Land and Food Systems, Faculty of
DSpace
UBCV
Rinaldi, Parisa Nourani
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
Extractive frontiers are regions where resource extraction is expanding and intensifying to meet the needs of a global economy. Since extractive activities are often water-intensive, highly polluting or otherwise damaging to water bodies, extractive frontiers are often sites of water conflicts among state, industry and local actors. In Colombia, the complexities of resource extraction and water impacts have largely been addressed through a technocratic lens that projects scientific certainty and expertise. In recent years, social movements have raised the questions of precaution and uncertainty, calling for greater social dialogue and democratic processes in environmental decision-making. This dissertation employs a combination of discourse analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and semi-structured interviews to investigate the interplay of complexities, uncertainties and the role of the expert at various scales where water science and democracy are practiced in Colombia’s extractive frontiers. Chapter 2 assesses water-oil controversies in the Colombian media between 2017 and 2021. The findings suggest that environmental narratives in Colombia have moved beyond traditional political and ideological boundaries and are now emphasizing issues of democracy, scientific uncertainty, and the precautionary principle. The study uses network analysis methods to examine the competing coalitions, storylines, and discourse frames for each controversy. Chapter 3 employs qualitative research methods (interviews, ethnography, and archival analysis) to investigate the temporal aspects of river-basin planning and the accrual of uncertainties in the Guayuriba River basin, a region subjected to multiple extractive activities, including oil extraction, palm oil cultivation and industrial gravel mining. The study finds that the drawn-out, technocratic planning process has perpetuated, accumulated, and obscured uncertainties related to flooding, water quality, and water use and availability. Chapter 4 similarly employs qualitative analysis to explore the effects of extractive industries on environmental democracy in the Guayuriba River basin. The chapter examines how, in extractive frontiers, the fundamentals of environmental democracy (access to information, participation and justice) produce cruel optimisms, leading to a sustained world of mixed frustrations and partial justice. The dissertation concludes with implications for the current challenges facing Colombia, limitations, and recommendations for future research.
WATER SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY IN COLOMBIA'S EXTRACTIVE FRONTIERS by Parisa Nourani Rinaldi M.S., Georgia State University, 2013 B.S., Emory University, 2011 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) June 2023 © Parisa Nourani Rinaldi, 2023 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Water Science and Democracy in Colombia’s Extractive Frontiers submitted by Parisa Nourani Rinaldi in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems Examining Committee: Les Lavkulich, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, UBC Supervisor María Cecilia Roa-García, Associate Professor, Center for Interdisciplinary Development Studies, University of the Andes Co-supervisor Sandra Brown, Associate Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Pablo Jaramillo, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of the Andes Supervisory Committee Member Wade Davis, Professor, Department of Anthropology, UBC University Examiner Margarita Serje, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of the Andes University Examiner Tom Perreault, Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, Syracuse University External Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Sean Smukler, Associate Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Extractive frontiers are regions where resource extraction is expanding and intensifying to meet the needs of a global economy. Since extractive activities are often water-intensive, highly polluting or otherwise damaging to water bodies, extractive frontiers are often sites of water conflicts among state, industry and local actors. In Colombia, the complexities of resource extraction and water impacts have largely been addressed through a technocratic lens that projects scientific certainty and expertise. In recent years, social movements have raised the questions of precaution and uncertainty, calling for greater social dialogue and democratic processes in environmental decision-making. This dissertation employs a combination of discourse analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and semi-structured interviews to investigate the interplay of complexities, uncertainties and the role of the expert at various scales where water science and democracy are practiced in Colombia’s extractive frontiers. Chapter 2 assesses water-oil controversies in the Colombian media between 2017 and 2021. The findings suggest that environmental narratives in Colombia have moved beyond traditional political and ideological boundaries and are now emphasizing issues of democracy, scientific uncertainty, and the precautionary principle. The study uses network analysis methods to examine the competing coalitions, storylines, and discourse frames for each controversy. Chapter 3 employs qualitative research methods (interviews, ethnography, and archival analysis) to investigate the temporal aspects of river-basin planning and the accrual of uncertainties in the Guayuriba River basin, a region subjected to multiple extractive activities, including oil extraction, palm oil cultivation and industrial gravel mining. The study finds that the drawn-out, technocratic planning process has perpetuated, accumulated, and obscured uncertainties related to flooding, water quality, and water use and availability. Chapter 4 similarly employs qualitative analysis to explore the effects iv of extractive industries on environmental democracy in the Guayuriba River basin. The chapter examines how, in extractive frontiers, the fundamentals of environmental democracy (access to information, participation and justice) produce cruel optimisms, leading to a sustained world of mixed frustrations and partial justice. The dissertation concludes with implications for the current challenges facing Colombia, limitations, and recommendations for future research. v Lay Summary This dissertation investigates the complexities and uncertainties around water science and democracy in Colombia's extractive frontiers, where resource extraction is expanding to meet the needs of the global economy. I use discourse analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and semi-structured interviews to examine water-oil controversies in the Colombian media, the slow bureaucracy of river-basin planning, and the effects of extractive industries on environmental democracy in the Eastern Foothills region of Colombia. I find that environmental narratives in Colombia have moved beyond traditional political and ideological boundaries, emphasizing issues of democracy, scientific uncertainty, and the precautionary principle. The drawn-out, technocratic planning process in the Guayuriba River basin has perpetuated uncertainties related to flooding, water quality, and water use and availability. In extractive frontiers, accessing environmental democracy often reproduces the frustrations it aims to address. The study concludes with implications for the current challenges facing Colombia and recommendations for future research. vi Preface This dissertation is the original, independent research and work of the author, Parisa Nourani Rinaldi. The UBC Behavioral Research Ethics Board approved the research presented under the project titled “Beyond participation in water science: towards water science democratization in the face of uncertainty and complexity” (certificate number H21-02873). Parts of Chapter 1 have been published in Rinaldi, P. N. (2023). Dealing with complex and uncertain futures: glimpses from transdisciplinary water research. Futures, 103113. A version of Chapter 2 has been published. Rinaldi, P. N. (2023). Water science in the public sphere: A narrative network analysis of fracking and oil spills in Colombian media. The Extractive Industries and Society, 13, 101215. Chapters 3 and 4 are based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Dr. María Cecilia Roa-García. An analysis based on Chapter 3 has been published as a public policy memo titled “Una cuenca de todos y de nadie”: Análisis del Plan de Ordenación y Manejo de Cuencas Hidrográficas (POMCA) del Río Guayuriba” in the open-source policy journal “Documentos de política pública y democracia,” jointly published by CIDER, Universidad de los Andes, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables ..................................................................................................................................x List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xi Glossary ....................................................................................................................................... xii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xiv Dedication ................................................................................................................................... xvi Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 Research background ...................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research objectives and questions .................................................................................. 4 1.3 Literature review ............................................................................................................. 5 1.3.1 Extractive frontiers...................................................................................................... 5 1.3.2 Complexity .................................................................................................................. 8 1.3.3 Uncertainty ................................................................................................................ 11 1.3.4 The role of the expert ................................................................................................ 15 1.4 Methods and study sites ................................................................................................ 20 1.5 Contributions................................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 2: Water science in the public sphere: A narrative network analysis of fracking and oil spills in Colombian media ..............................................................................................23 viii 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 23 2.2 Water-oil controversies and public discourse ............................................................... 27 2.3 Methods......................................................................................................................... 31 2.3.1 Data Collection ......................................................................................................... 32 2.3.2 Narrative network analysis ....................................................................................... 33 2.4 Results ........................................................................................................................... 35 2.4.1 Major water-oil controversies ................................................................................... 35 2.4.2 Discourse coalitions, storylines, and discourse frames ............................................. 39 2.4.3 Narrative network structure ...................................................................................... 50 2.4.3.1 Oil spill as well-handled exception ................................................................... 50 2.4.3.2 Fracking as savior ............................................................................................. 52 2.4.3.3 Oil spill as negligence ....................................................................................... 54 2.4.3.4 Fracking as threat .............................................................................................. 56 2.5 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 59 2.6 Limitations .................................................................................................................... 62 2.7 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 63 Chapter 3: Order through delay: the uncertainties of perpetually planning the Guayuriba river-basin .....................................................................................................................................65 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 65 3.2 River-basin planning and the politics of time ............................................................... 69 3.3 The business of floods and uncertain infrastructures .................................................... 75 3.4 Monitoring loopholes and uncertain water quality ....................................................... 82 3.5 Incomplete data and uncertain flows ............................................................................ 87 ix 3.6 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 4: Everyday river extractivisms: The cruel optimisms of environmental democracy in an extractive frontier ...........................................................................................98 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 98 4.2 A river in the Llanos frontier ...................................................................................... 103 4.3 Adjusting to the “crisis ordinary” of extractivism ...................................................... 107 4.4 The cruel optimisms of access .................................................................................... 111 4.4.1 Access to information ............................................................................................. 116 4.4.2 Access to participation ............................................................................................ 118 4.4.3 Access to justice ...................................................................................................... 122 4.5 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 125 Chapter 5: Conclusion ...............................................................................................................128 5.1 Limitations .................................................................................................................. 129 5.2 Future research directions ........................................................................................... 130 References ...................................................................................................................................132 x List of Tables Table 2.1 Discourse coalitions formed during the fracking debates and oil spill controversies in Colombian media between 2017 and 2021. .................................................................................. 41 Table 2.2 Discourse frames and example quotes from the fracking debates and oil spill controversies in Colombian media between 2017 and 2021. ....................................................... 43 xi List of Figures Figure 2.1 Number of articles by water-oil knowledge controversy (August 2017 – January 2021). Selected data represent the following events: a) Lizama oil spill; b) Court invokes precautionary principle to suspend norms on fracking; c) Expert recommendations on fracking made public; d) Pilot projects controversy ................................................................................... 33 Figure 2.2 Schematic of discourse coalitions, storylines, discourse frames and categories used for narrative network analysis of water-oil controversies in Colombia (2017-2021). ....................... 48 Figure 2.3 Narrative network graphs of major water-oil controversies. Storyline a) Oil spill as well-handled exception was promoted by the “industry defenders” coalition. Storyline b) Fracking as savior was promoted by the “pro-fracking” coalition. Storyline c) Oil spill as negligence was promoted by the “industry accusers” coalition. Storyline d) Fracking as threat was promoted by the “precautionary” coalition. Node size represents the number of mentions of each discourse frame, while link width represents the number of co-occurrences (simultaneous mentions of two or more discourse frames within the same coherent argumentative unit). Nodes are color-coded by category (gray nodes are related to complexity, orange codes are related to expert knowledge, and yellow codes are related to uncertainty). ............................................... 58 Figure 3.1 Map and location of the Guayuriba river-basin, including palm oil plantations and active oil fields. ............................................................................................................................. 