Abstract
This study focuses on wetland degradation and the creation of unequal access to and control of water resources in the region of Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Based on an ethnographic case study of the implementation of the Cauca River Corridor Project set out in 2012 to control flooding of the Cauca River in a partnership with the Netherlands government, this research explains how the Room for the River approach brought by the Netherlands experts collided with local identities and narratives around wetlands and the flooding issue in the region, while re-enacting existing inequalities in hydro-social relations in the territory. I revisited the history of the region to trace the creation of those inequalities and different narratives around wetlands and flooding held by economic and Afro-Colombian groups. And finally, I analyzed a contemporary case of conflict around the most important wetland of the region called the Sonso Lagoon to analyze the role of economic, illegal, civil society, state and international actors in the process of degradation and restoration of the wetland. This research, based on extensive interviews with key actors in wetland management in the region, participant observation and documentary analysis from multiple sources, reveals that wetland degradation in the region is linked to the creation of limited environmental citizenship rights for communities whose livelihoods depended on those ecosystems. I use a “political ecology” analytic framework to explain how global trends, national policies and violence in the region favored the development of large-scale capitalists agriculture, marginalizing small farmers and wetlands from regional environmental management. I complemented this framework with insights from environmental citizenship and environmental governance literature to explain the limited development of “practical authority” by environmental institutions in the region that exacerbated wetland degradation and exclusionary practices. Finally, I argue for the need to strengthen community actors in wetland management, linking local scales to national and international scales of wetland governance and granting decision-making authority to wetland management committees.