard and
lack of respect for the traditional indigenous authorities and the Mayan
standards systems to a situation where they are recognized officially and
legitimately.
The two cases where recognition was given to special jurisdictions as a
product of conflict resolution strategies being placed into practice occurred
in Colombia. One was the legal recognition that the black communities on
the Vallecaucano Pacific achieved over their territories after a long struggle
for possession and use of natural resources; the other was the declaration
of the Nukanchipa Alpa Indiwasi National Indigenous Park as the ancestral
territory of the Inga del Caquetá people.
Related to this is the legal use that happened in some cases as a product
of the conflict resolution strategies used, of some definitions related to
recognizing cultural diversity, such as the concept of territory (the black
community cases in the Vallecaucano Pacific, the Manaure salt mines,
and the Inga del Caquetá people), and the peasant concept of uses and
customs (the Water War Case in Cochabamba, Bolivia).
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The C&C Program experience.
The black community cases on the Vallecaucano Pacific and the
Nukanchipa Alpa Indiwasi National Indigenous Park are also characterized
by having achieved public adoption of local ethical codes. The former
has to do with an ethnic and territorial wellbeing plan developed by the
black communities after a long process of reaching internal agreements,
which was then accepted by the Inter-Sector Commission on Integrated
Management of the Vallecaucana Coastal Zone. In the Indiwasi National
Park case, the Inga people formulated an intercultural co-government
plan for joint management of the protected area that is currently in the
discussion process with the National Park System authorities in Colombia.
It includes a code of ethics for exercising their own non-indigenous health
management, based on the yagé (Zuluaga, 2002).
An increasingly frequently mentioned element to avoid eroding and
debilitating the institutions and the local culture in the conflict resolution
processes is the recognition of proprietary ethno-organizational ways. The
case of the Mayans in Guatemala and the Wayuu and Inga in Colombia
stood out – because of the public recognition achieved for traditional
authorities and their institutions – as interlocutors with society at large on
conflict resolution and environmental/territorial management issues.
In the Indiwasi National Park case, a “collaboration” monitoring mechanism
was even defined which provides legitimacy to the local authorities,
following traditional indigenous conduct. This mechanism consists of
submitting park management plans to the “taita (shaman) filter” which
means honesty, intention, and will by non-indigenous stakeholders, as well
as co-government plans being evaluated during the yagé ceremonies.
However, the ethno-organizational ways do not just play a role in
reproducing the local culture and its local-decision making procedures. In
some cases representing the community through a formal structure that
follows traditional local cultural frameworks may be a huge advantage
in facing conflicts with third parties and achieving a greater balance of
power in territorial or resource usage disputes. This was clearly illustrated
in the case of the peasants/migratory cattle ranchers in the Valle Central
de Tarija in Bolivia who, when they created the Asociación de Ganaderos
del Valle Central de Tarija (AGAVAT), had an evident advantage in ensuring
ownership of the migratory cattle practice posts over communities with no
collective organization.
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Perhaps the most difficult aspect, when developing conflict resolution
strategies that recognize the intercultural dimension is to respect the local
time flow and dimensions. This is a fundamental dimension in being able to
develop relationships involving trust, respect, and good communications
among stakeholders. The only case that evidenced a clear effort in that
direction was the Nukanchipa Indiwasi National Park. Here, the parties
assisting the Inga in the National Park declaration process (the Institute
of Ethnobiology), exerted great efforts in developing an intercultural
relationship that was gradual and did not impose western rhythms. It took
more than 20 years to create a sufficiently solid base to allow an approach
to the state agencies to propose creating the National Park under the
current co-government structure. This implied first dedicating time and
effort to resolving the Inga’s own intra-cultural conflicts produced by the
cultural deterioration occurring since the Spanish colonization, such that
prior to proposing joint actions with the state, they were sufficiently clear
in relation to the terms with which to suggest a collaborative relationship,
as well as in relation to respecting their vision of the future and society.
For many, twenty years is a luxury they cannot afford when resolving socioenvironmental conflicts. But if something does illustrate the Inga’s case
for us it is that most of the projects have to do with conflicts that cannot
be resolved overnight or with pre-established formulas. No matter how
much the development and conservation priorities impose rhythms and
individual priorities on us, it is evident that if the cultural particularities of
each case are not taken into account, it not only reduces the possibilities
of developing a sustainable collaboration relationship over time, but that
instead of being resolved, the conflicts continue to reproduce themselves
cyclically over time.
e) Knowledge approach, dialogue, and negotiation
Since a large part of the socio-environmental conflicts owe their origin
to a struggle over values, perceptions, or meanings about nature and its
use, another interesting key issue to explore through the experiences
generated is the way conflict resolution strategies took into account and
attained an approach to the different types of knowledge.
In fact, there were few projects that dealt with this dimension in the
conflict resolution processes evaluated, either because the researchers did
not believe it to be pertinent or because the experiences themselves did
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The C&C Program experience.
not deal with the issue. However, there were some projects that evidenced
concrete effects in that sense, in relation to generating new analytical
frameworks; combinations, complementary conditions, and synergies
among forms of knowledge; local knowledge projections; knowledge
transfer, and rejection of the dominant knowledge forms.
The former, creating new analytical frameworks, is revealed in some of the
participatory construction methodologies for knowledge proposed as local
or “universal from local up,” related to integral diagnostics of “problems
with local perceptions.” In that regard, the projects related to the Santa
Lucía Wetlands in Uruguay; Valle Verde, Peru; Providencia, Colombia; and
sustainable use of the Tola in Bolivia stand out.
In Uruguay, for example, significant progress was made in participatory
knowledge construction with key social stakeholders, “to identify values,
conflicts, stakeholders, and their relationships,” based on focus group
discussion that made it possible to identify the perception and the roles of
men and women of different ages, and activities. As part of the information
management and analysis for participatory management, work was
done with the Geographic Information System (GIS) of indicators and
stakeholders for the Santa Lucía Wetlands, which was then integrated with
the Montivideo Municipal GIS.
The combination, complementary conditions, and synergy among forms of
knowledge, on the other hand, refers to cases where there was community,
citizen, scientific, and technical knowledge exchange about protected
areas, ecosystems, and natural resources. In that regard, the projects
relating to the Indiwasi, Colombia; Bío-Bío Dams, Chile; the Colombian
Vallecaucano Pacific; the Water War, Bolivia; and the Tempisque Watershed,
Costa Rica; bear highlighting.