68 xii Glossary Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (ANLA): The national environmental licensing authority in Colombia, responsible for evaluating and approving environmental licenses for projects with potential environmental impacts. Concesión (concession): A type of contract in Colombia that grants a private company or individual the right to use and exploit a public resource or service for a certain period of time, subject to specific conditions and regulations. Corporación Autónoma Regional (CAR) or Regional Environmental Authority: A type of autonomous regional authority in Colombia responsible for managing and protecting natural resources and promoting sustainable development within their jurisdiction. Corporación para el Desarrollo Sostenible del Área de Manejo Especial La Macarena (Cormacarena): The autonomous regional authority in charge of managing and protecting the natural resources in Meta, Colombia. Derecho de Petición: The right of citizens in Colombia to request information or make a complaint to the government or other public authorities. Dirección Regional de Gestión de Riesgos: The regional agency in Colombia responsible for managing and mitigating natural disasters and other risks in their area of jurisdiction. Ecopetrol: Colombia’s state-owned oil and gas company, responsible for exploration, production, refining, and transportation of petroleum. Instituto de Hidrologia, Meteorologia y Estudios Ambientales (IDEAM): The national agency in Colombia responsible for monitoring and managing the country's hydrological and meteorological resources and for conducting environmental studies. Junta de Acción Comunal: A local community organization in Colombia that represents and advocates for the interests of their neighborhood or village. Manuelita: A Colombian agribusiness company, with operations in palm oil production, sugar cane, biofuels, and other agricultural products. Ordenamiento Territorial: Territorial zoning, the process of planning the use of land and natural resources in a specific geographic area. Plan de Ordenamiento Minero: A plan that guides the exploration, exploitation, and management of mineral resources in a specific area of Colombia. xiii Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial (POT): A planning tool used in Colombia to guide the sustainable development and management of land use in a specific geographic area, typically a city or municipality. Tercer Interviniente: A third party that intervenes in a legal process in Colombia, typically in environmental disputes or claims related to natural resources. Tutela: A legal mechanism in Colombia used to protect fundamental rights, including environmental rights, by allowing citizens to file an urgent legal action to protect their rights when they have been violated or threatened. Vereda: A rural subdivision in Colombia, similar to a hamlet or a small village, governed by local authorities, such as the Junta de Accion Comunal. Vertimiento: The discharge or release of pollutants, waste, or other materials into the environment, typically into water bodies such as rivers, lakes, or oceans. xiv Acknowledgements I thank my advisors Drs. María Cecilia Roa-García and Les Lavkulich, for continuously elevating my sense of purpose, thirst for knowledge and desire for justice. Cecilia, you have given me an example of selflessness and boundless collaboration within the often-self-absorbed academy. You have been a friend and I look forward to many more years of action, reflection, and scholarship with you. Les, although you would never allow me to tell you without turning it into a joke, I learned so much from you and the joy you derive from teaching, mentoring students, and contributing to society through the sciences. I will always cherish our conversations and thank you deeply for your guidance. Thanks also to Hans Schreier, who sent me an encouraging email many years ago that kept me committed to thinking about water. I thank my committee members Drs. Sandra Brown, Pablo Jaramillo and Sean Smukler. Sandra, without you, this joint PhD would not have been possible. You were the secret ingredient that pulled it all together. I thank you for sticking with me until the end, with patience, pragmatism, and amazing attention to detail. Pablo, I thank you for your perpetually insightful comments, excellent direction, and generosity of spirit. Sean, I thank you for always offering ways to push my work forward with fresh questions and a birds-eye view. I thank Dr. Gabriela Valdivia, who offered me an academic home at UNC-Chapel Hill as a visiting scholar during my last year of dissertation writing. Thank you, Gaby, for your thought-provoking connections, your genuine and compassionate mentorship, and for the ways you open the minds of all of us to broader horizons. It has been a great privilege to read, think, write, and present alongside you this year. Special thanks also to the professors at Universidad de los Andes and UBC, with whom I had the pleasure of working, including Claudia Leal, Diana Gómez, Diana Ojeda, Gonzalo xv Vargas, Javier Pineda, Sergio Montero, Patrick Moore, and Chris Ryan; as well as staff and administration at both institutions, who made my work possible, including Nathalia Franco, Esmith Carreño, Ana Yudy Morán, Roger Rossi, José Alberto López, Lisbeth Mendoza, Diana Muñoz, Catalina López, and Lia Maria Dragan. I thank my cohort+ of fellow students and office mates at Universidad de los Andes, UBC, and UNC, who offered solidarity, laughs, snacks, company, and moral support, including Suelen Castiblanco, Diana Montealegre, Juliana Jaramillo, Patricia Sánchez, Lorena Aja, Diana Ordoñez, Samuel Nossa, Sebastián León, Lorena Arias, Cindy Córdoba, Meishi Lim Haslip, Evelyn Arriagada, Jordy Kersey, Paula Porto, Morgan Hamilton, Joseph Crudo, Lewis Fausak, Annie Elledge, Leiha Edwards, and Ingrid Díaz. I offer thanks to the community leaders of the Guayuriba river-basin, who will remain anonymous. Thank you for your trust, inspiration, and unwavering commitment to social and environmental justice despite challenging circumstances. Thank you to all interview participants who took the time to share insights with us during the span of this project. Finally, I would like to thank CIDER, Universidad de los Andes for financial support for travel and fieldwork that made my research possible. xvi Dedication Dedicated to my family for making this journey possible. To my dear loving husband, Daniel Rinaldi, for persevering and traveling the Americas with me, often without knowing where we would end up next and how we would make it happen. To my sweet children, Soraya and Bayan Rinaldi, who provided joy and perspective during the course of my studies. To my incredibly caring and selfless parents, Fahimeh and Vahid Nourani, who supported me through food, love, childcare, resources, time and patience. I would not have been able to do any of my work without you. To my brothers Sana and Vesall Nourani, and my sister-in-law Sally Nourani, for intellectual inspiration and encouragement. To the Bahá’í communities of Bogotá, Vancouver, and Carrboro for their warmth, fellowship and awe-inspiring dedication. Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Research background This dissertation explores questions related to water science and environmental democracy in Colombia’s extractive frontiers. The three main studies that compose the body of this dissertation, as well as the analytical categories discussed in this introduction, evolved from an iterative process of thinking and doing, that brought seemingly disparate thought-projects, community concerns and action-research together throughout my doctoral program. I began my program in Interdisciplinary Development Studies at Universidad de los Andes, and continued through a joint program with The University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems. As I engaged in my studies, my lens was always centered on water in its social dimensions. My interactions with environmental leaders struggling for water justice in the Eastern Foothills and Middle Magdalena regions of Colombia, led me to deeply question what kind of knowledge and what kind of research could be helpful to communities suffering from the environmental impacts of an extractivist model of economic development. Before beginning my doctoral studies, I had the opportunity to work with Cecilia Roa and Sandra Brown on an analysis of water use and availability in the Metica River watershed in the Eastern Foothills of Colombia. This experience was crucial in many ways. Starting with a place-based project allowed me to become familiar with the challenges facing the region, to build connections with local actors, and to experiment with an interdisciplinary approach to water research. We quantified the amount of water available on a seasonal and annual basis, and the proportion being withdrawn and polluted by different economic sectors. Our calculations confirmed that the Metica River watershed was being utilized as a water-for-energy frontier, with 2 extractive industries contributing to seasonal water scarcity in a water abundant region. These results were published in Water International, under the title “Producing energy, depleting water: the energy sector as a driver of seasonal water scarcity in an extractive frontier of the upper Orinoco watershed, Colombia” (2021). Through this project, I learned that decisions were being made with uncertain data regarding water use and availability in a complex landscape with poorly understood hydrological dynamics and increasing resource extraction. Although our study presented ranges and estimates to deal with uncertainties, most water permits were being granted based on inaccurate values and outdated information. Even so, in the eyes of environmental authorities, these data were taken to be more legitimate than first-hand accounts of water scarcity. It also became clear, during a workshop we held to interpret our results with community members, that those living closest to the water sources held the most updated knowledge on the hydrological impacts of withdrawals and vertimientos (points of direct discharge of oil production waters). Once I began my doctoral program, the questions of complexity, uncertainty, and the role of the expert were already on my mind due to these insights from the Eastern Foothills. During the first year of my program, I turned to the question of what kind of water research could be useful in these extractive territories. I explored several disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary frameworks in water research, and examined how each approached the challenges of complexity, uncertainty, and the role of the expert. A version of this work, centered on transdisciplinary frameworks, was published in Futures, in an article titled “Dealing with complex and uncertain futures: glimpses from transdisciplinary water research” (2023). Writing the article helped me understand that there was a spectrum of approaches in water research, and that not all frameworks shared the same definitions of the concepts under 3 analysis. This thought-project was fundamental for building the analytical framework of my dissertation. It also helped me develop the idea for Chapter 2, in which I applied the same categories of analysis to water-oil controversies in Colombia in recent years. My comprehensive exams on postcolonial and decolonial perspectives on development led to the publication of “The Age of Transition: Postdevelopment and North-South Synergies” in Latin American Perspectives (2022). Working on this text enabled me to situate communities’ struggles for water justice within Latin American transition discourses such as postextractivism and buen vivir, which call for a fundamental redefinition of development, prosperity, and humanity’s relationship to the natural world. This led me to view the challenges surfacing in extractive territories as growing pains of an age of transition, in which new definitions of science, democracy, and development would gradually emerge through the “revolt and renewal of the world” (Rivera-Cusicanqui 2012, 96). Thoughts on the implications of postextractivism were further developed with Cecilia Roa and Estefany Grajales in the Middle Magdalena region of Colombia, where women living near one of the oldest oil fields in the country were beginning to recognize the impacts of the oil development model on their own mental framework, while simultaneously making efforts towards collective renewal. Our research led to the publication of “Like harvesting tarulla: The decolonization of being from a petrolized swamp” in Society and Space (2022) and the production of a 5-minute animated video (Palagua: Existir sin crudo1). Both were driven by Estefany’s involvement in the Palagua Swamp as a local activist and organizer, and our insights as academic collaborators. The process of reflection stimulated by the research and its 1 Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvR76xbb9sU 4 dissemination also opened new questions, particularly regarding the role of procedural environmental justice. In the case of Palagua, a civil lawsuit had been filed and “won” over two decades ago, but this had not resulted in better social or environmental conditions for the swamp and its peoples. The seeds of change that could be perceived in the present were coming about from a deeper process which was simultaneously internal and collective, and which did not rely on lawsuits for the enactment of justice. These ideas later influenced my assessment of environmental democracy in the Eastern Foothills region, where the communities surrounding the Guayuriba River were still hopeful (and as I argue, cruelly optimistic) about procedural frameworks regarding access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making. The inquiries detailed above, and other projects and conversations informed this dissertation in its approach to water science and environmental democracy in Colombia’s extractive frontiers. I would not have come to the questions or methods I have chosen without the above-mentioned opportunities to pursue big questions, interact with concerned citizens, and continually interrogate the usefulness of water research for society. 1.2 Research objectives and questions The overall objective of the thesis is to interrogate the implications of extractive frontiers for water science and environmental democracy in Colombia. To address this objective, I ask three major questions across the science, policy and sociocultural continuums, which correspond to the three chapters that compose the body of this dissertation: 1) How do knowledge controversies play out at the water-oil nexus in Colombia? 5 2) What is produced through the bureaucratic delay of watershed planning in extractive frontiers? 3) What are the limits to environmental democracy in extractive frontiers? To address these questions, I examine how the interlocuters of recent water-oil debates in Colombia address issues of complexity, uncertainty and the role of expert knowledge; how scientific uncertainty is produced and expanded through bureaucratic delay; and how the promises of environmental democracy are appropriated by extractive interests in ways that impact the emotional resources of those who seek justice. In the following sections, I offer a brief overview of the literature on extractive frontiers, complexity, uncertainty, and the role of the expert. I draw on political ecology, science and technology studies, critical resource geography and anthropology to explore these themes. 1.3 Literature review 1.3.1 Extractive frontiers The rapid expansion of extractive activities to new frontiers is transforming local hydrological and social dynamics. Intensive water use for extractive activities is increasing in rural territories across the globe (Cuba et al. 2014). Changes in the global social metabolism, the way human societies organize exchanges of energy and materials with the environment, induce socio-environmental pressures and conflicts (Martinez-Alier and Walter 2016). Extractive frontiers are regions where economic processes linked to the consumption, depletion and appropriation of natural resources are concentrated and expanding (Martinez-Alier and Walter 6 2016); and where biophysical and social factors coalesce, leading to geographies of uncertainty and risk for populations dependent on land, water and other resources (Cuba et al. 2014). In their book, “A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things,” Patel and Moore (2017) describe the historical workings of capitalism and its interaction with nature, underlining the crucial role frontiers have played in the cheapening of nature and thus the expansion of capitalist markets. The “social metabolism” or social organization of material and energy exchanges with the environment, has been accelerating at a global scale, resulting in increasing demands for the extraction of non-renewable resources and consequent socioenvironmental conflicts (Martinez-Alier and Walter 2016). Within Latin American economies, internal and external pressures to increase extraction for domestic use and export has displaced commodity frontiers to new territories (Patel and Moore 2017). These extractive frontiers are often located in areas of high biodiversity and cultural value (Martinez-Alier and Walter 2016) with local populations directly dependent on agricultural, land and water resources. Often, the expansion of extractive frontiers is justified as being in the best interest of local peasant populations, regardless of the processes of territorial dispossession that accompany extractive activities; dissent is increasingly criminalized as terrorism; and conflicts become long-term struggles for “political freedom, communal identity and [the] ability to imagine alternative paths to development” (Arsel, Hogenboom, and Pellegrini 2016). In Colombia, mining, oil extraction and large-scale intensive agriculture for biofuel production have emerged as central activities in extractive frontiers, threatening livelihoods and increasing socioenvironmental conflicts. Many tensions arise in relation to water use and contamination by extractive sectors, underlining the overt dynamics of inequity in water allocation (Roa-García and Brown 2017). 7 The concept of the frontiers and their implications for democracy have also received attention in Colombian scholarship. Margarita Serje has described how frontiers have been depicted as the periphery of the nation, where the State is “absent” (2011). She argues that this is a myth, and that, rather, the State is precisely formed by the center-periphery relationships sustained by the treatment of frontiers as backwards, lawless regions in need of intervention. The “absence of the State” has been a central argument to explain the duration of the armed conflict in Colombia. Serje claims that, instead, the armed conflict has been fueled by the presence of the State in a particular formation that places frontiers (which constitute a large portion of the national territory) at the service of urban centres in the central Andean highlands. For example, in the Middle Magdalena and Eastern Foothills regions of Colombia, which are currently major oil exporting territories, the State handed over large amounts of land to private hands from the time of the Spanish colony. These same areas were later transferred to cattle ranchers and, subsequently, to private and public companies with extractive interests (primarily oilfields and palm oil plantations). The armed conflict entered a vicious cycle in these regions, where the State and paramilitaries were often called on to militarize security, and to protect large, multinational corporations from guerrilla attacks in these frontier regions. It is important to note that these dynamics have differed across Colombia’s extractive frontiers, and that regions such as the Middle Magdalena and Eastern Foothills have been largely controlled by paramilitary presence, while other oil regions such as Arauca2 and Catatumbo have had a greater presence of guerrilla 2 In Arauca, the guerrilla entered the arena relatively early in the armed conflict (1966) and remained “in incubation” for nearly 15 years, during which revolutionaries organized cooperative agricultural programs for the peasantry. Later, the guerrilla group ELN (Ejército de LIberación Nacional) conferred access to technologies, credit and infrastructure, consolidating a network within the region. In 1986, they began to militarize and use extorsions against Mannesmann, the foreign company in charge of building the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline. Because the 8 groups. It is therefore important to note that, although this dissertation aims to study water and democracy in Colombia’s extractive frontiers, I concentrate my analysis in two regions that have suffered paramilitary rule and violence and have become differentiated by the characteristics of this particular regime. Studies have shown that paramilitary presence in Colombia was also associated with the consolidation of specific export industries (Rettberg and Ortiz-Riomalo 2016; Richani 2005). These configurations of violence, paramilitary security, and foreign investment have impacted the extractive frontiers analysed in the current study. 