Presentation short abstract

From confrontational resistance to creating a collective territorial model that bends traditional and academic knowledge, communities in Colombia shifted their strategies against disruption imposed by a river dam using family-based socioecological practices emerged from desired collective futures.

Presentation long abstract

The struggle for land and adaptation to environmental changes are part of a long history of the peasant and fishing communities of the lower Sinú River (Colombia). While disrupting their material reproduction and well-being, these challenges have also forged a culture of resistance and resilience in environmental conflicts. In this context, the Urrá Hydroelectric Dam (1987) became a new driver of change with serious negative consequences for the locals. The dam led to the loss of fisheries, reduced income, food shortages, and migration to other parts of the country. In addition, it exacerbated territorial conflict in the region between large landowners and small farmers and fishermen.

Emerging from social movements for land rights, local communities resisted the implementation of the dam through confrontational strategies, such as marches and highway blockades. These strategies were then altered due to violence and murders. Instead, they began to build a collectively model of local territorial development, combining traditional knowledge with academic knowledge (e.g., theories from Ostrom and Freire). This model, from a perspective of a desired collective future, aims to guarantee food sovereignty, income, territorial defense, and as a way of mitigating the environmental crisis. Centered around families and the concept of aesthetic beauty, it has its initial locus in houses (e.g., “socioecological backyards”) and expands to collective actions and projects of environmental protection, collective food production and commercialization. This case demonstrates the importance of collective action in building desired and socio-environmentally just futures as a way of counteracting the neo-extractivist model.