Another issue to consider is the public projection of the knowledge
produced in a process. In that regard, the Water War is well-known from
which local knowledge dialogue was projected worldwide as a social
resistance factor and as something related to building a new public policy
in Bolivia whose dimensions encompass the conflict transformation issue,
dealt with later in this volume.
In addition, technical knowledge transfer generally is one way: toward the
communities, as part of an information process in developing local conflict
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management strategies (the Los Pelaumbres Mining Company Case, Chile;
and the Lapa Verde Commission, Costa Rica).
Finally, an example should be mentioned where, in addition to dialogue,
a rejection of dominant knowledge forms was reported, or where there
was less mistrust in relation to technical and scientific information due
to a mixture of political and scientific competencies on the issue (the
Galápagos Case, Ecuador).
Chart 5.- Knowledge exchange
The Water War, Cochabamba, Bolivia
The Andean Vision of Water- One of the first tasks of the Consejo Interinstitucional del
Agua, CONIAG, was to attain inter-sector agreement about the vision that the Bolivians
have about water to then participate in a workshop where there were technicians and
social representatives present from Perú, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, and Bolivia. This
document was prepared in order to present the Andean vision in the Second World
Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, which was attended by peasants, representatives and the
Bolivian government.
The Bolivians contribution to the vision discussion was very important, especially
because of their focus from the cosmos-vision point of view, the water as a living being,
etc. According to the document, the Andean vision suggests that although the vision of
water in the Andean region has particularities based on the different existing indigenous
cultures, the diversity of the ecological areas, the different watershed locations, and the
social organization levels (communities, hamlets, plots, communities, etc.), common
denominators exist that should be maintained and respected.
For the Andean people, water is much more than a liquid resource. The water is
perceived as a living being, a divine being, the basis for reciprocity and complementary
postures, universal and community rights, an expression of flexibility and adaptability,
the creator and transformer, and it serves for social recreation.
The determining factors in conflict transformation
The analysis of the 30 experiences determined that there are three key
factors that determine the possibility or not of transforming conflicts:
the nature of the relationships among the stakeholders, the structural
power relations, and the dynamics and reconfigurations pertaining to the
conflicts.
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The C&C Program experience.
a) The nature of the relationships among the stakeholders
There are three key issues relative to the nature of the relationships among
the stakeholders that were determining factors in the cases where the
biggest changes and transformations in the previously described indicators
were seen: each of their action strategies; the quality of the interpersonal
relationships; and the role of intermediaries in the conflict.
In relation to the first of these points, a detailed discussion was held about
the varied action strategies used by the different stakeholders to make
their visions, interest, and value prevail within the conflicts in the different
projects.
The dynamic modifications that occurred in the experiences evaluated
in relation to the relationships among the stakeholders were part of the
results of deploying the strategies pertaining to each of them.
Two cases may illustrate the issue:
Chart 6.- Action strategies
The Galápagos, Ecuador
The fishing sector is considered to be a sector with power, but as being weak politically
and unorganized. The most important strategy for obtaining power on the part of the
fishing sector has been civil disobedience. Throughout 2004, three strikes were recorded,
in particular during the sea cucumber negotiations. The sector recognizes the efficiency
of this strategy and mentions phrases such as: “if they don’t accept us, we’ll take over
the Park…,” “they’re not used to it … when we block it, they’ll listen to us …,” “now that
we blocked it … the authorities are really worried …” Other sectors recognize that the
measures in fact are effective for the sector, but they do not believe they are legitimate
since “… the measures in fact weaken the Participatory Management System, the PMS.”
Another power strategy in the fishing sector is to gain the support of public stakeholders
external to the PMS: congressmen, the provincial council, municipalities, the Ministry
of the Interior, the National Galápagos Institute, and INGALA, among others, The
public stakeholders approach the PMS in some cases because they share a feeling of
marginalization and dissatisfaction that the population has toward the conservation
sector (Ospina, 2004).
In other cases it is because to the degree that this feeling of marginalization in relation to
the conservation sector and the “big tourism companies” is held by the population, it can
gain popular acceptance.
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Providencia, Colombia
As for transformations in relationships among the groups involved, the most notorious
and important change was what happened with the Fishermen’s Cooperative and the
fishing community headed by its representatives. For the committee, being the result
of a project advanced by the Fishermen’s Cooperative, provided it with very important
political recognition. The community organization began to be seen as legitimate and
valid in channeling the fishermen’s interests and, therefore, “fit” to be taken into account
in the discussions and negotiations in making decisions by the different institutions
related to resource management for the fishermen in the region, who are also part of the
committee.
In addition, the fishermen’s representatives increased their positioning to a good degree
because of the work they had previously done at each committee meeting, since it let
them stay informed, prepared, and holding well-argued proposals in the institutional
language. This provided them with recognition and respect, with respect to the other
entities, and when it was time to dialogue, and seek a consensus, it clearly increased
their power as stakeholders in the conflict. Likewise, this group of fishing representatives
was aware of this change in their relationship with the institutions that were members
of the committee, as a result of their commitment to and active participation in the
process.
Strictly associated with these strategies is the issue of the quality of
interpersonal relationships for those who are involved in a given conflict,
which in turn is determined by various factors: a) the strength of the local
traditions in building a consensus on collective and public matters, b) the
attention given to cultivating trust, respect and relationships of reciprocity
and equity among the stakeholders, to which end relationship ethics
codes arose as being fundamental in two cases (See Rosero and Amaya,
and Madrigal, et al., in this volume); c) the role of time in developing solid
collaboration relationships among the stakeholders; and d) the stability of
the pre-existing institutional arrangements, reflected in indicators such as
the constancy of the number of people and sectors attending meetings,
holding monthly meetings, holding local meetings, the existence of help
with minutes from the first meeting, openness to integrating new sectors,
and decision making by consensus.
All these factors come into play especially in relation to the role of
intermediary agents, made up mostly during the research by the people
executing the projects themselves and also by technicians, some of
whom occasionally have financial support from NGOs. In almost all the
experiences where they were involved, they were people with significant
time on the job locally, situated in strategic decision making posts, and/or
linked to the communities and their trust. Other intermediaries were some
communications media, multilateral agencies, and institutional or personal
advisors and allies.
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The C&C Program experience.