1.3.2 Complexity Complexity is not easy to define, despite the rising popularity of the term. It is a concept that is itself complex and multifaceted, one that continues to grow and mature. According to Cilliers et al. “complexity is a characteristic of a system and arises because of the interaction between the components of a system” (2013, 3). These interactions (among constituents of the system and between the system and its environment) have implications for the way we go about understanding them. Since they are “nonlinear and their properties nonadditive” (O’Sullivan et al. 2006, 612), the “whole cannot be fully understood simply by analysing its components'' (Cilliers 2002, viii). Complex systems are also multiscalar, since elements aggregate not only from local to global, but through a range of interlocking scales in between (O’Sullivan et al. 2006). The reductionist methods of traditional science offer time-honed methods to analyse parts of the system. This is a necessary but insufficient step to understanding essentially irreducible ELN reached medium to large-scale landowners pre-emptively, the regional elite did not support paramilitary groups and these were not consolidated as in other oil regions (Gutiérrez Lemus, 2010). 9 systems. Complexity theory has developed a terminology for characteristics of complex systems, such as being self-organized, exhibiting emergent patterns from the interactions of system components, holding memory and being path dependent, meaning that the next stage of development of a system is a product of its whole history (O’Sullivan et al. 2006). Self-organization and emergent patterns offer a novel conception of interlocking local-global processes which consider both “the `bottom- up' emergence of aggregate behaviour … and the `top-down' impact of emergent structures” (O’Sullivan et al. 2006, 614). This interaction between the behaviour of the individual and the structure implies that the appropriate scale of analysis cannot be fixed in a system that is constantly changing and emerging. These changes may occur in both space and time, so that both historical and place-based analyses become relevant in the study of complex phenomena. Complex systems are thus inherently uncertain. In hydrological and socio-hydrological systems, uncertainty refers to both aleatory uncertainty (which arises due to inherent random variability) as well as epistemic uncertainty (which arises due to incomplete knowledge) (Westerberg et al. 2017). For example, in flood estimates, data collection and analysis could result in epistemic uncertainty whereas weather variability could correspond to aleatory uncertainty. Di Baldassarre et al. (2016) criticize scientists for having emphasized aleatory over epistemic uncertainty, which they categorize into three types: known unknowns (things we know we don’t know), unknown unknowns (things we don’t know that we don’t know) and wrong assumptions (things that we think we know but we actually don’t know). The second type, unknown unknowns, can potentially generate surprises termed black swans (Taleb 2005), “unexpected events with an extremely high impact on the system, which are essentially impossible to forecast” (Di Baldassarre, Brandimarte, and Beven 2016, 1754). Similarly, Brown 10 (2010) describes the difference between bounded, unbounded and indeterminable uncertainty. Bounded uncertainty occurs when all possible outcomes are known but the probabilities attached are unknown. Unbounded uncertainty occurs when neither possible outcomes nor corresponding probabilities are known. Finally, indeterminable uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcomes cannot be known and will always lead to an element of surprise. Scientists have developed several approaches to respond to characteristics of complex systems such as multiscalar interactions, emergence, and uncertainty. Contributions lie on a spectrum between positivist, rule-finding approaches and relational, plural, and place-based approaches. “Complexity science” emphasizes rule-finding through simulation procedures such as agent-based modelling and other intricate methods based on nonlinear equations. Complexity scientists emphasize the use of new methods for studying the simple causes of complex effects, following a positivist research agenda based on “the assumption that complexity in the world arises from simple rules… [that] have the potential to predict and control the behaviour of real-world systems” (Phelan 2001, 130). Complexity scientists stress the systematic identification and quantification of uncertainty to make it explicit. In water science, this translates into a “reductionist approach [that] seeks to represent uncertainty through calculable risk” (Zeitoun et al. 2016, 1). On the other end of the spectrum are those who approach complexity by a plurality of means and methods, often in ways that go beyond quantitative analyses. Arturo Escobar describes complexity as “the dance between order and disorder” (Escobar 2017, 334) in which cause-effect relations and chaos result in a lack of predictability. This disorder leads to intelligible situations, in an alternating pattern of convergence and divergence. Escobar encourages social scientists to draw from the concepts of complexity theory. Complexity, in 11 Escobar’s view, is the quality that allows seemingly disparate local solutions to contribute to the emergence of a more sustainable whole. This view of complexity, applied in water research, leads to alternative methods for addressing uncertainty. Instead of quantifying risk, uncertainty is embraced and incorporated as a given. Authors such as Zeitoun et al. (2016) propose coping with uncertainty in water science by working with diversity and injustice in society and the environment. They encourage researchers to welcome adaptive approaches in the face of rapidly changing hydrological and social conditions. 1.3.3 Uncertainty Interdisciplinary scholars from science and technology studies, anthropology, sociology, and history of science, have studied uncertainty with increasing rigor during the past 20 years (see e.g., Frickel et al. 2010; Gross and Mcgoey 2015; Hess 2020; Kleinman and Suryanarayanan 2012; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008; Scoones and Stirling 2020; Senanayake and King 2021). Contributions in Scoones and Sterling’s book, The Politics of Uncertainty (2020), explore how uncertainties have concrete, material features; how uncertainties require an experiential, affective stance; how perspectives on uncertainties are embodied into who we are and how we think and feel; and how our understandings of uncertainties inform how we act and the types of imaginaries we construct. Birkenholtz and Simon (2022), in their work on ignorance and uncertainty in environmental decision-making, distinguish between ignorance as a lack of knowledge, and uncertainty as a lack of clarity of knowledge. Others have addressed uncertainty, ignorance, and ambiguity interchangeably, highlighting research pursued through the lens of “key geographic concepts such as scale, power, spatiality, place, and human-environment relations” (Senanayake and King 2021). 12 Interdisciplinary environmental research has highlighted how ignorance can emerge due to a variety of causes that leave important questions unanswered. This phenomenon, which Hess refers to as “first order undone science” (Hess 2016), can be a result of epistemic orthodoxies (Kleinman and Suryanarayanan 2012), topic foreclosures and blind spots (Sayre 2017), and subject matter ignorance (Frickel et al. 2010; Frickel and Vincent 2007). “Second order undone science,” according to Hess (2016), occurs when research needs are filled, but in a way that excludes certain categories of data or research questions due to original preferences that cascade and compound ignorance. For example, Bell (2022) shows how information regarding the root causes of water scarcity in Lima was made “invisible” over time through archiving, mapping, and historicizing activities. This persistence or accumulation of ignorance has also been noted by Murphy (2008) as “regimes of imperceptibility” and by Frickel and Vincent (2007) as “organized ignorance.” For example, Porcelli studied how undone science surrounding the anchoveta fishery in Peru contributed to its collapse (2022). In her analysis, she demonstrated how an overemphasis on Western scientific models such as the maximum sustainable yield led to a focus on biological factors to the neglect of climatological factors. Ultimately, El Niño conditions were not considered, and officials were not prepared for the fisheries collapse that ensued (Porcelli 2022). Uncertainty has been studied both as a weapon and as an opportunity. Scholars have explored how corporations and the state weaponize uncertainty, by strategically “deny[ing] awareness of things it is not in their interest to acknowledge” (McGoey 2012, 4) to avoid responsibility for environmental risk (see Langston 2010; Michaels 2008; Oreskes and Conway 2011; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008a). For example, Hesse (2021) demonstrated how the hydraulic fracking industry capitalized on the spatial and temporal flexibility of worksites to 13 render health risks unknowable and ungovernable. Alternatively, uncertainty can lead to pragmatic and improvised practices of survival (Cavallo 2021; Espig 2018; Senanayake 2021), as well as opportunities for “a more rigorous, robust, transparent – and democratically accountable – environmental politics” (Stirling 2018, 120). Although the politics of uncertainty have been analyzed extensively within liberal democratic societies, other contexts remain understudied. Scoones suggests that studying uncertainty “from the margins” could expand the development imaginary and allow for a broader understanding of the everyday practices of living in limbo (2021). Porcelli calls on scholars to research the tensions between corporate interests and state science in the global South, to explore “the conflicting, overlapping, and entangled dynamics of the state and science” (2022, 227). One such intersection of state science, corporate interests, and the dynamics of uncertainty in the global South is the practice of regional and territorial planning. Planning builds on the politics of hope (Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen 2019) to form the basis of anticipatory action (Anderson 2010). Planning involves imagining a possible and desirable future and entering a promise to make the plan a reality. The anticipation of a better future legitimizes actions in the present. However, as Abram and Weszkalnys point out, “the future promised in plans seems always slightly out of reach, the ideal outcome always slightly elusive, the plan retrospectively always flawed” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011, 3). Even if the promises are elusive, they hold an allure and reshape the present in the process. Abram and Weszkalnys refer to this work of planning as a performance of promise. Promises are situated speech acts (performances) tied to action that draw the “promisor, promisee, and the thing or action promised” into a set of social and material relations (2011, 9). When these relations include corporations, the power dynamics of capital lead to tensions 14 between corporations and the state. In some cases, multinational companies finance environmental impact studies to minimize the estimation of expected socio-environmental impacts (Gustafsson 2017). Corporations often overpower impoverished local governmental institutions or dominate planning outcomes by “land banking” or acquiring ownership of large extents of land for development (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011). The state reacts in different ways, sometimes delegating the expansion of capitalism and modernization in “frontier” regions to multinational corporations (Jaramillo and Cardona 2022), and in other instances, self-representing to produce legitimacy (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011). Uncertainty often compounds through technoscientific assessments, which are central to the promises made by planning. In landscapes dominated by extractive industries, “data practices and transparency measures… effectively authorize resource exploitation” (Blair 2022, 61). Public participation has increasingly become a pillar of such assessments and planning procedures, although participatory practices have been criticized for extending the reach of the state while disengaging from accountability (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011). Often, “local actors have little leeway to do anything but legitimise decisions which have already been taken” (Gustaffson 2017, 1045). The prescribed interaction between technoscience and participation creates tensions over knowledge and authority, where locals are allowed “constrained maneuverings” within “unequal encounters” between corporate, technoscientific and lay knowledge (Gustaffson 2017, 1045). Although participatory mechanisms in environmental licensing hold an imminent risk of “co-optation and fragmentation,” alternative and innovative use of mechanisms can increase communities’ leverage in future negotiations (Leifsen et al. 2017, 1046). 15 Ethnographies of planning have focused on what plans do as they make promises. These focus on the gaps between theory and day-to-day planning practice. They depend on a radical empiricism to study what is happening on the ground through fieldwork and special attention paid to everyday practices, rituals, technologies, and discourses (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011). A growing body of literature also addresses the emotions surrounding planning instruments and resource extraction (Carmona and Jaramillo 2020; Fent and Kojola 2020; Guerrieri 2019; Jansen 2016; Weszkalnys 2016). Plans often rely on a politics of hope that “simultaneously enables and disciplines” and “is at once tangible and elusive” (Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen 2019, 646). Hope is built up and compromised at the same time. It can lead to control and intervention as well as passivity and stuckedness (Hage 2009; Miyazaki and Swedberg 2017). In her work, Weszkalnys follows the sentiments of a community that has been promised the benefits of oil exploitation off its shores. She explores the drawn-out emotions of waiting, doubting, and changing narratives around oil, in a territory where plans are made for years without oil ever being extracted. These sensations, such as “euphoria, excitement, aggression, doubt, trepidation, frustration, disillusionment, and so on” have an impact on the community’s imaginaries of progress, changing behaviors and activities even in the absence of resource extraction (Weszkalnys 2016, 128). 1.3.4 The role of the expert The question of expertise in water science has been associated with the power held by the social elite. Zwarteveen (2015) points out how, in the Netherlands, water engineers were seen as heroes of modernity and progress, laying the foundation for national prosperity through visionary leadership. Hommes and Boelens (2017) narrate how, in Lima, Perú, the career aspirations of 16 Swiss hydraulic engineers coalesced with the envisioning of Lima as a modern place-to-be, fuelling an increasing spread of hydraulic technology. When expertise is manipulated for the political framing of uncertainty, science can result in a legitimising of authority and control. Funtowicz and Ravetz instead propose a science “based on the assumptions of unpredictability, incomplete control, and a plurality of legitimate perspectives” (1993, 739). The definitions of water problems, such as water scarcity or water security, have been largely dominated by framings from the global North (Zwarteveen 2015), oftentimes with little on-the-ground understanding of local contexts in the global South. Several authors have called on the need to embrace alternative ways of knowing water and of organizing knowledge production processes (Zwarteveen 2015). This recognition goes hand-in-hand with an understanding of knowledge co-production and the dialectical relationship between nature and society, where the discourses and knowledges that emerge have a material impact on the waters and society, and the everyday social practices and materialities of people and water also shape the knowledge and discourses that emerge. In this way, water governance is not only the organization of decision making, but also the production of social order via the administration of water (Zwarteveen 2015). Scholars have proposed rethinking expertise, calling for confrontation and mutuality among diverse actors (Boelens, Shah, and Bruins 2019) as well as a balance between techno-scientific, socio-economic, political and cultural aspects of water management (Castro 2007). Others call for pragmatism as a methodological renewal (Furlong, Carré, and Guerrero 2017), a recognition of plural and partial knowledges embodied through action (Furlong et al. 2019), and ideas for organizing and increasing public engagement in science and science-based policy (Zwarteveen 2015). Regarding the need for opening up new avenues of knowledge and expertise, 17 Zwarteveen writes: “Solving today’s water problems requires the burgeoning of many different kinds of knowledge and many different knowing identities and cultures” (Zwarteveen 2015, 21). Furlong et al. (2019) invoke Rivera-Cusicanqui’s Chi’xi Aymara thought that describes the coexistence of opposite and antagonistic forces through the metaphor of a fabric woven from black and white threads that appear grey from a distance. The authors call on the Chi’xi metaphor to emphasize the need for water science to go beyond techno-scientific domination and to truly incorporate other, often place-based, ways of knowing as equally valid. Within political ecology scholarship, the term “hydrosocial cycle” has emerged as a useful analytical tool for exploring ontological questions regarding the nature of water, questions that explore how water is made known, and ways in which water internalizes social relations, social power and technology (Linton and Budds 2014). Ontologically, the hydrosocial cycle views water and society as related internally, within a dialectical relation through which both constantly make and remake each other. Social relations and water co-produce hydrosocial arrangements, and water and power are co-constituted through discursive practices and representations (Linton and Budds 2014). Hydrology as a science was clearly outlined through the concept of the hydrologic cycle and its diagrammatic representation, first presented by Robert Horton at the 1931 meeting of the American Geophysical Union (Linton and Budds 2014). The creation of the hydrologic cycle delineated hydrology as a process that occurs independently of human involvement, making water legible for administrative purposes and legitimizing a technical authority of hydrologists over water (Linton and Budds 2014). Studies in political ecology, on the other hand, have employed the concept of the hydrosocial cycle, acknowledging the situatedness of truth claims and the intricate ways in which science and society are mutually related (Acevedo Guerrero 2020). 