Presentation short abstract

This paper analyses Colombia’s rapid adoption of OECMs through a data and epistemic justice lens, showing how national reporting criteria privilege international conservation targets, political interests and large, mappable units over local governance and situated knowledges.

Presentation long abstract

Colombia has rapidly reported Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) to demonstrate progress towards Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, now listing 46 areas in global databases (Protected Planet, 2025). OECMs were meant to acknowledge conservation efforts grounded in diverse governance and knowledge systems. Yet Colombia’s expansion has been mobilised through national guidelines and criteria that privilege large mapped units, such as river basins, and technocratic knowledge.

Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with actors involved in national OECM reporting—government officials, conservation NGOs and research institutes—alongside participant observation at national OECM meetings and perspectives from Indigenous and local community organisations, this paper examines how these procedures create epistemic hierarchies in Colombia’s area-based conservation agenda. Insights from two river basins reported as OECMs, where local awareness of the designation is minimal, are used to contrast national narratives with on-the-ground governance practices and development priorities.

Using conservation data justice (Pritchard et al., 2022) and epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007) as analytical lenses, the paper shows how decisions about which areas to prioritise and which data qualify as evidence tend to privilege political interests and the fulfilment of conservation targets, while marginalising bottom-up governance and knowledges. It discusses power asymmetries, weak or absent FPIC, and Indigenous and local communities’ demands for recognition of their contributions to conservation through their own categories rather than externally imposed labels. The paper concludes by examining whose priorities and knowledges shape OECM decision-making, and how data, metrics and indicators influence these politics of knowledge.