All together, it could be said that these intermediary stakeholders proposed
themselves or embodied building inter-sector, inter-institutional and interdisciplinary alliances at different territorial levels, to contribute to or make
stakeholder legitimization visible or to mediate within the conflict to make
sure the phases or the confrontation dynamics in general do not become
obstructed. To that end they contributed positively in some cases to
sensitizing local authorities to become involved in searching for solutions
and in conflict management, through building dialogue languages
and unblocking conflictive situations, and in finalizing and circulating
information.
They contributed various ways in their role as advisors and allies:
reporting on conflict dimensions, providing communications and
organizational support to specific stakeholders; clarifying technical issues
in conflict analysis; training about technical and legal issues; encouraging
participatory research; assuming the bridge role in building interlocution
and agreement agendas with national public institutions. With the
indigenous populations, they contributed to revaluing local culture to the
indigenous populations and outsiders; opening recognition bridges and
doing away with distrust; clarifying perspectives and connecting elements
that are necessary for community or institutional analysis; making
agreement viable; and serving as a catalyst for internal contradictions.
Some complex roles were assumed by the communications media, whose
role was at first key in disseminating information about the conflict but
then, in some cases, turned in favor of some economic interests in the
conflict. For some multilateral agencies such as UNESCO and the World
Bank, they on occasion played a pressure exertion role to force conflict
resolution (Machu Pichu, Perú) or to bias the sense of public management,
ignoring rural community aspirations (GTZ in Bolivia, Cochabamba:
“It minimized rural participation and biased peasant assimilation and
projection in workshops and agreement setting” – quoted from the
project’s final report).
In many cases, the external advisors were key factors in conflict
transformation, at first in a positive sense in internal community
information production and socialization which was decisive in building a
social consensus for reaching agreements.18 However, this incidence was
18 Indiwasi, Colombia; Bío Bío, Chile; the Tempisque Watershed, Costa Rica; the Water War, Bolivia;
Petrolera-Weenhayek, Bolivia; the Los Pelambres Mining Company, Chile; the Manaure salt mines, Colombia, etc.
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gradually negative, particularly in the case of the Manaure salt mines, once
the first advisors were relieved of their position by the dividing role of
different regional political figures, which occurred based on institutional
offers of rural subsidies or community support, and in creating local
offices for developing private interests and through the state entities
involved, which had a major influence on rupturing and fractioning local
organization.
A fundamental aspect of this issue is the complex role of the state in
negotiations between development projects and indigenous people,
which was assumed as secondary in Bolivia (oil on Guaraní and Weenhayek
land), and critical in the cases in Chile and Manaure, Colombia, as a function
of imposing specific results within the conflict in favor of private business
interests.
b) Structural power relationship expressed within political, standards, and
institutional frameworks.
With regard to this issue, a first relevant aspect consists of the constitutional
and legal definitions in favor of inter-institutional, environmental,
participatory, and concerted management; of intercultural adjustments
within ethnic diversity and cultural contexts; and the recognition of
legal pluralism and community jurisdictional exercises; all of which are
issues recognized in many national constitutions that were renewed in
Latin America during the 90’s of the last century. This element, however,
in almost all the countries lacks practical application of these precepts,
subordinated by the current development model and by the imposition of
particular interests by the dominant economic and political groups.
In second place lie the preferred public policies and/or collaboration
promoters in relation to their formulation (concerted proposals for
public environmental and social policies; integral negotiations with
indigenous peoples), or their management scenarios (instances of shared
management, communications media democratization, etc.)
Thirdly, the existing institutions opened to concerted efforts, such as some
protected area systems, national, regional, and local legislative proposal
commissions, or organizational instances in civil society. A good example
of the latter is the public indigenous associations such as a legitimate
interlocutor in the proposed co-government structure in the case of the
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The C&C Program experience.
Indiwasi, Colombia, where the ethnic organizational institution (shaman)
recovered and fulfilled a fundamental role in transforming intercultural
conflict over territory. The result of the transformation was relevant here:
an indigenous process influences creating a non-indigenous institution (a
national nature park) and its work policies.
However, in general this proclivity toward positive conflict transformation,
present in the text of some legal and institutional frameworks, has
enormous difficulty in delving deeper in some countries where experiences
occurred because of:
-
-
-
The enormous asymmetries among the stakeholders involved in
the conflicts (economic groups, multinational companies, poor
and weak national governments, local territorial entities, local
organizations and communities, etc.).
The strong political and economic dependence by the municipal
governments on the central government.
The lack of an official response to the request for title to lands in
various countries.
The absence of an active citizen participation culture related
specifically to “learned desperation,” expressed in statements
such as “you can’t do anything when you go up against the
state.”
The lack of sensitization and information about what can be done
for citizen rights.
The fear of manipulation and of becoming involved in processes
marked by persecution within authoritarian contexts.
The low self-esteem and confidence of the community
stakeholders.
And finally, the weakness of public institutions and social
organizations to impede the slowness of the processes and to
precipitate results in them; where they are determining factors
in resource limitation, organizational instability, systematic
functionary change, and the absence of clear participation
mechanisms in the public institutional offices.
Other decisive aspects consist of the tensions between legality and state
legitimacy (law generating and enforcement organizations), the lack of a
citizen culture and special equity institutional status policies, overlaps in
institutional competencies, public policy sector contradictions such as
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environmental contradiction in relation to economics; that tend to impose
themselves within conflicts, with nefarious effects on the environment and
the indigenous populations’ living conditions.
In general, based on these experiences, modification of structural relations
of power was contradictory and unequal involving at time progress and
in other important setbacks, in settling conflicts and public policies. There
were however positive conflict transformation experiences, some of which
are illustrated below.
Chart 7.- Modifications of structural relations of power in conflicts
The Tempisque Watershed, Costa Rica
The environmental conflict in Bolsón and Ortega (CABO in Spanish) shows that local
alternative conflict management (GALA in Spanish) is part of the same process, of a
continuum; they are mutually propellant and together empower conditions for social
change for “adaptive adjustment” in social relationships.
The profound asymmetry of power among the leading stakeholders in the conflict
locally (company-community group) did not allow the conditions for negotiation or
settlement to be created, since until the times with the greatest tension in the conflict,
the community group was not recognized as a social stakeholder or as being fit for
negotiations. A contribution to this was the ambiguous intervention of local institutions
with environmental authority, based on recent and unknown legislation about the role
of the state in wetland conservation. -- they showed technical inexperience in valuing
and delimiting these ecosystems and in facing the CABO demands. Within this political
and local institutional context, the community group sought national and international
allies with environmental authority and political influence. Likewise, it took advantage of
the conjunction of the preparations for the Ramsar Convention to be held in Costa Rica,
which promoted wetland management and conservation with a community base.
