
Project aim
Recognizing the increasing number of socio-environmental conflicts surrounding resource extraction in Latin America over the last decade, this three-year research project aims to study the nature and outcome of currently available mechanisms for conflict resolution.
General information
Contact person: Dr. Esben Leifsen,
Other Noragric staff involved: Dr. John Andrew McNeish
Project partners: Noragric, University of Stockholm, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, University of north Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rainforest Foundation Norway, Universidad del Valle (Cali-Colombia), Proceso de comunidades negros (Colombia), CIESAS-Mexico, Observatorio de conflictos ambientales – UTPL (Ecuador).
Funded by: Research Council of Norway
Project period: 2014-2017
Project description
The project in particular questions whether ‘prior consultation’ and ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) processes represent a set of effective mechanisms for preventing and resolving resource conflicts. Whilst also considering the potential for resolution, in this project we intend to go beyond this to ask how consultation, consent and compensation practices strengthen or weaken affected peoples’ democratic participation and rights to self-determination. Consultations with different indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant and peasant groups involve the meeting, translation and negotiation between different cultural traditions, worldviews, forms of knowledge and perceptions of nature. A central focus of the project is therefore to study empirically the cultural dimension of desirable and un-desirable processes and outcomes.
