Doctoral Studies Support Program: Environmental Peace and Development in Colombia (DSSP)

About DSSP

The doctoral studies support program (DSSP) on “Environmental Peace and Development in Colombia” was a training and research program developed by the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn and the Institute for Environmental Studies (IDEA) at Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL). These two bilateral partners worked jointly on setting up a network structure for supporting development and environmental conflict studies from an inter- and transdisciplinary perspective. 

The two phases of the program (I. 2018-2020 and II. 2021-2025) focused thematically on territorial rights, land use, access to, and extraction of natural resources. All these issues are deeply rooted in diverse forms of violence, reproducing structural inequalities and conflicts. 

The DSSP was part of the “Sustainable Development Goals Graduate Schools” program, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD), which aimed at making progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations.

Methodology

• Development of an inter- transdisciplinary postgraduate support program (Master and PhD) addressing the SDGs
• Creation of a research agenda with alternative development perspectives

Objectives

The national peace agreement which was signed in Colombia in 2016, allowed Colombian society to balance different interests in natural and cultural resources management and negotiate a durable and sustainable peace. How knowledge is produced and shared plays a crucial role in this process. Therefore, four objectives guided the activities carried out since the first phase of DSSP, with a fifth added to the second phase: 

1. Introducing interdisciplinary, integrative, innovative scientific approaches, concepts, and methods on environmental relations, natural resources, and conflict. 
2. Developing a research agenda addressing the SDGs.
3. Internationalizing science and fostering comparative analysis of research sites/regions with transnational and regional partners.
4. Exploring and critically reflecting on the role of higher education for the SDGs.  
5. Consolidating and extending information and data management systems.

Our Research

The scientific agenda of DSSP was the result of intensive discussions among the bilateral partners IDEA, and ZEF, on how to engage in co-producing knowledge. Adding to this agenda has an extended partner structure comprising activist groups, civil society organizations, and other university members. All research initiatives and activities within the program were related to the following research lines:

• Exploration of the complex relations between conflict and the environment in a highly culturally and biologically diverse country like Colombia.
• The examination of competing actors and institutions at various scales in land management.
• The analysis of the path- and interdependencies of legal, social, cultural, and economic factors. 
• The analysis of potentials to strengthen communities in their activities to use and protect the environment.

Rights and access to natural resources

Territorial rights and access to natural resources are key elements to understand long-standing political and social conflicts in the world. In Latin America, their role is enhanced by many interconnected factors such as divergent world views on land and territory and consequential competing interests. This includes for example concepts of land and nature as livelihood with symbolic meaning vs. the notion of land and its resources as a commodity. Such factors are largely responsible for the increasing and unsustainable use of resources and exploitation of natural resources. This can be in the form of more extractive activities such as mining, agro-industries and monocultures with a destructive impact on the environment.

Colombia’s case of conflict

Colombia is a show case of a country in which territorial rights, land use and the extraction of natural resources have been deeply entrenched with diverse forms of violence. The long-lasting armed conflicts starting in the mid1960s between different guerrilla groups such as the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, today Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común) and ELN (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional) on the one hand and the consecutive Colombian governments on the other show the linkages between armed conflict and historically derived inequalities in terms of access to land and territorial distribution. In Colombia, this relation has not only led to the exploitation and destruction of the environment but also to the expropriation of land and displacement of rural population. In fact, Colombia is one of the earth’s five mega-biodiversity centers which makes the country the world‘s core biodiversity region and therefore a hotspot for its commodification.

“Post-conflict” opportunity

Currently, Colombia faces a unique historical challenge with the ‘post-conflict’ (posacuerdo), because the peace agreement with FARC and the peace negotiations with ELN seem to end the armed conflict. But the challenge lies in implementing strategies for a ‘sustainable peace’, which would need to address the unequal distribution of land, the legal pluralistic notions of land, respective claims for territorial rights and the sustainable use of ecosystems and natural resources rather than exploiting them arbitrarily. Nonetheless, the relations between the environment and the armed conflict in Colombia are manifold. Thus, the diverse ecosystems and natural resources may appear as the cause, the victim (deforestation, fumigation), or the beneficiary (through the protection and conservation of contested sites with high biodiversity) of these ongoing conflicts. At the same time, the environment and the way territory is distributed and used is at the core of any long lasting solution to the complex conflict.

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary project approach

This project needs and chose an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to deal with the complex setting. The different relations between the environment and the conflict in Colombia, the role land and access to natural resources play for the peace building process and how the environment can be protected in the long run still need to be fully understood.

Both the exploration of the destruction of the environment and the development of solutions to use and protect the environment and all the people therein (implementing an institutional set-up for land use planning, developing forms of alternative agricultural production, ecological-organic farming, tourism, etc.) need the inclusion of different dimensions of knowledge production. 

This will allow a better understanding of human-nature relationships and the feedback mechanisms of the socio-ecological systems. Whether the commercialization of natural resources can be managed in a sustainable way depends to a large extent on the legal and institutional set-up and the way the affected population is involved in decision-making on strategies to use the common goods for a peaceful future. Peace in Colombia highly depends on sustainable, locally adapted and integrated solutions for land use and access to resources, to which highly qualified scientists can substantially contribute.