The intervention by these external stakeholders allowed for legitimizing the community
group’s demands on the company, instead of leveling the “playing field” locally.
However, GALA’s positive impact on the environment and on the stakeholders involved
in the conflict shows that community group management based on alliances with the
maximum national and international environmental authorities may at this point modify
local scenarios. In addition, it contributes to community initiatives acquiring alternative
forms of conflict management.
Enriching the local culture through scientific knowledge contributed to setting
the foundation for GALA. The popular concept of the “lowlands” on the part of the
community group, based on the social importance assigned it by its direct users,
was enriched through the alliance with the Wetlands Department of the Universidad
Nacional. The local stakeholders incorporated scientific knowledge about wetland
ecological dynamics that impacted its GALA project to the degree that it broadened
its territorial vision of the environmental problem. This made it possible for them
to understand the need to promote concerted management among the different
stakeholders with impact on the Tempisque wetlands and stimulate the company to
incorporate the wetland concept and its importance into its productive rationality.
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The C&C Program experience.
The Colombian Pacific
As the primary result of the analysis, it may be stated that management of conflicts over
territory and natural resource use in the Valecaucano Pacific, Colombia, has historically
evolved from fortifying unilateral positions, defended in may cases by the use of
weapons and the creation of alliances between sectors or ethnic groups in virtue of
the coincidences between their interests and cultural interpretations and from there
to opening collective construction spaces where all the social sectors and public and
private institutional sectors with interests in the region participate.
Since this is a historical analysis, it cannot be stated whether a change in the conflict
itself may have existed about possessing the land and using its resources as a
consequence of the action-research process. However, what is clear is that the reflection
brought up in the historic research and the conflict management proposal described
next seeks to generate an impact on the way in which the regional stakeholders
approach the collective construction spaces, where opposing interests are immersed
with an impact that will only be able to be measured in time periods that greatly exceed
the period in which the action-research is carried out. To the degree that the regional
stakeholders reflect on the historical evolution of territorial conflict and natural resource
usage, and appropriate the proposed instruments for managing that conflict, it will be
possible to establish significant changes in the way in which the collective construction
processes are treated.
In almost all the experiences the institutional weaknesses of the social
agreements were made evident, based specifically on the scant link
between protection policies (land zoning, environmental ordinances) and
economic and social promotion; the limitations on the public territorial
articulations by the nation states; problems in the decentralization
construction and functioning process; whether or not to institutionalize
applying the previous consultation provided in the WLO’s Convention
169, signed and appraised by most of the countries in question; the
non-resolution of the agrarian problem; the authoritarian, ethnocentric
and unilateral character of the country’s institutional, legal and political
framework (especially apparent in Bolivia and Perú) and the verticality and
centralism of the decision making processes, along with the weak local
organization and scant social mobilization capacity, especially in countries
such as Chile and Guatemala.
Added to all of this are the existing legal and institutional limitations on
modifying previously agreed upon decisions in the political spheres and
power economics; the institutional weakness and superimposition of
functions; and the lack of political will to coordinate public actions.
Finally, to these negative structural factors for conflict transformation,
present in the legal and institutional frameworks, is added what has
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been analytically proposed as the role of broader social contexts, which
are related to the dominant fashion of the globalization process in Latin
America. Although they make the social movement and alternative
information network building more dynamic, as will be seen later on in
light of experiences such as Cochabamba, they “generate dominant trends
in society transformations, such as the apparently unshakeable conflict
framework” (Chile, the Bío Bío Project).
Within this context, “the state generates conflicts and reaction by civil
society sectors such as resistance movements” (Bolivia, the Water War
Projects, and Colombia, the Manaure salt mines Project); neo-liberal
public company privatization policies, governments converted into
agents of private interests; establishment of “para-stateisms” in public
functions through NGOs with a proclivity for these tasks; the absence of
solid institutional policies that make the conflict management processes
depend more on people than on institutions; economic and financial
inconsistencies; implicit government minimizing policies in friction with
the economic sectors that interestingly induce public inefficiency when it
comes to measuring and solving conflicts; local isolation, communication
fragmentation; and entrance into the conflicts by diffuse stakeholders in
globalized scenarios. All these issues weaken the possibility of or prevent
building and proposing sustainable public policies.
They have an influence on or arise from what must be considered to be
the Latin America baseline in conflict evolution: concentration of capital
and wealth; dependency; inequality in resource distribution, poverty,
difficult unequal access to the market, basic services, and information;
marginalization and exclusion of large social sectors; inequality in access
to the legal system (immunity, discrimination, justice crises, legal process
costs and complexity, etc.); the crisis in the development model due to
not being sustainable and inadequate in relation to the natural base; lack
of a democratic institutional culture; political crises expressed as a lack
of public institution legitimacy, and “client-ism,” corruption, populism,
violence; etc.19.
However, as was stated earlier, the globalization process paradoxically
stimulates positive aspects in conflict transformation: the fabric of
Latin American social and natural diversity is increasingly visible in the
19 “Base line” which remains implicit for all the projects as a group, as occurs with the state of natural
resources involved in conflicts, which could be two large fields of action for going into more depth in
developing the C&C Program in its new phases (see later on).
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The C&C Program experience.
cultural identities in politics and in consensus building; the presence of
global environmental agendas within relationship and local contexts;
the process in public opinion’s environmental awareness; the relative
universal transparency (information) in democratic government transition
empowers opening social control spaces; the emergence of new issues
and subjects on political agendas (diverse citizenries; environmental,
cultural, and economic social rights; the indigenous peoples and the Afro
American communities; the regional peasant cultures; local traditions of
reaching agreement in national scenarios, etc.), as a base for social and
institutional discourse articulation, social and environmental regulations
and institutionalities, and new relationships with the international human
rights community, multilateral organizations, and NGOs.
c) Conflict dynamics and reconfigurations
Transformations in power relations develop through true social dynamics
that are lived within the flux of conflicts and may be distinguished by two
primary aspects or dimensions: a) conflict configuration and development
scales; and b) the temporary conditions of their processes.
As for scales, various types of conflicts may be recognized within the
C&C Program universe, based on the transcendence between one and
the next, from local to international, from regional to national, and other
components such as stakeholder articulations, institutional arrangements,
and transformation progress and setbacks.