18 Related to the concept of the hydrosocial cycle is that of the hydrosocial territory: “the contested imaginary and socio-environmental materialization of a spatially bound multi-scalar network in which humans, water flows, ecological relations, hydraulic infra- structure, financial means, legal-administrative arrangements and cultural institutions and practices are interactively defined, aligned and mobilized through epistemological belief systems, political hierarchies and naturalizing discourses” (Boelens et al. 2016). The concept of hydrosocial territories has allowed for uncovering the intricate linkages that lead to spatial inequalities in water access, distribution and knowledge production. In a study of the Santurban páramo in Colombia, Duarte-Abadía and Boelens (2016) employ the framework of hydrosocial territories to demonstrate the complex biophysical and political-institutional interactions as well as diverse territorial imaginaries of the páramo ecosystem. The complex interactions between proponents of large-scale mining, multisectorial subsistence agriculture, nearby urban climate change activists, and geopolitical actors including the government and armed forces lead to diverse technological, political and cultural projects and governance schemes in this contested territory. Yates et al. (2017) describe the notion of hydro-ontological contestation to elaborate on the need for local knowledge to be considered on equal footing, even if it is in stark contrast with dominant techno-scientific or economic rhetoric. Ontological questions revolve around the nature of reality, for example, the nature of water. Hydro-ontologies describe a community’s world view and relationship with water, which can often incorporate cultural and spiritual relationalities that vary radically from the dominant view of water-as-resource (Yates et al. 2017). For example, Canadian First Nations consider water as a lifeblood and living being in relational connection with humans and other living beings. They have developed complex traditions to remind people to honor the spiritual nature of water and to treat it with awe and 19 reverence (Walkem 2007). This is in direct contrast with Canadian water policy, which, in its focus on drinking water, breaks water down into parts and removes some parts according to a treatment plan (Yates, Harris, and Wilson 2017). There has been a growing recognition that dominant paradigms of resource governance have failed to represent the needs of ecological systems and democratic societies. Calls for participation have been criticized as mere adornments for top-down approaches to decision-making. Science and technology for water governance remain in the hands of technoscientific experts and policymakers, while the public continues to suffer the consequences of scarcity induced by poor management decisions. Reflecting on the challenges of environmental science and policy, Saltelli and Funtowicz (2017) write of a two-dimensional crisis: on one hand, a loss of public trust in scientific evidence, and on the other, a crisis in reproducibility and quality control. The authors outline numerous causes for this crisis, from imprudent inferences leading to improper science advice, to the manipulation of p-values, the use of mathematics to ward off debates and veil ideological stances and the use of statistics as recipes, to publishing issues such as predatory journals, high prices, inadequate metrics, etc. The authors call on the “model of extended participation,” proposed by Post-normal Science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993), to work with a welcoming of diversity and a more careful appreciation of uncertainty and ignorance against the hubris of quantification. Others call for a redistribution of expertise in the face of environmental uncertainties, highlighting the need for more inter and transdisciplinary divisions of knowledge and increased public engagement in science for policy (Whatmore 2009). Although participation is now considered standard in many scientific frameworks for water governance, the concept remains polysemic and in need of greater clarity. Jasanoff asserts that participation alone cannot bring about such democratization, and that what is instead needed 20 is a change in the culture of governance, to promote “more meaningful interaction among policy-makers, scientific experts, corporate producers, and the public” (2003, 238). This change in the culture of governance requires what Jasanoff terms “technologies of humility” that pay attention to substance and process, deliberation, and ethical and political analysis, while engaging human beings as active agents capable of knowledge, insight and memory. Post-normal Science also points to extended peer communities as a way to engage in interactive dialogue and to solidify a commitment to quality rather than to truth, making values explicit and considering the relevance of space, time and process to scientific explanations (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). These descriptions of a culture of governance, trust in the knowledge capacities of the public, and a commitment to interactive dialogue and quality of process, shed light on some of the profound changes that a democratization of science would require. Beyond concerns related to knowledge generation, it cannot be denied that science democracy would also require transformations at a societal level. As Wesselink and Hoppe assert, “getting things done in the policy arena involves more than providing the right science: it involves doing politics, that is, using power and influence strategically” (2011, 390). 1.4 Methods and study sites The purpose of this section is to provide a general overview of methods and study sites used to address the three main questions of this dissertation, which feed the overall objective of interrogating the implications of extractive frontiers for water science and environmental democracy in Colombia. The chapters that comprise the body of this dissertation (chapters 2 through 4) provide greater detail on data collection and analysis. The first question, “How do knowledge controversies play out at the water-oil nexus in Colombia?”, is addressed through a 21 national-level discourse analysis of recent water-oil controversies (chapter 2). Question 2, “What is the impact of bureaucratic delay on watershed planning in extractive frontiers?”, and question 3, “What are the limits to environmental democracy in extractive frontiers?”, are addressed through ethnographic fieldwork in the Guayuriba river-basin in the Eastern Foothills of Colombia (chapters 3 and 4). Although Chapter 2 is focused on debates that occurred at the national level in the media, the territory at the center of the debate is the Middle Magdalena region. Therefore, as a whole, my dissertation focuses on two major extractive frontiers in Colombia, the Middle Magdalena and the Eastern Foothills, which constitute two of the most important oil exporting regions. As Chapters 3 and 4 indicate, the Eastern Foothills is, in addition, a main site of palm oil cultivation, using a system of monocrop agriculture and intensive irrigation that has been termed agro-extractivism (Gudynas, 2015) or agrarian extractivism (Ojeda, 2021). In Chapter 2, water-oil controversies were first identified through an overview of recent (2017-2021) Colombian news coverage. Argumentative discourse analysis (Hajer 1995) was employed to characterize the competing coalitions, storylines, and discourse frames for each controversy. A subset (n=168) of articles were systematically coded using discourse frames identified through the argumentative discourse analysis. These discourse frames were categorized based on whether they communicated meanings surrounding complexity, uncertainty, or the role of expert knowledge. To determine how these meanings were structured during water-oil controversies, the relative prominence of discourse frames and links among them were quantified and visualized using network analysis methods. In Chapters 3 and 4, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2018 to 2021 in communities of the Guayuriba River basin, the city of Villavicencio, and the capital of Bogotá. I 22 conducted, transcribed, analyzed, and coded over 30 semi-structured field interviews with 48 participants. I also reviewed public hearings regarding environmental licensing, and conducted archival analysis of planning, licensing, and regulatory documents. Interview participants included fishermen, riverside residents, industry representatives, environmental activists, representatives of multi-level state agencies, and academics. The names of interview participants have been anonymized, as established in the ethics review and consent process. 1.5 Contributions This dissertation seeks to further the scholarship on water science and environmental democracy in extractive frontiers. Through the following three studies, I examine how narratives regarding the complexity and uncertainty of the water-energy nexus are involving in the Colombian context and explore the role and limitations of democratic mechanisms in territories governed by extractive interests, paying special attention to the underemphasized affective dimensions3 of environmental democracy. 3 I am referring here to the role of affect and emotions in the collective experience of procedural environmental democracy. Referring to the wide range of growing scholarship on “affect theory,” affect has been defined as pre-cognitive drives and attachments, “those visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing that can serve to drive us toward movement, thought, and ever-changing forms of relation” (Gregg and Siegworth, 2010). Paying attention to the affective dimensions of environmental democracy thus means paying attention to general and pre-cognizant feelings of apathy, frustration, attachment, anxiety, rage, despair and hope of those who pursue a voice in decision-making. 23 Chapter 2: Water science in the public sphere: A narrative network analysis of fracking and oil spills in Colombian media The looming global water crisis and waning dependence on fossil fuels have intensified the public discourse on oil and water rights, leading to conflicts over the water impacts of oil extraction and transport. This article assessed water-oil controversies that dominated media coverage in Colombia between 2017 and 2021. By drawing on discourse analysis, the assessment exposed how debates are shifting away from an economic-environmental boundary, towards nuanced discussions surrounding complexity, uncertainty and the role of expert knowledge. A database of 388 newspaper articles was compiled to characterize the competing coalitions, storylines and discourse frames for each controversy and a subset (n=168) were systematically coded. The relative prominence of discourse frames and links among them were quantified and visualized using network analysis methods. The findings presented a structural understanding of each coalition’s narrative network, providing insights regarding the relative success of each within the public sphere. Environmental narratives in Colombia have transcended traditional political and ideological barriers by emphasizing issues of democracy, scientific uncertainty and the precautionary principle, thus moving beyond unilateral economic and environmental debates. 2.1 Introduction On September 15, 2022, politicians, activists and community leaders gathered for a public audience before the Colombian Senate. This was a new kind of public audience, one in which environmental debates were supported by the new government, who has vowed to convert 24 Colombia into a “global potency of life.” A young senator wearing an anti-fracking t-shirt convened the meeting. She and others sported water bottles filled with mucky water, packaged with the logo “Agua piloto: el sabor del futuro” (Pilot water: the taste of the future). The brand had been designed to raise awareness about the threat hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” poses to the future of water, and life. Influencers promoted the product on social media, and activists staged sales of “pilot water” on the streets, asking fracking supporters to try drinking the water of the future. Now, the bottles accompanied a public audience to discuss the proposal of the new Law 114 of 2022, which would prohibit fracking in Colombia and give the national government two years to formulate a coherent energy transition policy. Susana Muhamad, the recently appointed Minister of the Environment, opened the session. She praised the openness and democratic nature of the debate, inviting the public to contribute their views. During her intervention, she also stated: “What fracking does is to lock us in deep within an unsustainable energy matrix, leaving us with immense environmental uncertainties. Because we have no idea what fracturing the bedrock in Barrancabermeja would mean, due to its globally unique characteristics.” I suggest that Muhamad’s emphasis on the uncertainty of environmental impacts and the complexity of Colombia’s unique hydrogeology and ecosystems represent shifting views of water science that have become consolidated in the Colombian public sphere through water-oil controversies in recent years. Narratives that emphasize the unknown and the complex have become the opening points for increased public participation, supporting a wave of diverse 25 expressions of environmental democratization and water justice movements across the country (Dietz 2019; Roa-garcía 2017). Muhamad’s main points were echoed in various forms throughout the public audience. Although those who spoke before the Senate represented heterogeneous interests, objectives, and priorities, this has not always been the case in Colombia, in matters of water and oil controversies. The Colombian public sphere has historically been divided between pro-economy and pro-environment fractions, heavily marked by the dynamics of internal conflict. Public debates about oil tended to become “commitment rituals” whereby participants either sided with large-scale capital or risked “being accused of collaborating with the guerrillas” (Tognato 2017, 101). For decades, issues such as the national royalty system or the nationalization of the oil industry were divided along these lines. In recent years, the public debate on fracking has united actors across the ideological and political spectrum, leading to the formation of a broader coalition (Tognato, 2017). An analysis of the early stage of the fracking controversy in Colombia (2011 to 2018) found that the state’s discourse echoed that of the oil industry, emphasizing the urgency of fracking for economic development, and systematically minimizing the public’s concerns (Roa-Avendaño and Orduz-Salinas 2021). As this rhetoric intensified, demands for water justice through mechanisms of democratic participation were on the rise (Dietz 2019; Roa-García 2017). This article seeks to comprehend the narrative and discursive elements that emerged from 2018 to 2020, that allowed Colombians to move beyond earlier “commitment rituals” in water-oil controversies. I ask, what elements of discourse surrounding water science in the public sphere have allowed for the creation of a broader coalition? How have matters of complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge figured within the narratives of opposing 26 coalitions? In asking these questions, I recognize that the issues at stake are not so black-and-white. Society cannot be understood as merely consisting of discrete opposing groups and controversies cannot be understood as merely comprised of objective facts. These categories are fluid and could better be understood on a spectrum: coalitions and the objective “facts” of controversies are constantly shifting. I do not pretend to capture these heterogeneities or nuanced understandings in a single article. Rather, I use the methodological lens of “discourse coalitions,” which are considered as coherent groups of actors who use similar lines of argumentation to communicate their stance and are loosely held together by overarching narratives or “storylines” about specific issues. This concept of coalition is distinct from that developed by scholars of agrarian conflict in Colombia, who have studied coalition formation among indigenous, afro-descendant, and rural women’s groups in enforcing redistributive land reforms (Coronado 2019), as well as coalitions among state, elite and paramilitary actors engaged in rural land grabs (Grajales 2017; Reina 2022). By adopting the lens of “discourse coalitions,” I acknowledge that a binary of grouping of actors that side with industry versus the environment is artificial, and coalitions are constantly in flux. I accept this paradox for an analytical moment, to tease out how the public discourse on water science in Colombia is grappling with understandings of complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge. It is also important to note that these discussions do not occur in a vacuum, and the public sphere is not only shaped by these notions. Behind each discourse framing or narrative discussed in this paper, there is a world of political economic factors shaping these views. I make brief mention to some of these factors influencing the shape of discourse in the following section. Each framing could be analyzed and understood within the context of long historical processes that has brought it to the fore. Therefore, I urge readers to 27 view the results of this study as a useful analytical exercise - a contribution towards a larger narrative with many moving parts - without adopting a binary or stagnant view of water-oil controversies in the Colombian public sphere. To answer these questions, I present a detailed and systematic analysis of two of the most prominent water-oil controversies occurring in Colombian public media during this timeframe: an oil spill that occurred in the Middle Magdalena region of Colombia in 2018 and the fracking debate as it played out from 2018 to 2020. I draw on argumentative discourse analysis and network analysis to quantify and visualize the ways in which discourse framings have addressed complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge. I suggest that environmental narratives in Colombia have been successful in transcending traditional political and ideological barriers, by emphasizing issues of democracy, scientific uncertainty, and the precautionary principle, thus moving beyond unilateral economic and environmental debates. This shift can be understood as a disjuncture in the public’s understanding of water science. Rather than relying on technoscientific expertise in either environmental or economic calculations of risk, a multiplicity of actors point to the irreducible nature of uncertainties and complexities (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994), opening up water science to actors involved in environmental democratization and water justice movements (Roa-García 2017). 