Abstract

DURAN, Carlos Andrés. Governance in colombian National Parks: Reflections on the Case of the Orika Community and its Participation in Environmental Conservation in Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2009, n.32, pp.60-72. ISSN 0123-885X.

Environmental policies in Colombia's national parks tend to generate local conflicts and contradictory outcomes. This article describes the history and development of these policies, and criticizes their effects, in the case of the Islas del Rosario, a group of islands off of Colombia's Caribbean coast whose surrounding marine area was declared a national park in 1977. The article focuses on the main efforts to generate environmental governance over the marine, coastal, and terrestrial ecosystems and the effects of this management model on the Afro-Colombian community that inhabits Orika. It also analyses the political and environmental empowerment of this community, following its organization as part of participatory processes, and how it ended up becoming a political and ethnic actor that proposed a different model of governance in the protected area. Finally, the article discusses the difficulties that environmental policy faces when scientific knowledge is privileged over reality, local culture, and traditional knowledge.

Keywords : Governance; National Parks in Colombia; Marine Protected Areas; Islas del Rosario; Afro-Colombian Community; Participation.

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