Table 6.- Dynamics based on conflict scale diversity
DYNAMICS BASED ON CONFLICT PROJECT
SCALE DIVERSITY
Local conflicts that transcend toward
national and international settings.
Machu Pichu, Perú, and the Guanacaste
Wetlands, Costa Rica.
Social conflicts that were transformed
from interest negotiation into agreeing
to set public policy at different scales.
The Social Water War, Cochabamba, and the
processes in the indigenous Mayan territories,
Guatemala.
Providencia, Galápagos, and Indiwasi.
Conflicts that articulated local,
regional and/or national stakeholders
(community, academic, NGOs, territorial
and sector entities), around institutional
arrangements (management
committees, work tables, etc.).
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DYNAMICS BASED ON CONFLICT PROJECT
SCALE DIVERSITY
Conflicts with progress and setbacks
in reaching agreements that
ended up not being fulfilled due
to unilateral imposition of interests
and reaffirmation of hegemonic and
exclusionary logic by the state and
economic groups.
The Manaure salt mines, Colombia, and the
indigenous Weenhayek people vs. the oil
company in Bolivia.
In addition, the temporary conditions of the processes turn out to be,
without a doubt, a fundamental issue in the basic conceptualization of
environmental issues and in transforming structural power factors such as
those set forth herein. For example, in the case of the Manaure salt mines,
long incubation periods for new scenarios and issues in the conflict gave
way to the emergence of confrontational stages where the stakeholders’
action strategies intensified, as did their projection on the media and
related public authorities or on new stakeholders emerging in the conflicts,
based on the new political and economic realities created by the public
reform and economic relationship globalization process in relation to the
resource that is the subject of the conflict, salt (opening and privatizing the
state company, the fall of the state monopoly, and the creation of private
oligopolies, etc.).
This set of phenomena brings the analysis to what can be called a conflict’s
historical dimension, understood to be the depth of the scope of its
transformation in relation to the social structures themselves. Few projects
worked explicitly on this dimension: in Colombia the projects for the
Manaure salt mines (See Chart 8), the Vallecaucano Pacific (See Rodríguez
in this volume), the Indiwasi Natural Indigenous Park (See Rosero and
Amaya in this volume), and Providencia are relevant. They display the
importance of this dimension in conflicts, to precisely state both the results
and the impact of the social and natural processes taken into account.
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The C&C Program experience.
Chart 8.- Process dynamics and historic dimension. A case
The Manaure Salt Mines, Colombia
The effective social construction achieved by the agreement as a political and
institutional process in relation to contributing to forging a rights recognition horizon
and a social and political inclusion policy for the Wayuu at Manaure, has been very costly
for the community and the country. The Wayuu have been excluded from a particular
space that is essential to their current social reproduction, centered on industrial and
semi-industrial salt production. While they were making progress in the local setting
in relation to their rights being formally recognized, and in relation to maintaining
the expectation that the agreement would be fulfilled, the conditions for industrial
salt production and distribution in the country were changing in other national and
international scenarios. Along with them the Wayuu’s enormous family and local
resources were also changing.
Thus, their progress in political inclusion did not match their socio-economic one, and
much less the socio-cultural inclusion promised in the agreement.
While the successive governments were de-structuring the public patrimony of the
national salt production industry with the delivery of previously protected salt industry
spaces to a few economic groups and with the material destruction of the industrial
Manaure establishment, the enormous investments made in it over many decades came
apart and local assistance was set up in a subsidiary fashion, selectively oriented to very
precise cores in the community, as the visible local face of a dark privatization process in
relation to both salt management and consolidation of the Wayuu’s articulation spaces
in the country. This is the matter that was to concern the community and the public
opinion sectors interested in the two issues underlying the two Manaure social conflict
issues in the future. They are essential to Colombians’ identity and quality of life: food
safety and the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity, both of which are affected by the
agreement not being fulfilled and are related to the Wayuu’s rights derived from the
constitution, the laws, and the agreement itself.
In terms of the social conflict, it went from a clear local scenario articulated nationally
to a complex, changing globalized space where the power stakeholders became diffuse
for the local stakeholders at least as far as their acting publicly in power relations with
the national government and congress plus economic financial groups which are
institutional management subjects pertaining to a political project or a development
project in particular within the apparent disassociation of the economy and politics.
At the time reaching an agreement was made viable because it was able to transform
power conditions by surmising a scenario that was local and national at the same
time where the regional power factors were revitalized and because above all else, it
generated a socially excluded subject recognition dynamic, this time an indigenous
community. But then, repressed and weakened by the adverse handling of the proposals
stipulated to transform it, the conflict reverted what was national into something
regional when the community, in its desperation in the face of stagnation in reaching
an agreement, or the issue blockages centrally, delegated the political mediation and
technical assessment to some regional stakeholders. They easily fell into the arms
of traditional “client-ist” groups in these settings, for whom socially excluding the
indigenous has been a condition of the political dynamics.
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It was the latter scenario where over the last thirteen years, the Wayuu generational
takeover was finalized whose current primary stakeholders, the children of traditional
leaders or younger siblings of the agreement negotiation leaders, assumed tasks and
initiatives without any clarity as to confrontation or negotiation. This situation gave rise
to individualized institutional protagonist relationships that have barely sought formal
recognition as subjects of management and interlocution, linking the old vindication
and social issues to the assistance projects interestingly offered through official
manipulation.
Thus a profound “de-centering” of the work issues and the struggle over salt was
produced. They were concrete forms of a new Wayuu social domination and exclusion
process, this time by turning their culture and resources into something folkloric: an
isolated, relatively closed handcraft project, especially weavings; and diffuse tourism
and seaport mega-projects. Interestingly, they still agitate from time to time about local
development management and in some illusive sense as the only concrete elements in
the 1991 agreement negotiation.
A proposal for illustrating conflict transformation factors
Reading and analyzing the 30 research projects housed in the Program
has made it possible to prepare an instrument to graphically illustrate the
primary elements that determine the dynamics of socio-environmental
conflict transformation in our region. These elements are:
a) The conflict evolution levels. These fluctuate from situations where
conflicts are latent or where confrontation due to negation of
the other, unilateral impositions, and repression dominates, to
situations where the conflict has become explicit and is in the
improvement process due to recognition of “the other” and the
search for mutual understanding.
b) The stakeholders’ strategies in the conflict interaction, whether
adversarial or collaborative;
c) The power and legitimacy factors, expressed as a range that
runs from particular interest and/or public policy application,
inclusive and exclusive in each case; and
d) The progress in solving them either through management
approaches, transformative approaches or through building
“governmentality” conditions in a given case (Cfr. the essay by
Carlos Crespo in this volume).