2.2 Water-oil controversies and public discourse Water science and oil policy involve complex relationships among technoscientific and political economic factors. Truths and facts that are presented as objective, are often produced through the power relations of subterranean geopolitics (Valdivia 2015) as well as the socio-material interactions of technical, chemical, and legal processes (Sawyer 2015). In Colombia, the 28 state’s discourse on water and oil has traditionally sided with the oil industry, which has been a major provider of financially attractive foreign investments. For example, from around the 1980s to the 2000s, government narratives would emphasize the importance of fossil fuel production as a source of public income, used for improving public services and infrastructure. Towards the 2010s, the state narrative shifted towards promoting the extractive sector as a major financer of Colombia’s Peace Accord (Strambo and González Espinosa 2020). The oil industry has also been historically linked to the internal dynamics of armed conflict, with evidence of multinational corporations having financed the war system (Richani 2005). Those who live in areas dedicated to oil production have suffered the social and environmental consequences and “slow violence” of ecosystem degradation, without the promised benefits to livelihoods (Vélez-Torres and Méndez 2021). These dynamics have polarized narratives around oil, so that scientific “facts” presented as “neutral, objective resource[s] for accountable and transparent decision-making” have been shaped by multiple political economic interests (Nost and Goldstein 2022, 4). Public narratives on water-oil controversies are often narrow or simplistic, and journalists’ reports are frequently shaped by the geographic, economic and political contexts of news production (Matthews and Hansen 2018). In the case of fracking, studies have found that positions regularly vary based on demographics (Brasier et al. 2011; Jacquet 2012) or media effects (Boudet et al. 2014; Cunningham 2019; Habib and Hinojosa 2016). For example, in the US, news coverage on fracking employed framings unique to the local political, economic and social context of each state (Hedding 2017). In Canada, news stories on fracking differed by province and focused either on environmental issues or economic benefits, but rarely both (Olive 2016). Scientific “facts” regarding water availability have been mobilized by national 29 governments to garner support for the extractive industry. For example, in Argentina, the provincial government of Neuquén downplayed the complexity of water use and emphasized a perception of surface water abundance to gain public consent for fracking (Bernáldez and Herrera 2019). Uncertainty due to incomplete knowledge is a central aspect of water-oil controversies. This can stem from insufficient scientific evidence of risk, a lack of adequate data, or challenges with transparency. The public has challenged industry secrecy, for example, in the case of the chemical content of fracking fluids (Kinchy and Schaffer 2018) or contradictory oil spill data (Watts and Zalik 2020). Actors involved in water governance and fracking have often agreed on the need for more data regarding geophysical factors, while issues of responsibility and the incorporation of local and ancestral knowledge have remained unresolved (Moore, Shaw, and Castleden 2018). Uncertainty has been studied both as a weapon and as an opportunity. Scholars have explored how corporations and the state weaponize uncertainty, by strategically “deny[ing] awareness of things it is not in their interest to acknowledge” (McGoey 2016, 4). For example, Hesse (2021) demonstrated how the fracking industry capitalized on the spatial and temporal flexibility of worksites to render health risks unknowable and ungovernable. Alternatively, uncertainty can lead to pragmatic and improvised practices of survival (Cavallo 2021; Martin 2021; Senanayake 2021), as well as opportunities for “a more rigorous, robust, transparent – and democratically accountable – environmental politics” (Stirling 2018, 120). Uncertainty in water-oil controversies can lead to power dynamics regarding the role of expert knowledge. In the US, researchers have found that government knowledge was privileged over all other categories of evidence in rule-making processes surrounding fracking regulations (Baka et al. 2019). In Alberta, Canada, newspapers portrayed the oil and gas industry as victims 30 of ideologically motivated environmental lobbyists during oil sands protests (Gunster and Saurette 2014). A similar narrative was identified in Colombia during popular consultations against extractive activities (Dietz 2019). The state framed consultations as emotionally and ideologically charged and motivated by political interests or affiliations with left wing guerrilla groups, thus discrediting mobilized publics (Hess and Sovacool 2020). Expertise can also be discredited, as in the case demonstrated by Duffy (2021), where industry actors influenced the interpretation of science by framing certain problems as unrelated to fracking. The case refers to a public outreach campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) to demonstrate the health and safety benefits of fracking. IPAA’s key discourse strategy was to narrow their definition of fracking to refer to the specific process of well-stimulation and to exclude processes such as well construction and waste disposal. This way, the campaign report could include statements such as “Nearly 65 years of use, and not one case of groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing” (Duffy 2021, 65). In some cases, coalitions moved away from an emphasis on expert knowledge to highlight the importance of democracy, participation, and social license. In the UK, a shift in anti-fracking discourse has moved towards issues of local power and democracy over those of environmental risk or economic benefits (Bomberg 2017). The intersection of water science and the politics of oil offer a unique arena for the study of how science plays out in the public sphere. Water-oil controversies in media debates demonstrate the ways in which diverse actors address the complexity of water-oil dynamics, the uncertainty brought on by incomplete knowledge, and the role that expert knowledge plays in shaping policy. However, questions of oil extraction and water often go beyond notions of science, to “involve the very definition of the ‘things’ that are at stake” (Blaser, 2013: 14). For 31 the U’wa people of Casanare, Colombia, for example, oil is the “blood of the mother earth” (ruiría, sangre de la madre tierra) (Duarte 2016: 387). Defending the territory from oil extraction is a way to defend “complex webs of relations between humans and nonhumans” (Blaser, 2013: 14). In focusing on discourse framings surrounding complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge, I do not wish to disregard the conceptual richness of these “ontological conflicts.” Indeed, exploring society’s shifting understandings of science may lead to greater dialogue on conceptualizing science otherwise. For the present study, I draw attention to these shifting notions of water science in the public sphere, even as the political economy of extractives shows signs of change. I hope that others will further trace these changes in discourse and connect them with the moving ontologies of water and oil in Colombia and beyond. 2.3 Methods The objective of the assessment was to identify the most recent and prominent water-oil controversies in Colombia and to decipher how meanings surrounding complexity, uncertainty and the role of expert knowledge were structured and communicated during these controversies. To achieve this aim, water-oil controversies were first identified through an overview of recent (2017-2021) Colombian news coverage. Argumentative discourse analysis (Hajer 1995) was employed to characterize the competing coalitions, storylines and discourse frames for each controversy. A subset (n=168) of articles were systematically coded using discourse frames identified through the argumentative discourse analysis. These discourse frames were categorized based on whether they communicated meanings surrounding complexity, uncertainty, or the role of expert knowledge. To determine how these meanings were structured 32 during water-oil controversies, the relative prominence of discourse frames and links among them were quantified and visualized using network analysis methods. 2.3.1 Data Collection Initial data collection involved a compilation of news sources related to oil and water, using the Center for Research and Popular Education (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular, CINEP) media database. Using the descriptor code related to the oil and mining industries (Ecopetrol, OXI, petroleum politics, mining, hydrocarbons) for August 2017 to August 2021 returned a total of 3,223 articles. Articles were then filtered by those that mentioned water which reduced the search to 945 articles. After excluding those related to mining or exclusively financial aspects of the oil industry, these were reduced to 388 articles. These articles were categorized thematically based on headlines to identify the most prominent water-oil controversies within the period 2017-2021 (Figure 1). Although other topics, such as offshore drilling and illegal refineries also surfaced in this analysis, the Lizama oil spill and fracking had the largest number of articles. After a preliminary reading of articles related to these two water-oil controversies, main actors and coalitions were identified. Peaks in the number of published articles were selected by graphing the articles out over time and identifying three-month periods with increased article publication for major controversies (Figure 1.a- 1.d). A sub-set of articles (n = 168) released during these peaks were selected for systematic, manual coding. 33 Figure 2.1 Number of articles by water-oil knowledge controversy (August 2017 – January 2021). Selected data represent the following events: a) Lizama oil spill; b) Court invokes precautionary principle to suspend norms on fracking; c) Expert recommendations on fracking made public; d) Pilot projects controversy 2.3.2 Narrative network analysis Argumentative discourse analysis (Hajer 1995) was used to examine how meaning is created through argumentative struggles in which two or more “discourse coalitions” form. Discourse coalitions are coherent groups of actors who use similar lines of argumentation to communicate their stance. They are loosely held together by overarching narratives or “storylines” about specific issues. Storylines promoted by coalitions are comprised of “frames”, or coherent clusters of concepts, sentiments and sets of assumptions shared by coalition members. Frame concepts are ideologically and intrinsically compatible (Roth and Bourgine 2005), mixing information and emotive appeal to reconstruct meaning (Bomberg 2017). In the context of this paper, coalitions and storylines corresponded to major water-oil controversies identified in step 1 (data collection): the Lizama oil spill (Figure 1.a) and the fracking debate in 34 Colombia (Figure 1.b-d). Each discourse coalition was related to a storyline comprised of a series of supporting discourse frames. The discourse frames were identified through several iterative rounds of qualitative analysis. During the initial analysis, groups of 2-3 sentences that made up a coherent argument were tagged with “a word or short phrase that symbolically assign[ed] a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute” (Saldaña, 2015, p. 3). This first round of coding through the inductive approach, a bottom-up approach that allows codes to emerge through interaction with the text. This allowed for a deeper appreciation of the complexity and diversity of the data and produced a long list of initial descriptive codes that were later consolidated into higher level analytical categories during subsequent rounds of coding (Skjott Linneberg and Korsgaard 2019). The consolidation of initial codes was informed by discourse frames previously identified in the literature. Codes were then grouped by category to understand each coalition’s narrative approach to complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge. Discourse analysis was combined with network analysis to explore the relative strength and relationships among discourse frames within three pre-established categories of concern (complexity, uncertainty and the role of the expert). Network analysis has been used in conjunction with discourse analysis to visualize actors, concepts, and storylines (Brugger and Henry 2021; Hamann and Suckert 2018).4 Network graphs allowed for the visualization of nodes 4 The present study used Atlas.ti©, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software to code for discourse frames identified in the first phase of the analysis. Discourse frames were grouped by category of analysis (complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge) for each discourse coalition. “Coherent argumentative units” of two to five consecutive sentences were often coded for more than one discourse frame. These units with overlapping discourse frames were calculated using co-occurrence tables, and cross-tabulated matrices were produced by Atlas.ti. Co-occurrence tables were then exported to create network graphs using the R project for statistical computing. Links in network graphs were weighted by degree of co-occurrence. 35 and links between nodes. In the context of this paper, nodes represented discourse frames and links represented the simultaneous use of two or more frames within a coherent argumentative unit. Nodes were sized based on the number of mentions, so that the discourse frames used most often by a particular coalition figured as larger within the network graph. This permitted a visual analysis of the most prominent, or most frequently used, discourse frames. Discourse frames that were often used together were represented by nodes with thicker links between them. Network graphs also placed more connected nodes towards the center of the graph, and less connected nodes towards the periphery. Discourse frames which were most central were most connected to other discourse frames. Finally, nodes were also color-coded by category, with gray nodes representing discourse frames related to complexity, yellow nodes representing discourse frames related to uncertainty, and orange nodes representing discourse frames related to the role of expert knowledge. Color-coding nodes granted a visualization of the prominence and centrality of nodes by category. This aided in the analysis of each coalition’s approach to complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge. Together, the placement, size and color of nodes and links within network graphs represented each coalition’s narrative network structure. 2.4 Results 2.4.1 Major water-oil controversies A preliminary reading of Colombian news articles on water-oil controversies (2017-2020) led to the identification of two major controversies: the Lizama oil spill of 2018 and the public debate on fracking (2018-2020). The following section offers a brief overview of these two controversies, drawing on media coverage of key events. 