Search

Drawing on ethnographies from two case studies – one describing Afro-Descendant efforts at ensuring the enforcement of a constitutional court judgement in order to stave off incursions from multinationals and outlaw, armed actors, and another describing the efforts of Embera Chami Indigenous people in regulating their own ancestral mining and fending off state criminalisation – I unpack the spectrum of legal pluralities around extractives in Colombia, and the tools that Black and Indigenous peoples are using to assert their self-determination and sovereignty. I explore the various logics, discourses and uses of the ‘law’ in its broadest sense; how these collide, clash or interact; and the effects of these encounters. I focus particularly on rights to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), analysing how these rights are conceived, invoked, appropriated, and played out in practice. Theoretically, I identify what I call ‘raw law’, the rules and regulations used by armed actors, a concept inspired b...

Free, prior, and informed consultation and consent has become an important interface in encounters between governments, corporations, grassroots organisations, and other actors, particularly in cases involving extractive activities. Based on over two years of collaborative research, this article examines the consultation and consent processes for the Environmental Management Plan for a large hydroelectric dam in Afrodescendant and Indigenous ancestral territories in Western Colombia. We identified several problems lessening the effectiveness of the consultation processes, particularly the seeming impossibility of crafting conditions for genuine interculturality, and the state’s lack of political will to uphold consent. We conclude that the most significant variable in achieving concrete benefits for the communities is the strength of their political organisations.

This paper analyzes literature on the Whitehorse Mining Initiative (WMI) and subsequent multipartite dialogue processes in the extractive sector in Canada and overseas to critically assess Indigenous participation. It synthesizes design elements for more meaningful Indigenous participation and identifies implications for Indigenous-led, national, multipartitie policy dialogue. While the WMI did bring about more inclusive and democratic decision-making, there are serious weaknesses in Indigenous participation, lack of concrete outcomes, and little evidence of institutional learning about strengthening Indigenous participation in subsequent processes. Adapting the WMI model without addressing these issues will perpetuate power asymmetries and marginalization of Indigenous and Tribal peoples.