Figure 1 presented conflict evolution aspects based on the first two types
of elements. In this case the aim is to correlate the interactions among
the stakeholders with the power relations and the crystallization of this
evolution in reference to the last two elements. If the strategies are crossed
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The C&C Program experience.
with the evolution levels , and attention is paid to the power dimensions
that express the transformation (“crystallizations” of particular interests or
public policies), the transformation can be graphed, inscribing the initial
evolution triangle within a reference framework about the status and
results of a conflict process. The graph is complex indeed (See Figure 2), but
it may be used to analytically represent the process within a determined
systematization:
Figure 2.- A graphic illustration of conflict transformation
Conflict Evolution
Gobernmentality
Building*
Transformation
Adversarial Strategies
Unilateral Strategies
Management
Management
--------------------------------
Transformation
--------------------------------------
------------------------------------
Depth of the Conflict Resolution Process.
---------------------------------------------
Collaborative Strategies
Depth of the Conflict Resolution Process.
Shared and/or Jointly Defined Strategies
Latent Conflict/ Confrontation: repression/unilateral use of power
Cristallizations of the Process (All-inclusive Interests)
Conflict is made explicit: mutual agreements/ acknowledgement of the other
Gobernmentality
Building*
Crystallizations of the Process (All-exclusive interests)
Crystallizations of the process (legitimate public rules of play**)
Crystallizations of the process (illegitimate public rules of play**)
*Governmentality (structural and integral factors of governance – including political, social,
and cultural issues such as mutual recognition among stakeholders, legitimacies, public
institutionality, etc.) (Cfr. the essay by Carlos Crespo in this volume).
**Legitimate public rules of play (recognized by all parties).
The aim of this instrument is to propose a conceptual and methodological
reference point to analyze given experiences. Many of its concrete
possibilities may be seen in the light of the experiences included in this
volume. No more progress is being made here in this respect because the
idea is for the authors to elaborate on it later through future joint efforts of
critical analysis on the subject in our countries. 20
20 Some development work has been done on the Latin American group of socio-environmental conflicts, included as an epilogue to this volume.
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THE ACTION-RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS TO TRANSFORMING
SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS
Another of the Program’s dimensions that is interesting to explore, other
than what was discussed previously, but related to it, is the possible
contribution of the research projects to consolidating the conflict
management and/or transformation processes.
Based on the character of the announcements that C&C issued in both
phases, almost all the projects applied an action-research focus that was
developed in many cases with the participation of key stakeholders within
the conflict.
Among the more frequently achievements mentioned by the investigators
in the use of this research approach are: action-research provided for
reflection by the stakeholders about the cause of conflicts and the
methods used to resolve them and to create consensual visions in favor
of conservation. All this helped to systematize, organize, and socialize the
local processes (or historic memory) in resolving conflicts and building
concerted visions. This favored progress toward a change in attitude,
perceptions and the conflict stakeholders’ willingness, or strengthened
the local stakeholders and the links between the researchers and the grass
roots organizations.
This was achieved through a broad range of methodological approaches
that varied from interest and conflict analysis workshops, social construct
analysis, critical reality analysis, development of local organizational
capabilities, and the use of community mapping. Chapter 3 in this book
has a sample of some of these methods and a detailed discussion of their
contributions and concrete limitations as to conflict transformation in
some of the cases analyzed.
Despite its contributions, action-research faces serious limitations to
consolidating conflict management and/or transformation processes
that should be highlighted here. Some research projects (for example,
the Manaure salt mines, Colombia; the Marino Ballena National Park,
Costa Rica, and the Galápagos, among others) faced, and still do, many
difficulties in synchronizing the times scheduled for field activities, with
the community life times, and especially with the dynamics of the local
organization representatives. For example, the salt mine project, faced with
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The C&C Program experience.
community divisions caused by the demands of the legal representatives
and the difficulties in agreement negotiation, confronted difficulties in
acting in favor of all the Wayuu sectors, without becoming involved in
those differences.
In addition, in certain cases conflicts had different faces, processes, and
transformations that evidenced other conflict levels that were not always
originally considered by the researchers. This, generated in the concrete
case of, for example, the Providencia project in Colombia, other forms of
unexpected conflicts that changed the course of the “research problems”,
imposing paths that were not seen at the beginning, but that in any case
were enriching for the alternative conflict management process.
Also, with inter-ethnic relationships within the conflicts, limitations were
evidenced on working in all the communities initially included in the
studies, due in part to underestimating the technical difficulties and the
cultural barriers to applying pre-established action-research approaches.
One of the factors that was seldom taken into account by the researchers
was the need to allow for flexibility in developing project activities, for
instance to sensitize the territorial authorities about the research objectives
or make adaptations to local languages. In some cases it became necessary
to make methodological adjustments along the way to assume the role of
mediator and facilitator in conflicts.
Another order of problems in inserting the projects into the conflict
resolution processes and in valuating their impact, had to do with more
general factors such as current national policies and processes as complex
as war (in the case of Colombia).
CONCLUSIONS
Individually, the 30 C&C research projects provide us with a wide range
of information that will help us better focus our efforts to resolve future
socio-environmental conflicts in the region.
Conceptual issues
The conceptual approaches used for socio-environmental conflict
resolution varied as much as the 30 conflicts studied. This is evident
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by how many different research concepts were used to approach the
aforementioned projects as well as the different conflict resolution
approaches adopted by each project.
Generally however, there is evidence to suggest that the Program is slowly
moving from a “conflict management” approach that favors instrumental
and methodological conflict solutions, towards a broader approach that
emphasizes the political nature of the socio-environmental conflicts in our
region, and that prioritizes structural long-term solutions to them. This is
reflected in the differences there are between the projects of the Program’s
1st and 2nd phase regarding the predominant conceptualizations
concerning the socio-environmental conflict represented in both groups
of projects, and in the understanding of their structural complex causes.
It is also evident in a number of phase 2 projects that point out that
an integral approach to the issue requires concepts that open up
discussion about conflicts and their causes in relation to broader social
and institutional realities, and in this way to be able to transcend the
merely instrument part of conflict resolution. This implies focusing socioenvironmental conflict resolution as part of sustainable development
processes and promoting good governmentability and inter-cultural
practices within the state.