36 On March 2, 2018, an oil seep was registered 200 meters from the Lizama 158 oil well in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. The well belonged to the state petroleum company, Ecopetrol, and had been closed in 2015, due to low production rates. At first, the oil spill went relatively unnoticed. It was not until March 15th that the full scope of the disaster was revealed to the public through media reports. Heavy rains exposed thousands of barrels of oil mixed with water and earth, contaminating a 24-kilometers stretch of the Sogamoso River and its tributaries. The oil spill lasted a month, causing the death and displacement of thousands of native animals, health effects in the local population, and economic consequences for local fishers. While Ecopetrol offered reassurance that the company had followed protocols, accusations against the company grew. A report from 2015 demonstrated that state authorities had warned Ecopetrol about the risk posed by the abandoned wells in the La Lizama oil field. For the month that followed the oil spill, controversies ensued about what caused the spill and the delayed response, as well as the extent of the damage and the expected duration of the recovery. Throughout the controversy, several experts became involved in evaluating the causes and recovery efforts. Environmental toxicologists emphasized the extent and complexity of ecosystem-wide contamination, while other environmentalists and political scientists questioned Ecopetrol’s contingency plans and lack of transparency. Still other experts praised the amount of work the company had put in towards cleaning up the spill and compensating communities. Meanwhile, Ecopetrol had been promising its own expert knowledge that would clarify the underlying causes of the oil spill: a “snubbing unit ” from the United States had been sent to the site to collect data that would be analyzed by a team of national and international experts. Once 37 the data had been collected, Ecopetrol officially sealed the well, and, in July 2018, turned in the final report. The report identified four main causes, thus officially closing the case. Although the fracking debate in Colombia had already been on the public radar for several years, it was not until 2018 that it gained momentum. Due to global interest in fracking in 2012, the General Comptroller of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República) had issued a concept to the Ministry of the Environment to consider the environmental impacts of fracking in any future decisions on licensing. By 2014, oil and gas companies were preparing to obtain licenses and operate. With nineteen identified blocks, the minister of Mining and Energy endorsed fracking within Colombia, confident that environmental reviews would follow and soon be approved. The process, however, was delayed, and companies were kept waiting for environmental permits. Meanwhile, criticism from civil society and activists grew stronger, both on social media and in the streets. A protest in San Martín, Cesar, in 2016, resulted in violent clashes with the state’s Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (Esmad). After this event, the social organization “Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking” (Alianza Colombia Libre de Fracking) was formed, consolidating a coalition of over 85 social and environmental groups and academic actors. Presidential elections and the growing environmental movement intensified the public debate on fracking. In August of 2018, the department of Boyacá held a public audience against fracking that resulted in the suspension of seismic exploration activities by the Polish firm Geofisyka Torún. A popular consultation in October of 2018 sought to ban fracking at the municipal level in Fusagasugá and San Bernardo, two cities in the department of Cundinamarca, with 99% of voters opposed to fracking. The municipal-level popular consultation offered the environmental movement hope that the activity could be banned at the base, through popular 38 education and grassroots democracy. This hope, however, was short-lived. The same month, a court decision declared popular consultations regarding extractive activities to be null, since, legally, the state was the sole owner of the subsoil. Around the same time, thirty congressmen were proposing legislation to the State Council to ban fracking at the national level, and the Comptroller General was requesting that the state suspend all activities advancing the development of fracking. The proposed legislation, drafted by the Alliance for a Colombia free of Fracking, and the Comptroller’s requests, were based on the precautionary principle, which had been embedded in Colombia’s 1991 state constitution. The precautionary principle has been an important ethical consideration in hydraulic fracturing due to its assertion that potentially harmful processes subject to scientific uncertainty should not be permitted until the social benefits can be proven to outweigh the risks. In the case of fracking, the precautionary principle has been used as a rationale for moratoriums at state and subnational levels in Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Scotland, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Canada (Quebec) and the United States (the states of New York and Maryland), due to its potential threats to human health (Patterson and McLean 2018; Pérez Castellón et al. 2016). In response to the political climate and demands of the oil and gas industry, president Iván Duque announced the formation of an “independent interdisciplinary expert commission” in October of 2018. The commission was tasked to study the viability of fracking in Colombia, so that the state could base its decisions on a rigorous scientific debate. In early November, the State Council declared a temporary moratorium on fracking. After six months of investigations, the “independent interdisciplinary expert commission” turned in its report to the president. The commission, comprised of thirteen experts, had not given a definitive green or red light to fracking. Instead, the report highlighted environmental, 39 ecological, hydrological, atmospheric, seismic and health hazards within the Colombian context. The report drew attention to the information gaps surrounding biodiversity and groundwater. In addition, it identified a lack of institutional capacity to monitor and control the projects, as well as the absence of social license in historically vulnerable and impoverished extractive regions. As a result, the commission recommended that, once several social and institutional factors had been addressed, research pilot projects (PPII, proyectos piloto de investigación integral) could be advanced. The commission’s report was controversial in many circles. Environmentalists were divided between those who whole-heartedly sanctioned the report, and those who rejected the recommendation for pilot projects. Industry hoped to interpret the recommendations as a green light for pilot projects. The state was left unsatisfied with the report’s findings, having hoped for a clearer green light. The State Council called for a second committee from the National University to present answers to seven unresolved questions regarding the technical possibilities of mitigating risks. This second call resulted in two documents produced by two separate groups of experts, each with a different conclusion. Because the results were not consistent between the two reports, Ecopetrol, the Ministry of Mining and the National Agency of Hydrocarbons filed an objection due to “serious error,” asking the State Council not to consider the findings. Towards 2020, the debate centered on the nature and purpose of pilot projects, their link to potential commercial projects, along with details for their licensing and monitoring. 2.4.2 Discourse coalitions, storylines, and discourse frames Two opposing discourse coalitions were identified for each controversy (oil spills and fracking) (Table 2.1). For the oil spill controversy, the “industry defenders” coalition (comprised 40 of industry representatives and networks, experts, research institutions and journalists) presented a storyline of the Lizama oil spill as a well-handled exception to construct meaning in ways that deflected the blame of the accident off the oil industry. The “industry accusers” coalition (comprised of residents of affected areas, local government officials, state authorities, experts, environmental NGOs and journalists) presented a storyline of the Lizama oil spill as a result of negligence to construct meaning in ways that placed the blame of the accident directly on the oil industry. 41 Table 2.1 Discourse coalitions formed during the fracking debates and oil spill controversies in Colombian media between 2017 and 2021. Discourse coalitions Storyline Member Types Member examples Oil spill controversy Industry accusers Oil spill as negligence Residents of affected areas; local government officials; State authorities; experts; environmental NGOs; journalists Fisher associations; Mayoress of Barrancabermeja; National Agency for Environmental Licenses; Attorney General; Ministry of the Environment; academics (i.e. environmental toxicologist Jesús Olivero, environmentalist Manuel Rodriguez Becerra); NGO CENSAT Agua Viva; law NGO Yareguíes; Environmental Movement; Alliance for a Colombia free of fracking; El Tiempo editorial writers Industry defenders Oil spill as well-handled exception Industry representatives; experts; research institutions; United Nations; journalists Representatives of national government; Felipe Bayón, CEO of Ecopetrol; Orlando Velandia, president of National Agency of Hydrocarbons (ANH); Association of Colombian Petroleum Engineers (Acipet); Von Humboldt Institute; United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; El Nuevo Siglo, El País and El Colombiano editorial writers Fracking controversy Precautionary Fracking as threat Environmental and legal NGOs, experts, government officials, politicians, ex-industry workers, residents of oil regions, journalists Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking; Environmental Movement; law NGO Podión; Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation; interdisciplinary Expert Commission appointed by the government; academics (i.e. environmentalists Manuel Rodriguez Becerra and Julio Carrizosa Umaña); Comptroller General; Attorney General; Council of State, political parties such as the Green Alliance, the Democratic Pole, MAIS, and Farc; residents of Magdalena Medio towns such as Sabana de Torres, San Vicence de Chucurí and Puerto Boyacá; El Tiempo and El Espectador editorial writers Pro-fracking Fracking as savior Industry networks, oil companies, government officials, politicians, experts, journalists Representatives of national government; Colombian Association of Petroleum (ACP); Colombian Chamber of Oilfield Goods and Services (Campetrol); oil companies (i.e. Ecopetrol, Esso Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Drummond); National Agency of Hydrocarbons (ANH); Ministry of Mining and Energy; political parties such as the Democratic Center; economists (i.e. Guillermo Perry Rubio and José Roberto Acosta); El Nuevo Siglo and El País editorial writers 42 During the fracking controversy, the “pro-fracking” coalition included many of the same actors as the “industry defenders” coalition. The main storyline offered by this coalition was that of fracking as savior to construct meaning in ways that promoted fracking as a national economic strategy. The “precautionary” coalition included a broader coalition with NGOs (several under the umbrella of the Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking and the National Environmental Movement), academics, politicians, and journalists. The main storyline offered by this coalition was that of fracking as a threat to construct meaning in ways that would ban fracking activities from the national territory. The discourse frames used by each coalition were identified and combined into frames used by pro-oil coalitions (“industry defenders” and “pro-fracking” coalitions) and pro-environment coalitions (“industry accusers” and “precautionary” coalitions). Discourse frames were grouped by categories related to complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge (Table 2.2, Figure 2.2). 43 Table 2.2 Discourse frames and example quotes from the fracking debates and oil spill controversies in Colombian media between 2017 and 2021. Discourse frame Example quote Discourse frame Example quote Complexity Strong institutions “The industry has incorporated good practices in environmental and safety matters into its DNA.” (Germán Espinosa quoted in El Colombiano, July 1, 2018) Weak institutions “Oil companies fail to maintain their infrastructure until an accident occurs… they feel obligated to change pipelines once the damage occurs but not preventatively.” (Johana Andrea Velásquez, quoted in El Colombiano, July 1, 2018) Security “If Colombia refrains from developing its unconventional deposits, we will have a certain risk of losing energy self-sufficiency, of doing without resources that are very important for investment, both nationally and regionally… which would necessarily translate into an increase in taxes for everyone.” (Francisco José Lloreda quoted in El País, September 2, 2018) Environmental and health risks "The [expert] commission looked at the hazards… it discovered threats to the environment, ecosystems, water and atmospheric contamination, induced seismicity and public health.” (Manuel Muñoz, quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, September 9, 2019) Opportunity “We must check the potential, the pilot [projects] for the non-conventionals will allow us to understand if the potential is real. But if you add liquids and gas, Colombia could go from 6 years of petroleum reserves to 20, 25 or 30 years of reserves. And in terms of gas, we could go from 19 to 40, 50 or 60 years.” (Felipe Bayón quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, September 4, 2019) Social license and democracy “[The decision for a temporary moratorium] was objective and considered the rights of those communities that could be affected by the pilot projects… This is a triumph of citizen mobilization and of all those who defend water and life.” (Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking, quoted in El Tiempo, September 12, 2019) 44 Development “Losing our self-sufficiency… would gravely increase unemployment and poverty. In other words, we would be taking a leap backwards and we would be much, much poorer.” (Rafael Nieto Loaiza, El Colombiano, January 12, 2020) Alternative development “We have rejected fracking. We have defended our water and natural treasures. We have protected and promoted our campesino identity and ways of knowing, of which we have so much to learn.” (Carlos Amaya, quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, July 13, 2019) Anomaly “In the oil company’s report… it is stated that… the four causes are connected and ‘if one had not occurred, the event would not have occurred, which allows it to be qualified as atypical, unpredictable, extraordinary and with almost inexistent probabilities of being repeated.’” (Richard Aguirre Fernández, El Colombiano, 21 July 2018) Hydro-geological complexity “Scientific and technological complexity increases when it is applied to a complex environment such as Colombia’s: very diverse and broken in its relief and geology, with great fluctuations between dry and wet seasons.” (Julio Carrizosa Umaña, quoted in El Espectador, September 4, 2018) “We have… complex aquifers of enormous richness and higher seismic risks because of the type of soil that we have.” (Carlos Santiago, quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, August 15, 2018) Low risk “The possible impacts and risks are very similar to those of conventional activities… they can be prevented… Colombia does not have to choose, because this technology is totally compatible with the… protection of our ecosystems and natural resources.” (Francisco José Lloreda quoted in El País, September 2, 2018) Ecological complexity “The waters of Caño Muerto and La Lizama creek have important functions in the reproductive process of fish, and as natural corridors for various animals. It is not likely that the water bodies contaminated with mercury and lead will recover within the span of one year.” (El Nuevo Siglo, May 18, 2018) Geopolitics “There are more than two and a half million oil wells that use this technique in the world. In the United States and Canada, where the environmental standards are very high, there has not been a single case of groundwater Geopolitics “The Colombian government should analyze the fact that other countries such as Germany, France or several states in the United States have prohibited fracking. Is it possible they are 45 contamination due to fracking.” (Rafael Nieto Loaiza, El Colombiano, January 12, 2020) uninformed?” (Carlos Amaya, quoted in El Espectador, September 3, 2018) Energy transition “If you ask me: What would you desire for the world? I would say to accelerate the transition to cleaner energies… But, meanwhile, the Colombian people need gas, they need diesel, they need gasoline.” (María Fernanda Suárez quoted in El Tiempo, January 12, 2020) New energy paradigm “Many environmental organizations, social movements and countries have rejected this practice [fracking]; they suggest emphasizing renewable energies and incentivizing research, science and technology, to make the necessary transition.” (Jaime Fajardo, El Mundo, March 15, 2020) Uncertainty Technical solutions “I do not want to speculate, because we still do not have all the technical information. As soon as we can enter the well with the [snubbing] unit from Houston, we will have data that will allow us to determine where the error occurred.” (Bayón quoted in El País, March 27, 2018) Precautionary principle “What does the opposition of such varied organizations… have in common? They all base their position on the precautionary principle, which… establishes that when there are indications of environmental harm, even if there is not complete scientific certainty, it is imperative to take all actions that the case requires to avoid these.” (Manuel Rodríguez Becerra, El Tiempo, September 10, 2018) Transparency “The evaluating committee will be present, but also the oversight of 50 million Colombians who would want to see how the pilot [projects] work. This is face to face with the Colombian people, it is transparent.” (María Fernanda Suárez quoted in El Tiempo, January 12, 2020) “Transparency is fundamental for trust-building.” (Germán Espinosa quoted in El Tiempo, September 18, 2019) Non-transparency “A rigorous scan of declarations, communications and interviews allows us to conclude that Ecopetrol has an almost perfect monopoly on information: not only on what went wrong in the subsurface, infrastructure, and maintenance operations (or lack of), but also about what is happening, possible solutions, and those who are responsible.” (Tatiana Acevedo Guerrero, quoted in El Espectador, March 25, 2018). 46 Sufficient knowledge “Colombia is prepared to develop non-conventional wells in a responsible way, because it has strict legislations… and because the companies… possess experience and knowledge.” (Francisco José Lloreda, quoted in La República, August 29, 2018) Insufficient knowledge "Although impact evaluations have been conducted in other institutional and biophysical contexts, they have not been done here.” (Juan Pablo Ruiz, quoted in El Tiempo, January 14, 2020) “There are large information gaps about certain critical topics that do not allow us to reach definitive conclusions.” (Manuel Rodríguez Becerra, El Tiempo, September 10, 2018) Expert knowledge Expert reassurance “After a visit to the zone… the expert from Von Humboldt assured that the cleaning work was advancing satisfactorily… the experts reported that 98% of the 1,600 rescued animals… had been released into the Sabana de Torres nature reserve.” (Vanguardia Liberal, April 6, 2018) Expert evidence of risk “There are particles of hydrocarbons that cannot be seen at first glance, but traces are present in the environment and in the water. The problem is managing the trophic chains. That is to say, when one animal consumes another that has been contaminated, and thus is affected in the long-term. The recovery will take years.” (Miguel Bacca, quoted in Vanguardia Liberal, April 2, 2018) Misinformed public “[Regarding Lizama, there have been] truths, half-truths and absurd lies, which, mixed with the understanding of the general public is acquiring overtones of an unprecedented environmental catastrophe” (Álvaro Sánchez, El Nuevo Siglo, April 8, 2018) “There are voices, like those of the alliance [for a Colombia Free of Fracking], that will oppose fracking no matter what is said. But there are thousands more… that oppose because no one has explained to them what fracking is about or the benefits it could Lived experience Hernando González, a fisherman from the Lizama area, stated that "people say that the fish tastes like oil and if someone comes to buy it, they ask us for our name and our address, to return it, if it turns out to be contaminated." We are in a very difficult situation." (Vanguardia Liberal, April 30, 2018) "If they haven't given us an answer to what we have suffered with conventional deposits, what are we going to face with non-conventional ones? From Bogotá everything looks nice but living in a contaminated territory is not." 47 bring. This requires… explain[ing] everything in a simple and convincing manner.” (David Yanovich, El Espectador, March 10, 2020) (María Jaramillo, quoted in El Tiempo, March 16, 2020) Non-experts The self-proclaimed “environmentalists” don’t know this, or if they do, they do not understand, or if they understand, even worse, they hide it. If we don’t take out all the petroleum between now and 2050, we will be stuck with it.” (Rafael Nieto Navia, El Nuevo Siglo, March 10, 2020) Non-experts “We do not trust the report of the expert commission, since a large part of the people summoned to that commission had undeclared conflicts of interest. Some of them in recent years have received money for consulting or other money from the oil companies that have fracking projects in Magdalena Medio.” (Carlos Andres Santiago, quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, July 29, 2019) 48 Figure 2.2 Schematic of discourse coalitions, storylines, discourse frames and categories used for narrative network analysis of water-oil controversies in Colombia (2017-2021). 