With a new peace process underway between the Colombian government and leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cuba, the spotlight is back on this long-troubled South American country. But decades of civil conflict have overshadowed an incredible fact: Colombia is among the four most biologically diverse countries on Earth.

With an area almost twice the size of Texas, Colombia boasts the world record for largest number of bird species and possesses 314 different ecosystems ranging from snow-capped peaks to large swaths of tropical forests to miles of coastline touched by two oceans.

Many of the world’s conflict zones are located in places where biodiversity is at its highest. This is why Conservation International (CI), an organization focused on the connections between nature’s well-being and our own, is increasingly looking at the positive role that abundant natural resources and stable environmental conditions can play in promoting peace and cooperation.

But to get there, our environmental scientists must learn to think like peacebuilders, understanding both the conflict risks and peacebuilding opportunities associated with protecting and preserving biodiversity.

To meet this need, CI’s Policy Center for Environment and Peace is holding a series of trainings to build the capacity of our field staff and partners to better respond to conflict and capitalize on opportunities to support peacebuilding in the communities where we work. In Colombia, we brought together participants from six different organizations to look at conflict issues related to illegal mining in the northern Pacific department of Chocó.

Illegal Mining in Chocó

The population of Chocó is largely Afro-Colombian with smaller populations of indigenous groups, mestizos, and whites. This is believed to be part of the reason the department has historically received little attention from the national government and has been largely excluded from access to services, development funds, and political participation. As a result, its population has one of the lowest standards of living in the country.

Despite the extreme poverty, the area has long been recognized for its mineral-rich lands and important forestry resources, fisheries, and biodiversity. This natural wealth has attracted outsiders since the Conquest, when the Spanish brought African slaves to work in gold mines. Following the abolition of slavery, many freed slaves remained in the region and, knowing no other way of life, became artisanal miners.

When major national and multinational companies in the extractive sector arrived in Colombia in the 1980s, they entered into verbal, non-contractual agreements with local communities. In contrast to the artisanal mining techniques developed by the Afro-Colombian communities that are based on manual labor, these companies introduced mechanized equipment and the practice of dredge mining to Chocó’s river systems.

The introduction of mechanized mining led to a massive increase in mineral extraction, and today Chocó is the main producer of platinum in Colombia and the second-largest producer of gold and silver after the department of Antioquia. However, the majority of mining operations are done without a title and thus considered illegal. In the 2010-2011 Department Census, 99 percent of the 527 mining sites surveyed did not have titles.

The social and environmental impacts of this shift have become key conflict drivers. Territorial rights and the use of water from an economic, social, and cultural point of view are flashpoints. This is further compounded by conflicting government policies and a lack of coordination from the local level that feeds up to the national level around things like land titling and the distribution of benefits in the form of royalties.

Context Is Everything

Asking the basic question, “What is the conflict about?” should be the first step in any conflict transformation effort. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we focused on further adapting existing tools to meet the specific needs of conservationists working in Chocó.

A variety of conflict analysis frameworks and tools have been developed by international organizations, donor agencies, and non-governmental organizations. We introduced participants to three lenses of analysis to better understand the factors that drive or mitigate conflict, map the roles of stakeholders involved, and identify opportunities for peacebuilding.

The first part of the training centered on the conflict itself, focusing on identifying and understanding the structural or institutional root causes as well as the individuals, organizations, and institutions involved. Later, participants switched focus to look at the processes and structures in place that build (or are intended to build) peace and collaboration.

Identifying the factors that drive conflict as well as the possible factors that contribute to peace provides a more holistic picture of the context. This extra step is very valuable when it comes time to find entry points for action and link the conflict analysis to each constituent step of programming.

The information generated from the workshop was compiled into a “Conflict Needs Assessment” that will inform CI’s activities in the area. As well, one of the participating organizations, Foro Nacional por Colombia, said the process will be helpful for them in working to incorporate conflict-sensitive programming into 10-year work plans for three local municipalities.

Lessons Learned

CI is excited to be leading an effort to integrate conflict-sensitivity into conservation, but we still have a lot to learn. Coming out of the training, we learned three valuable things.

First, the leap is not as far as you may think. Although some of the peacebuilding vocabulary or analytic frameworks were new, many of the tools were familiar to participants. The approach was not that different from planning methodologies and stakeholder engagement tools commonly used by conservationists.

Second, the process itself has tremendous value. Bringing people together from different disciplines, with different perspectives and experiences, is important for strengthening the interaction and relationship between actors and promoting a shared understanding of the context. Shared understanding and trust between stakeholders is in turn important for ensuring the success of any conservation project.

And finally, peacebuilding tools do not have to produce a “peacebuilding project.” Although we applied “peacebuilding” tools to better understand conflict dynamics, the possible interventions identified from that analysis still looked like conservation projects. These activities were just more robust in terms of our understanding the potential impacts on local stakeholders and biodiversity.

We learned a lot from our experience in Colombia and CI plans to build upon this learning by addressing conflict dynamics as part of conservation projects in additional places like Liberia and Timor-Leste. All of these efforts work together to help CI achieve its mission to help societies pursue a healthier, more sustainable development path.