Despite this shift in approach between the two Program phases, many of
the projects make it explicitly or implicitly clear that there is a considerable
conceptual void when it comes to conflict resolution approaches and
analysis. Collectively building a conceptual framework that addresses
the reality and nature of socio-environmental conflicts in our region has
become one of the greatest challenges that we who do research in this
field will have to face in the future.
Conflict resolution strategies
Many more socio-environmental conflict resolution strategies are
being used in our region than those conventionally considered, such as
reconciliation, negotiation, conciliation and arbitration.
Using one or another of these strategies depends on the stakeholders
involved who will promote or develop them, the power resources
they have available, and the power relations that exist between them.
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The C&C Program experience.
Interestingly, the projects reveal that State stakeholders tend to go with
strategies that favor a more efficient, organized, and in some cases, more
equitable environmental and territorial management. On the other hand,
NGOs, and grassroots organizations, tend to go with strategies that seek
greater respect for and attention to local perspectives and forms of social
organization in environmental planning and implementing development
policies.
These different ways of dealing with conflict resolution reflect a latent
tension in the region between what is collaborative and what is
adversarial, as possible ways of resolving socio-environmental conflicts. An
important part of the collaborative solutions are being promoted by State
stakeholders that seek to maintain the existing power relations, without
questioning or substantially modifying the deeper causes that give rise to
the conflicts. In many cases, this becomes obvious participatory decision
making and environmental planning processes that do not go beyond
symbolic and social co-option exercises, instead of rights and responsibility
distribution processes in environmental management and use.
On the other hand, grassroots organizations and in many cases the NGOs,
rather than opting for collaborative strategies, tend to turn to more
adversarial strategies as a way of generating the conditions necessary for
dialogue and in some cases, possible collaboration.
This questions the viability per se of the non-adversarial approaches being
able to resolve environmental conflicts in Latin America. In situations
where there are marked differences in power, as is characteristic in the
region which is adversarial, it frequently becomes a necessary condition in
order to make room for more equitable and just collaboration processes.
From results obtained from the 30 research projects, it is clear that the
viability of collaborative socio-environmental conflict management and
the sustainability of long term agreements, depends to a large extent, on
the possibility of overcoming the large power asymmetries existing in our
region. The research projects reveal, that many times in order to achieve
this, more than “manage a conflict” one has to make it emerge, promote
it, and feed it so that the weaker stakeholders can be strengthened and be
in a more advantageous position to jointly dialogue and build consensual
solutions with other stakeholders.
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In many cases this implies the use of adversarial methods in order to
apply social pressure such as protests, marches, and lobbying. It is also
true though that a number of projects, which applied adversarial conflict
resolution mechanisms, also showed that social pressure is not enough
to ensure the necessary conditions needed for dialog and social change.
Social pressure is much more effective when it is accompanied by a
previous process at the local level concerning the construction of visions
of the future and a classification of perspectives and interest.
This is precisely where the Program’s value becomes evident in the absence
and/or weaknesses of the State with regard to conflict resolution. The C&C
Program, because of its very research nature, has to date had a limited role
in supporting profound social changes in the socio-environmental conflicts
studied. However, it is compensating, to a certain point, the huge absence
and weaknesses of the States in managing and resolving environmental
conflicts.
Today we unquestionably live in a period our region in which NGOs,
grassroots organizations, the academic sector, and to a lesser degree, the
business sector, are assuming many of the conventional responsibilities of
the State. Within that context, the Program is not only, not exempt, but it is
also a good reflection of this reality.
NGOs and the academic sectors have so far assumed, with greater
emphasis, the tasks of evaluating conflict resolution experiences that
are currently under way and of suggesting new approaches that make
it possible to generate more just, equitable, sustainable environmental
management in the region. Although in some cases in the research there
was co-participation by some governmental stakeholders, the real motor
behind the projects were these two sectors.
The effect of the experiences
Most of the experiences evaluated evidence few substantial contributions
in long-term conflict transformation, particularly in terms of developing
more just and equitable relations among the stakeholders, or in changes
concerning power relations, or in modifying the dominant institutional
and political frameworks.
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The C&C Program experience.
This is due, in part, to the fact that most of the processes evaluated only
have a relatively short lifetime, and conflict transformation is something
that can only be observed in the long term due to the complex causes
behind it. However, the lack of conceptual frameworks that help to
understand and analyze the complex nature of conflicts prior to trying to
resolve them, contributes to the fact that the strategies put into practice
mostly remain at a superficial level. The marked power asymmetries
that characterize the conflicts studied, also strongly limit the road to
transformation.
Therefore, more than profound transformations, the projects indicate that
there have been achievements in terms of building consensual visions,
promoting dialogue among the stakeholders and the formulation of public
policies that positively contribute to developing a culture of dialogue and
agreement among the stakeholders. In some cases these achievements
last over time and become consolidated, but in others there are major
setbacks that force the stakeholders to re-think strategies. This tells us that
more than being a static processes, conflict transformation should be seen
as a dynamic, constantly moving process. What at times may be seen as a
major achievement, after a time may not be so, and vice versa, depending
on how the strategies are being articulated among the stakeholders in
response to their respective interests, values, and social perspectives. They
may or may not be built on public policies that acknowledge the diversity
of interests and world-views.
The experiences evaluated indicate that the intermediary agents such as
NGOs, academics institutions, and in many cases, even personal advisors,
play a major role in this process by both helping to strengthen the weaker
stakeholders and filling the huge void of Latin American states in their role
of mediators. The quality of interpersonal relationships, and particularly
building solid trust relations that respect different stakeholders’ rhythms
and notions of time, stand out as a key element to be taken into account
during the mediation processes.
Among the structural challenges in the political and institutional
frameworks that may block this process and that must be confronted in
the future by the different stakeholders, stand out: the existing legal and
institutional limitations on modifying previously agreed upon decisions in
political and economic power spheres; the institutional weakness and the
overlap of functions; marked political and economic dependence by the
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municipal governments on the central government; the lack of political
will to coordinate public actions, the absence of civic culture and of
institutionalized equity policies.
The C&C Program’s impact
The C&C Program’s impact may be measured at two levels: a) the
contribution by each research project in promoting and consolidating
change or building consensus among the stakeholders, and b) the scope
of Program in relation to the nature of conflicts in the region.
