Unsettled Rights: Afro-descendant recognition and ex-situ titling in Colombia

The natural capital of the Colombian Pacific basin. Challenges for a megadiverse region with little Government assistance

“…The Pacific basin experimented with rapid changes in many ecosystems, driven by economic development (Romero 2009;Lozada-Ordóñez et al 2018). The most important anthropogenic disturbances in the Colombian Pacific basin are mainly due to historical deforestation (Leal and Restrepo 2003;Velez et al 2020;Gonzalez-Gonzalez et al 2021), continental or/and alluvial illegal mining (Romero 2009;Rodríguez-Zapata and Ruiz-Agudelo 2021), arms conflict and violence (Restrepo and Rojas 2004;Hougaard 2022), illegal crops (Romero 2009;Lobo and Vélez 2022), overfishing (Castellanos-Galindo et al 2018;Selvaraj et al 2022), and expansion of the agricultural and livestock frontier (Romero 2009;Velez et al 2020). Additionally, the persistence of poverty in this region of the country is another threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services (Lozada-Ordóñez et al 2018).…”

“…This high dependency represents a new challenge for remnant natural capital management, which must ensure a sustainable flow of vital benefits (natural housing materials, food, Fishing, energy from biomass, water from natural sources, among others) for a growing human population and highly dependent on these.According to our analyses, 75% of the Colombian Pacific Basin remnant natural capital is present in community lands of Afro-descendant and 10% in the Indigenous reservations.These indigenous peoples face today are ecological degradation, occupation of their territories by non-Indigenous people, lack of lands to sustain the Indigenous population, and cultural clashes caused by the incursion of industries and foreigners into their lands(Sanchez 2007;Finer et al 2008). On the other hand, and according to Garzón-Rodríguez and Moreno-Calderón (2018), since the implementation of Law 70 of 1993, the black communities in Colombia have not made significant progress in terms of the economic, social, and political aspects; explained by the low governmental administrative level, the violence, illegal mining, illegal crops, wood traffic, and the massive presence of illegal groups in the Afro-descendant territories.According toHougaard (2022), ethnic recognition and collective titling have since the second half of the 20th century been promoted as ways of compensating for historical injustices and countering the destructive effects of capitalist development. Despite this, the appropriation of community lands of Afro-descendant by other stakeholders continues to increase, configuring a permanent governance conflict in the Colombian Pacific basin(Quintero- Angel et al 2021) that affects the permanence of remnant natural capital.…”