49 Within the complexity category, several discourse frames addressed the issue of complexity directly. The anomaly frame addressed the surprising and unknowable events characteristic of complex systems. Hydrogeological complexity referred to Colombia’s complex geology, groundwater, and landscape interactions, while ecological complexity referred to Colombia’s complex ecosystems and high level of biodiversity. Other discourse frames within the complexity category indicated whether coalitions considered institutional, economic, political, environmental, and social concerns as isolated or interconnected problems. The strong institutions frame highlighted institutional experience and sound protocols, whereas the weak institutions frame emphasized corruption, oversight, and incompetence. The security, opportunity, and development frames described economic concerns. The security frame drew on arguments surrounding financial and energy security, the opportunity frame referred to untapped economic potential, and the development frame drew attention to the bounties of the national royalty system and an improved standard of living tied to the oil development model. The alternative development frame was a direct contradiction to the development frame, highlighting alternative visions of wealth and well-being. The energy transition frame presented fossil fuels as necessary for easing the gradual transition to renewable energies without harming the economy. On the other hand, the new energy paradigm frame called for an increased urgency to abandon fossil fuels and to question the growth paradigm in the face of the current climate crisis. The social license and democracy frame drew attention to issues of environmental democracy, public participation, and territorial autonomy. The low risk frame denied or minimized risks presented in the environmental and health risks frame. And the geopolitics frame referred to studies, policies and postures adopted by other countries, held up as standards for Colombia to follow. 50 Within the uncertainty category, knowledge was either presented as complete (sufficient knowledge frame) or incomplete (insufficient knowledge frame). Truths and facts presented by the state and industry could either be trusted (transparency frame) or met with skepticism (non-transparency frame). Areas of uncertainty were either dealt with through technoscientific protocols (technical solutions frame) or by exercising restraint (precautionary principle frame). With regards to the role of expert knowledge, this was either invoked to bolster awareness of environmental and health risks (expert evidence of risk frame) or to confidently negate or minimize risk (expert reassurance frame). Perspectives regarding the public were also related to notions of expertise. The lived experience frame emphasized the value of knowledge gained empirically through daily life, whereas the misinformed public frame presented the public as unknowledgeable victims of false information. The non-experts frame referred to the disqualification of expertise on either side of the equation, whether the delegitimized experts were environmentalists, state authorities, or industry-sided professionals. 2.4.3 Narrative network structure 2.4.3.1 Oil spill as well-handled exception The oil spill as well-handled exception storyline featured the following discourse frames as most prominent: strong institutions, expert reassurance, technical solutions, and anomaly (Figure 2.3.a). Of these, the technical solutions frame was most central, or most connected to other discourse frames used by the coalition to support its storyline. This relationship suggests that the perception of institutional strength was promoted by dealing with uncertainty through technical solutions. As indicated by the width of links, the strong institutions frame was most 51 often invoked along with the transparency, anomaly, and expert reassurance frames. The misinformed public, sufficient knowledge, and low risk frames were peripheral to the debate. The technical solutions frame included statements that proposed handling or banishing uncertainty through the use of technology. The main object of uncertainty was the cause of the oil spill, although other questions arose regarding the delayed response, the likelihood of oil spills in other abandoned wells, the extent of the impact, and the length of the recovery. Ecopetrol’s president Felipe Bayón repeatedly stated that nothing could be said regarding the causes of the oil spill until the “snubbing unit” from Houston, Texas had taken its measurements and a technical report had been delivered through these results. The anomaly frame painted the Lizama oil spill as an exceptional event, one that had never occurred before in Colombia, and would probably never occur again. This view was also related to ideas that forces of nature, outside the company’s control, contributed to the disaster. The coalition repeatedly mentioned heavy rains and possible seismic activity. Ecopetrol’s final report on the causes of the oil spill relied on the anomaly frame to avoid responsibility. The report detailed four factors, the confluence of which qualified the event as “atypical, unpredictable, extraordinary and with almost inexistent probabilities of being repeated” (Aguirre Fernández, El Colombiano, 21 July 2018). The transparency frame was linked to the anomaly frame, since Ecopetrol emphasized that the company had the same amount of information regarding the causes of the oil spill as everyone else. However, about a month into the disaster, the Attorney General revealed that its office’s 2016 report had warned Ecopetrol about the improper abandonment of a series of wells in the Lizama oil field. In the face of accusations and uncertainty surrounding possible negligence, Ecopetrol reaffirmed both its innocence and its commitment to transparency. 52 Finally, the expert reassurance frame was strengthened by citing expert visits supporting the storyline that the oil spill had been a well-handled exception. For example, a commission from the United Nations was sent to the site for two weeks and concluded that the spill was “medium-impact,” guaranteeing ecological recovery within a year. Experts from the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute also visited the area and “assured that the cleaning work was advancing satisfactorily” since “98% of the 1,600 rescued animals… had been released into the Sabana de Torres nature reserve” (Vanguardia Liberal, April 6, 2018). 2.4.3.2 Fracking as savior The fracking as savior storyline featured the security frame, together with the opportunity frame, as most prominent (Figure 2.3.b). The strong institutions and low risk frames were secondary to frames related to economic benefits. With regards to the role of expert knowledge, the expert reassurance, misinformed public and non-expert frames were also relatively prominent, and most strongly linked to the sufficient knowledge frame. The energy transition, development, sufficient knowledge, transparency, and geopolitics frames appeared on the perimeter of the “pro-fracking” coalition’s narrative network structure. The security frame was related to both the idea of energy security as well as financial security and was used most by government and industry representatives. A common feature of the discourse around security was its emphasis on self-sufficiency, and the subsequent threat of having to decrease investment and increase fuel imports, deepening a national dependence on foreign powers. The security frame was closely related to the opportunity frame, which referred to the untapped potential and economic opportunities related to fracking. Both the security and 53 opportunity frames were represented on the periphery of the network graph, indicating that although they were prominent frames, they were not often mentioned together with other discourse frames. The technical solutions frame was the most central, along with the low-risk frame, allowing both to bring together all other discourse frames. The technical solutions frame was employed to point out technologies that would minimize environmental and health impacts. For example, coalition members stated that water recycling and wastewater treatment would eliminate the need to “sacrifice water for oil” (El Tiempo, March 8, 2020). The president of the Colombian Association of Petroleum (ACP) indicated that conventional oil extraction held similar risks to fracking, and therefore, there were already technical procedures in place to identify and mitigate risks. Later in the debate, once the expert commission had recommended pilot research projects, the “pro-fracking” coalition viewed these as a technical solution that would allow the government to “close existing uncertainties… and reach conclusions that would help make a decision” (Suárez quoted in El Tiempo, January 12, 2020). The “pro-fracking” coalition used the expert reassurance frame to garner support for the fracking as savior storyline. When the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, announced the formation of the independent interdisciplinary expert commission, the “pro-fracking” coalition supported this development. Some members of the coalition conveyed their certainty that the experts’ report would confirm the benefits of fracking, negate environmental and health risks, and reassure the public through sound, objective, quantifiable evidence. The Minister of Mining and Energy expressed her confidence in the expert commission, stating that “science and knowledge are the best way to clear the doubts of the Colombian people” (Suárez quoted in El Tiempo, March 8, 2020). 54 Together with the expert reassurance frame, the “pro-fracking” coalition also put forth the misinformed public frame. Regarding the public’s misconception of fracking, Francisco José Lloreda stated that “many Colombians… have heard that this practice will be the end of our country’s water resources and that they have to choose between water and fracking [but] this dilemma does not exist” (Lloreda quoted in El País, September 2, 2018). Coalition members also called on the need for the public to be educated “because no one has explained to them what fracking is about or the benefits it could bring” (Yanovich, El Espectador, March 10, 2020). The misinformed public frame was supplemented by the non-expert frame, which discredited expert knowledge that opposed the main storyline. This frame was particularly apparent when the second expert committee, comprised of faculty from the National University of Colombia, presented their results before congress. The Ministry of Mining and Energy questioned the validity of the first set of experts from the National University before the court, citing “grave error” in their analyses. Finally, the public bias frame critiqued not only ignorance, but the manipulation of public opinion along ideological and political lines. The fracking debate was called “emotive,” a “visceral and charged discussion” (Sánchez, El Nuevo Siglo, September 2, 2018) fueled by a Left that “want[s] to continue being poor” (Martínez, El Colombiano, September 13, 2019). 2.4.3.3 Oil spill as negligence The oil spill as negligence storyline featured the weak institutions frame as most prominent, although the environmental and health risk frame was most connected, and the insufficient knowledge frame was both central and prominent (Figure 2.3.c), suggesting that uncertainty was a central concern. The weak institutions frame highlighted how industry and 55 environmental authorities were unprepared to handle surprises characteristic of complex systems. Lived experience was the most prominent frame with regards to expert knowledge. This frame referred to anecdotes about living with contamination (e.g., statements about residents’ loss of fishing livelihoods, fish tasting like oil, lack of clean water, etc.) as evidence of the oil spill’s extent. Compared to this frame, expert evidence of risk and non-expert frames appeared as secondary. Lived experience was also strongly related to non-transparency and insufficient knowledge. The weak institutions frame highlighted flaws in emergency response plans due to a general lack of institutional capacity. One of the main concerns with the oil spill was the company’s delayed response. Coalition members argued that “oil companies fail to maintain their infrastructure until an accident occurs” and that institutional capacity lags in isolated territories “far from civilization” (Velásquez quoted in El Colombiano, July 1, 2018). The coalition capitalized on the poorly handled incident to question the industry’s ability to “be technically informed and able to respond to more advanced mechanisms, such as fracking” (Sánchez, El Colombiano, March 26, 2018). Although not as prominent, the hydrogeological complexity frame stressed the importance of water resource impacts in oil regions with rich and complex groundwater systems. Ecopetrol president Felipe Bayón claimed that seismic activity could have induced the oil spill, since the region is characterized by high seismicity. Members of the “industry accusers” coalition turned his statements around, arguing that, precisely due to high levels of seismicity, more caution should be taken to ensure the safety of groundwater resources. The incident also drew attention to the issue of abandoned oil wells. Coalition members questioned the safety of abandonment practices in regions with complex groundwater systems. In the aftermath of the 56 Lizama oil spill, one columnist wrote “whatever is uncovered about this case should serve as a warning bell regarding potential risks in other sealed and abandoned oil wells, of which there are hundreds across the expanse of the [national] territory” (quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, April 2, 2018). 2.4.3.4 Fracking as threat The fracking as threat storyline featured the environmental and health risks frame as most prominent, although it was closely supported by two additional prominent and central frames: insufficient knowledge and social license and democracy (Figure 2.3.d). The environmental and health risks was also most commonly invoked together with the precautionary principle frame, as well as the weak institutions frame. The insufficient knowledge frame was also linked to the expert evidence of risk frame, which was most prominent among frames dealing with the role of expert knowledge. The new energy paradigm, alternative development, lived experience, non-expert, transparency, hydrogeological complexity, and ecological complexity frames all figured within the debate, and although they were mentioned less, they were related to other frames and helped create a coherent narrative. The insufficient knowledge frame emphasized uncertainty regarding the implementation of fracking within the Colombian “institutional and biophysical context” (Ruiz quoted in El Tiempo, January 14, 2020). The argument surrounding “large information gaps about certain critical topics” (Rodríguez Becerra, El Tiempo, September 10, 2018) led to the formation of the expert commission. The insufficient knowledge frame was also used to support the precautionary principle frame, which “establishes that when there are indications of environmental harm, even 57 if there is not complete scientific certainty, it is imperative to take all actions that the case requires to avoid these” (Rodríguez Becerra, El Tiempo, September 10, 2018). The social license and democracy frame was pushed forward particularly through social movements, mobilizations, petitions, and statements made by the Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking. Early in the debate, participatory mechanisms at the departmental level (Boyacá) and municipal level (Fusagasugá and San Bernando) sought to determine their own autonomy and ban fracking from these territories. During this time, popular consultations were constitutionally binding. The governor of Boyacá, Carlos Andrés Amaya, who had campaigned for his department to be the first to ban fracking, said in one interview: “even if you don’t like it, we are using a constitutional mechanism to defend our rights and territories” (quoted in El Espectador, September 3, 2018). However, once popular consultations on extractive activities were suspended by the state in 2018, the “precautionary” coalition had to shift to other strategies to push for social license and democracy. The Alliance worked on obtaining signatures and drafting bills for congress instead. Due to these efforts, Óscar Sampoyo, a member of the alliance, called the court decision for a temporary moratorium a “triumph of citizen mobilization, of communities, workers, and a lot of people for the defense of water and life” (quoted in El País, September 11, 2019). The social license and democracy frame grew within the public debate on fracking with the recommendations made by the expert commission. The commission highlighted the need for obtaining social license from communities in oil regions before the implementation of fracking projects. Pilot projects would also have to “foment citizen participation” in all phases of planning and implementation (El Nuevo Siglo, September 4, 2019).58 Figure 2.3 Narrative network graphs of major water-oil controversies. Storyline a) Oil spill as well-handled exception was promoted by the “industry defenders” coalition. Storyline b) Fracking as savior was promoted by the “pro-fracking” coalition. Storyline c) Oil spill as negligence was promoted by the “industry accusers” coalition. Storyline d) Fracking as threat was promoted by the “precautionary” coalition. Node size represents the number of mentions of each discourse frame, while link width represents the number of co-occurrences (simultaneous mentions of two or more discourse frames within the same coherent argumentative unit). Nodes are color-coded by category (gray nodes are related to complexity, orange codes are related to expert knowledge, and yellow codes are related to uncertainty). 