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- Convenors:
-
Marie-Line Sarrazin
(CICADA - McGill University)
June Rubis (ICCA)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Territories of life are governed, managed and conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities. This panel features perspectives on relationality and on challenges and strategies for documenting, sustaining and defending territories of life.
Long Abstract:
Collective lands, waters and territories governed, managed and conserved by custodian Indigenous peoples and/or local communities can be considered "territories of life". They are characterized by: 1) deep relations between a specific territory and a specific custodian community or Indigenous nation, embedded in their identities, cultures and practices; 2) the custodian community taking and implementing decisions through self-determined institutions, which 3) contribute to the wellbeing and integrity of both community and territory, including conservation of nature. Territories of life can be informed by 'planes de vida' (life projects), which are collective visions and plans for 'buen vivir' (living well), embedded in relational ontologies and experiences of place and self. Research and grassroots experience suggest four interdependent 'pillars' for vibrant territories of life, and carrying out life project strategies: 1) robust local institutions of conservation governance, 2) resilient livelihoods, 3) vigorous legal defense and mobilizing for appropriate recognition and support, and 4) powerful inter-peoples' alliances.
This panel consists of two sessions featuring perspectives and experiences of members of Indigenous peoples and local communities, practitioners and engaged academics.
Session 1 will focus on relationality in the context of territories of life, including the ontological dimension of policy and legal frameworks that affect them.
Session 2 will engage with challenges and strategies for documenting, sustaining and defending territories of life in practice, including the role of the research and conservation industries in supporting or undermining these efforts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper I analyze how the conservation of páramos in Colombia assemble scientific practices and conservation policies that exclude communities and their territories of life. It also contributes to the reconstruction of conservation from scientific practices and local communities ontologies.
Paper long abstract:
Páramos are among the most important ecosystems of the northern Andes in South America. The provision of water for millions of people there depends on these unique mountains, which are also the refuge for a rich biodiversity. That is the case in Colombia, where páramos encompass a variety of relationships: as 'Islands of the sky' for biologists, or 'biodiversity hotspots' in conservation agendas, but also as a 'territory' for campesino communities that found in these remote mountains a safe place after fleeing and suffering political violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. The need to protect páramos is uncontroversial, but the attempts to do it has been conflictive.
Once the Colombian government tried to regulate the conservation of páramos through GIS tools and biological samplings, it was clear that the páramo of the policy was not compatible with the presence of campesinos, despite they have been there for generations cultivating their territories. Since then, campesinos have been in a struggle to defend their territories and life projects from conservation agendas that do not recognize their ontologies based in a relationality with plants, animals, tools, knowledges and a shared history in the high mountains. In this paper I analyze how the conservation of páramos in Colombia assemble scientific practices and conservation policies that disproportionally affect historically excluded communities and their relational ontologies. It also interrogates about the possibility to reconstruct an environmentally just conservation attentive to scientific practices and campesino's ontologies beyond the limits of modern western environmental politics.
Paper short abstract:
The paper problematizes the relations between protected sites – local communities – means of living in Bulgaria. It focuses on the socio-ecological dimensions and challenges, building on some preliminary observations and results of an ongoing research project.
Paper long abstract:
This paper proceeds from an ongoing research project “Life in protected zones and areas: challenges, conflicts, benefits”, supported by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria (КП-06-Н40/12). It studies the relations between protected sites – local communities – means of living in Bulgaria within the normative context of various conservation regimes: nationally designated protected areas, as well as protected zones, part of the European ecological network “NATURA 2000”, introduced in 2007.
The expansion of the conservation network during last several decades has been done through the inclusion of populated territories. Local communities, however, perceive their environment as a source of livelihoods, but also as a marker for their socio-cultural identity. In this respect, little is known about what is happening in the settlements (and/or their lands) within these protected sites, where people face new “post-industrial” concepts of conservation and are forced or encouraged to adapt their current economic and other everyday practices to the conservationist requirements.
Therefore, the paper will take a close look at the conceptual framework within which nature is considered as inhabited by man and, simultaneously, is analyzed as an emic category that various social actors (local communities and smaller groups, protected sites’ administration, nature conservation NGOs, etc.) use to express their attitudes and interpretations. This approach stems from the proposition that a tourist, a regional environmental inspector, a park ranger and a farmer can see the same place in a protected zone/area in totally different ways, highlight different things, give them different value, etc.
Paper short abstract:
In Ixtacamaxtitlán, Mexico, a Canadian mining company denied the presence of an Indigenous people in order to bypass Mexican legislation. Through engaged ethnography, we demonstrated the presence of strong Indigenous identity and the persistence of Nahua (Mexicanero) culture and social organization.
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze an experience in engaged, participant ethnography, whose aim was to assert indigenous presence in a Mexican highland municipio, Ixtacamaxtitlán, as part of a ten-year long struggle against an open-pit mining project promoted by a Canadian concern, Almaden Minerals. In order to bypass Mexican legislation, which requires previous, free and informed consultation for any large scale project taking place on indigenous lands, the company had a fake anthropological enquiry made, which concluded that there were no indigenous people in Ixtacamaxtitlán (CMI Consulting 2018). Members of the Unión de ejidos y comunidades Atcolhua, people from CESDER and Pierre Beaucage decided to realize a real ethnographic survey in Ixtacamaxtitlán, with the participation of students from CESDER, most of whom are indigenous or mestizos. The results demonstrate the presence of a strong indigenous identity and the persistence of nahuat (‘mexicanero’) culture and social organization in many communities, as had been declared in the 2015 request of injunction (Beaucage and Marreros Lobato 2020). It is on the basis of these indigenous identity and culture that a judge finally suspended the company’s mining license (Vázquez Rebollo 2019).