Exploring justice with indigenous peoples and local communities
My research aims to explore justice in the data that informs and shapes area-based conservation policy in Colombia. This will be accomplished by analysing justice implications for indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) living in areas prioritised for conservation and consequently declared protected areas or recognised as Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECMs) in response to the global agreement to protect 30% of the Earth’s terrestrial and marine areas by 2030 (30×30).
I will concentrate on two regions of Colombia that hold global significance as biodiversity hotspots: the Tropical Andes and the Choco-Magdalena region. These areas have a historical presence of indigenous, Afro-descendant, and campesino groups with varying degrees of legal recognition and land tenure rights. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of cases in protected areas and OECMs in each of these regions, my objective is to examine the varying degrees of recognition of IPLCs in setting conservation priorities, their participation in governance and decision-making, and the distributional consequences of introducing area-based conservation measures from the emerging field of data justice in biodiversity conservation (Pritchard at al., 2022).
Valeria Zapata-Giraldo
PhD Researcher