As for the former, the Program substantially contributed in: a) supporting
local processes which helped the stakeholders reflect about the cause of
conflicts and the methods used to resolve them and to create consensual
visions in favor of conservation; b) helping to systematize, organize and
socialize the local processes (or the historic memory) in conflict resolution
and building agreed upon visions; c) helping to advance toward a change
in attitude, perceptions and willingness on the stakeholders’ participating
in the conflicts, and d) strengthening local stakeholders and the links
between researchers and grass roots organizations. These contributions
are seen more clearly and concretely in the projects in phase 2, where there
was a clear effort from the beginning to create a common language and
participatory methodology for analyzing the conflicts by using methods to
analyze Power – Interest – Legitimacy (PIL) or Power – Interest- Need (PIN).
All of this indicates that the action-research approach may play an
important role in strengthening the key stakeholders in the conflicts or
dialogue and consensus processes among them, although not necessarily
in effective and long-term conflict transformation. Some problems that
still need to be solved or challenges that may possibly continue to be
confronted when using this research approach include: a) the limitations
imposed by the inter-ethnic relationships to develop participatory
research processes, b) the need to develop appropriate informed consent
processes to avoid the research itself turning into a source of conflicts,
c) openness to the research triggering or causing other conflict levels
or phases to emerge, d) synchronization of the times scheduled for field
activities, with the community life times and especially the dynamics of
the local representative organizations, and e) more general factors such
as the current national policies, and such complex processes as war or
the imposition of polarizing or simplifying policies for social conflicts
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The C&C Program experience.
that complicate or prevent the research process as was foreseen at the
beginning.
As for the Program’s scope in relation to the nature of environmental
conflicts, we can conclude the following:
-
In the future it would be ideal to achieve a clearer link between
the individual experiences and the globalized nature of the
environmental conflicts in the region.
-
The Program has not been able to significantly integrate public
managing entities, companies or large civil society foundations,
perhaps as a result of a particular bias towards strengthening
grass roots stakeholders in the conflict resolution processes
when designing the announcements. In the future, an evaluation
would need to be made about whether it is of interest to more
actively integrate State and private enterprise stakeholders, or
to maintain this particular bias.
-
More than in-depth research, the funded projects systematized the
conflict resolution experiences. This is due in large part to the
existing conceptual limitations at the time of conflict analysis.
Therefore, in order to be able to realize the complex nature of
the conflicts in our region, it is important in the future to support
processes with more reflection and conceptual construction in
relation to the subject.
-
It is evident that, given the shift that is in evidence in the program
from a conflict management approach towards a conflict
transformation approach, currently the program leans more
toward the second approach than the first. However, greater
clarity in the Program’s actions in the future will require a clearer
positioning in relation to one or another line of thinking and
action.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CROSSROADS IN LATIN AMERICA
About a necessary phase 3
One last conclusion is evident from the lessons learned throughout the
C&C process: the importance of Program continuity. This is important
considering the wealth of approaches in socio-environmental conflict
resolution and the results obtained from them promoting environmental
public policies that contribute to peace and sustainable development in
Latin America.
The first aspect involved in ensuring the continuity of the program is
sharing the results throughout the region and within each participating
country. Another one includes consolidating its components and the
existing interactions among its members, through exchanges like the
ones that took place on the second phase of the program on themes like
indigenous peoples, protected areas and rural-urban contexts.
This process could be developed through a transition phase, in which
a “C&C Network” is formally structured with the support of a focal group
that takes on board the organization of a data base of people, research
teams and participating institutions together with development of the
communication strategy. A possible step in this direction would be the
dissemination and discussion of lessons, through which the strengths
and limitations of phases 1 and 2 are adequately discussed and the profile
of a new phase, including alliances and funding strategies, are jointly
defined among the Program members. A possible work horizon for the
C&C Network would be to develop four themes that have jet not been
sufficiently addressed in the Program: the impact of conflict resolution
strategies on the state of natural resources, environmental conflicts in
urban contexts, inequity and the crisis of the judicial system and of the
relationship with nature in Latin America and the impact of globalization
on local and regional contexts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND/OR SOURCES CONSULTED:
BUCKLES, Daniel. (Ed.) (2000). Cultivar la paz. Conflicto y colaboración en el
manejo de los recursos naturales. Ottawa, Canada, IDRC.
CARRIZOSA UMAÑA, Julio. (2001) ¿Qué es ambientalismo? La visión
ambiental compleja. Bogotá, CEREC – PNUMA - IDEA, Universidad Nacional
de Colombia.
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The C&C Program experience.
CHEVALIER, Jacques (2003). [email protected]
DOUROJEANNI, A. (1994). La gestión del agua y las cuencas en América
Latina. Revista de la CEPAL, Nº 53, Santiago, Chile, August, pp. 111-127.
FOUCAULT, Michel (1991). “Gubernamentalidad”. En Espacios de Poder.
Various editions of La Piqueta. Madrid, Spain.
GUIMARAES, Roberto (1999). “Aterrizando una Cometa: Indicadores
Territoriales de Sustentabilidad”. In Ricalde, T (ed.) La Economía Ecológica
como Ecología Humana. CESU/UNPD. La Paz, Bolivia.
NEGRI, Tony and Michael Hardt (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard
University Press. (See www.negri.es.org. There are various editions in
Spanish: Hardt, Michael and Tony Negri. 2001. Imperio. Bogotá, Ediciones
Desde Abajo.).
RED MESOAMERICANA DE CONFLICTOS SOCIO-AMBIENTALES (2000). Serie
Del Conflicto a la Colaboración #3. San José, Costa Rica.
RODRÍGUEZ, Manuel and Guillermo Espinoza (2002). Gestión ambiental
en América Latina y el Caribe. Evolución , tendencias y principales prácticas.
Washington, World Development Bank, Sustainable Development
Department, Environment Division.
UNIVERSITY FOR PEACE. Programa Conflicto y Concertación Phases I y II
(2000-2005). www.upeace.org/programacyc/documentos
ZULUAGA, Germán (2002). “Propuesta para la creación de un área especial
de conservación en la cuenca de río Fragua, Caquetá, piedemonte
amazónico colombiano. Informe al Instituto de Ciencias Exactas para
especificar importancia del área: Parque Nacional Natural Alto Fragua
Indiwasi”. Instituto de Etnobiología-Dirección Territorial AmazoniaOrinoquia de la Unidad Administrativa Especial del Sistema de Parques
Nacionales Naturales de Colombia, UAESPNN, Bogotá DC, Colombia.
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