59 2.5 Discussion The present study suggests that the widening of the “precautionary” coalition is related to its narrative network structure: its ability to embrace complexity, and to connect environmental and health concerns with issues of insufficient knowledge, democracy, and the precautionary principle. The ability to embrace complexity was observed through both the narrative network structure as well as direct references to characteristics of complex systems. In the field of political psychology, complex discourses have been defined as those capable of differentiation (considering distinct dimensions of a problem) and integration (making complex connections among differentiated topics) (Tetlock 1993). This framework has been applied to measure the complexity of public discourse (Hoffman and Slater 2007). In the context of this paper, the pro-environmental coalitions were able to use a variety of interrelated discourse frames to support their storylines, whereas the pro-oil coalitions tended to simplify water-oil controversies by focusing on fewer, less-connected economic concerns (i.e., the security and opportunity frames). The tendency to disregard complexity led pro-oil coalitions to become contradictory. Using the anomaly frame, industry representatives claimed that most water-oil systems were not complex and did not present unanticipated events. For example, former Minister of Mines Ruben Darío Lizarralde stated that there was no oversight in Ecopetrol’s operations, just “old wells that give surprises” (Lizarralde quoted in El Colombiano, 21 July 2018). Ecopetrol’s president also sought to attribute the cause of the oil spill to possible seismic activity from one of the region’s many geologic faults. This argument also presented the oil spill as an “unintended consequence of well-intentioned choices,” a common response to accidents that “absolves technology and its human progenitors of responsibility and blame” (Jasanoff 2004, 3). 60 Although the anomaly frame was applied to avoid liability, pro-environmental coalitions highlighted the frame’s contradictory nature, using the same arguments to expose the complexity of the Colombian landscape. This was captured in both the hydro-geological and ecological complexity frames, which also figured during the fracking controversy. An emphasis on Colombia’s diverse and “complex environment… its relief and geology, with great fluctuations between dry and wet seasons” (Carrizosa Umaña, El Espectador, September 4, 2018) led the Minister of the Environment to state that blanket risk assessments would not work. Instead, they would have to be conducted “point by point, village by village, aquifer by aquifer, community by community” (Ricardo Lozano, quoted in El Nuevo Siglo, August 15, 2018). Pro-environmental coalitions were also successful in connecting environmental and health concerns with issues of uncertainty. The “pro-fracking” coalition tended to handle uncertainty with technical solutions. However, the “precautionary” coalition placed the insufficient knowledge frame at the center of its narrative, which was instrumental for the legal use of the precautionary principle. But it also allowed a more expansive view of expertise and public participation. In the case of the Lizama oil spill controversy, lived experience became important because scientific evidence was lacking, and transparency was a concern. Therefore, only residents could assess on-the-ground conditions. The lived experience frame combined contextual evidence with emotional and sensory ways of knowing. This is in line with recent scholarship regarding water security, which explores the dimension of water affect: “the emotional, cultural, and subjective experiences of water” (Jepson 2014, 109). Scholarship on toxicity has also focused on embodied and emotional suffering from water contamination (Perreault 2018), the experience of “slow violence” (Vélez-Torres and Méndez 2021), and changes in connections to place due to water contamination (Willow 2016). 61 An increased emphasis on uncertainty and lived experience during the oil spill controversy contributed to the prominence of the social license and democracy frame during the fracking controversy. The link between non-technical expertise, lived experience and democracy is a topic which merits additional attention, but is beyond the scope of this study. Scholarship on extractive knowledge controversies have found that expertise is often “a performative, ideological, and interactional phenomenon… authorized by existing power relationships” (Carmona and Jaramillo 2020). Opening up expertise and including the non-technical, embodied experience of living with the impacts of oil extraction on water could lead to more democratic debates. The “precautionary” coalition did not, however, focus on democratic principles in isolation. These were often presented together with the expert evidence of risk frame. Foreign expertise represented by the geopolitical frame also gained relevance, in the form of scientific studies and progressive policies. The coalition thus used simultaneous arguments regarding the need for social license, as well as scientific evidence of risks reported in other countries. This phenomenon of combining activist concerns with expert scientific evidence has been labeled “scientific environmentalism” (Yearley 2005). Activists have moved environmental concerns into public discourse by drawing on expert authority (Pellizzoni 2011) and increasingly applying scientific methods and languages (McCormick 2007). Kimura (2016) analyzed this tendency in citizen science approaches, and warned against framing environmental problems through a reductive, technocratic lens, since doing so could unintentionally delegitimize actors less comfortable with the methods and language of science. Pro-environmental coalitions would do well to continue strengthening the discourse on democracy. An over-emphasis on scientific 62 evidence could inadvertently create contradictions within the complex argumentative structure that has been built around uncertainty, democracy, and the precautionary principle. 2.6 Limitations Although studies that analyze media sources can be rich and insightful, limitations arise due to several challenges with the press, including media capture and clientelism, journalist self-censorship, the silencing of Afro and indigenous voices, and a lack of coverage in remote regions – all of which result in untold, incomplete, and obscured stories. In the case of Colombian media outlets, most are owned by an elite group of politicians and media businessmen (Márquez Ramírez and Guerrero 2017). For example, El Tiempo, Colombia’s biggest national newspaper group, was owned for a long time by the influential Santos family, who produced two of Colombia’s presidents. Since 2012, El Tiempo has been owned by the banker Luis Carlos Sarmiento, the richest man in Colombia. Colombian journalists have been fired, censored, or threatened for exposing corruption and human rights abuses (Hughes et al. 2017). As a result, many have engaged in self-censorship, choosing certain stories over others to defend their livelihoods (Barrios and Miller 2021). Through 16 in-depth interviews with Colombian journalists, Barrios and Miller found that “generalized fear, the distribution of official advertising and political publicity, the media’s property, and local journalists’ vulnerability” were the most prevalent motivations for self-censorship (1423). Some have responded by creating new independent online outlets, such as the Silla Vacía, a website founded in 2009. Silla Vacía has published articles on the fracking debate, and just recently on September 18, 2022, released its first documentary titled “Wells: a people marked by fracking” (Pozos: un pueblo marcado por el fracking). Because this study used the CINEP database for its media analysis of oil spill and 63 fracking debates in Colombia, results were confined to print sources. Online spaces such as the Silla Vacía, as well as discussions held on Twitter and other social media, were omitted. Other spaces where these controversies played out, including congress hearings, forums, academic conferences, street performances, and protests, were also not included. The scope of the analysis presented in this article was therefore limited and offers only a partial window into the structure of public discourse. 2.7 Conclusions This article has highlighted two of the most debated recent water-oil controversies in Colombia: the Lizama oil spill of 2018 and the question of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”. It has detailed the coalitions, storylines and discursive frames formed around each controversy, both in support and opposition of the oil industry. Beyond the identification of discourse frames, the analysis has paid special attention to the ways in which these are structured and related to each other around themes of complexity, uncertainty, and the role of expert knowledge. An overview of each coalition’s narrative network structure suggested that the precautionary coalition has achieved the greatest level of coherence in its discourse. Its success in the public sphere resulted from its placement of issues of scientific uncertainty and democratic participation at the core of its discourse, along with discussions of environmental and health risks. This allowed the coalition to transcend traditional political and ideological barriers and to move beyond unilateral economic and environmental debates. This shift can be understood as a disjuncture: a public break with technoscientific expertise in either environmental or economic calculations of risk. A multiplicity of actors point to the irreducible nature of uncertainties and 64 complexities (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994) in water science, supporting movements for environmental democratization and water justice (Roa-García 2017). The analysis was conducted before the recent presidential elections in Colombia (2022) and therefore reflected the shape of discourse primarily during the Duque administration. Now that the state discourse on fracking is changing – the new Minister of the Environment and Minister of Mines (both women) oppose fracking, and the President is advocating for an energy transition – narratives on oil and water will assuredly shift. Already, there is a sense of this. In her presentation before the Senate on September 18, 2022, Muhamad emphasized the need to move beyond a “carbon culture” (carbono-cultura) in Colombia. Opening a discussion on culture and fossil fuel dependence could shift the public gaze away from the complexities and uncertainties of science to a discussion on the meanings of water and oil for culture, society, and the national imaginary. The present moment, and the state’s commitment to leadership for an energy transition, offers new opportunities for exploring the shifting contours of these debates. 65 Chapter 3: Order through delay: the uncertainties of perpetually planning the Guayuriba river-basin Perpetually planning the Guayuriba River basin for nearly two decades has allowed mining companies to continue extracting gravel, amidst uncertain flooding dynamics; oil companies to continue discharging production waters, despite uncertain water quality; and palm oil plantations to continue large-scale irrigation, notwithstanding uncertainties in water use and availability. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews in the Guayuriba River basin of the Eastern Foothills of Colombia, I discuss the temporality of planning, the rituals of expertise and public participation, and the accrual of uncertainties related to flooding, water quality, and water use and availability. Uncertainties have been perpetuated, accumulated, obscured, and met with a lack of will throughout the continual revision and adjustment of the river-basin planning document. While peoples and natures are made to wait, the delaying of order has in fact lead to a tacit authorization of increased resource extraction despite concerns of environmental degradation. 3.1 Introduction In 2019, I was finishing work on a study of water use and degradation in the department of Meta, Colombia. Carolina, a local activist I had met through the study had stayed in touch, sending my colleagues and I updates about the rivers and the communities’ legal struggles with environmental licensing. She urged us to undertake a study of the Guayuriba River (Figure 3.1), the iconic braided river that passes through the city of Villavicencio, also in the department of 66 Meta. “It’s turning into a sumidero [waste disposal],” she would tell us. Although it was a large river with significant flow velocity, Carolina told us that in the dry season, the Guayuriba’s flow was almost completely comprised of discharge water from oilfields. In her calls, she would continuously reference the river-basin plan, which she called by its acronym, “POMCA,” stating that a good POMCA – one with the right conclusions based on accurate information - could revert the situation. POMCA stands for “Planning for the zoning (ordenación)5 and management of hydrographic basins” (Planeación para la ordenación y manejo de cuencas hidrográficas). The POMCA had generated discontent because it held the promise of protecting river-dwellers and the river itself from encroaching extractive activities, such as oil extraction, palm oil production, and gravel mining operations. But, as Carolina told us, it was based on outdated, inaccurate information, and that made it ineffective for opposing environmentally degrading practices. When I first committed to studying the POMCA of the Guayuriba, I viewed the POMCA as a planning document with legal rhetoric and clearly defined environmental zoning that was either in favor or opposed to increased resource extraction within the region. But as I became more attentive to the processes and timeframes of river-basin planning as it was operating on-the-ground, I realized that the ordenación had been happening all along and was not dependent on the legal provisions of the final, approved POMCA. Through nearly two decades of perpetual planning, regional environmental authorities had been “giving and imposing order” (Asher and 5 Although ordenación is translated here as zoning, it is important to understand the Spanish word ordenación and ordenamiento beyond the technical act of zoning. As Asher and Ojeda have pointed out regarding ordenamiento territorial (territorial zoning policy), ordenación “not only involves reorganizing physical space but also the restructuring of the state’s administrative authority and functions” (2009, 293). In their article, Asher and Ojeda use the Spanish term ordenamiento territorial to illustrate “the ideas of giving and imposing order to national territory better than the English translation “territorial zoning”, which risks appearing more literal and technical” (2009, 293). 67 Ojeda, 2009, 293) to the territory through the very process of delay and through many disparate forms of perpetuating and accruing uncertainties. Delay had kept the promise of planning alive, through technical studies, basin council elections, zoning procedures, risk assessments, and other elements of the POMCA. But rather than shedding light on dynamics that could lead to sound decisions for environmental protection, these elements appeared to be making it even more difficult to know how to mitigate floods, prevent water pollution, or allocate water equitably. When sociologist Javier Auyero began studying the “politics of the poor” in Argentina, he was first interested in the “real… observable, measurable” elements of political clientelism. In hindsight, he realized that waiting in the welfare office “and being made to endure the runaround by state officials” had been a key temporal process “in and through which political subordination is reproduced” (Auyero 2012, 2). The tactic of veiling and manipulating time through waiting and delay, deserves attention, not only in the study of the poor and state benefits, but in the bureaucratic slowness of environmental planning and governance. Delay, in this sense, authorizes slow violence (Nixon 2011) on peoples and natures, by allowing degradation associated with resource extraction to continue, aided by the accrual and system consolidation of uncertainties. In the sections that follow, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2018 to 2021 in communities of the Guayuriba River basin, the city of Villavicencio, and the capital of Bogotá. Research involved over 30 semi-structured field interviews with 48 participants, the review of public hearings regarding environmental licensing, and was supplemented by an archival analysis of planning, licensing and regulatory documents. Interview participants included fishermen, riverside residents, industry representatives, environmental activists, representatives of multi-level state agencies, and academics. I begin by discussing the 68 temporality of the planning process, and the rituals of expertise and public participation that have been enacted throughout. I then present three sections corresponding with three spheres of uncertainty within the Guayuriba: flooding, water quality, and water use and availability. These sections tell how the perpetual planning process was allowing mining companies to continue extracting gravel, amidst uncertain flooding dynamics; oil companies to continue discharging production waters, despite uncertain water quality; and palm oil plantations to continue large-scale irrigation, notwithstanding uncertainties in water use and availability. I conclude that the continual revision and adjustment of the POMCA has in fact “giv[en] and impos[ed] order” (Asher and Ojeda, 2009, 293) by perpetuating, accumulating and obscuring uncertainties related to water quality, hydrology and flood dynamics, allowing resource extraction to increase in the river-basin. Figure 3.1 Map and location of the Guayuriba river-basin, including palm oil plantations and active oil fields. 69 3.2 River-basin planning and the politics of time When they were first integrated into Colombian legislature, POMCAs represented the country’s hope for sustainable development. In many cases, large amounts of funding would be spent on extensive studies, multi-institutional deliberations, and basin council meetings, only to reach conclusions that would be disputed by powerful industrial players. The POMCA process would then be suspended, revoked, or generally placed in limbo. After several years, a new set of contractors would be hired, new studies would be set in motion, and the process would be repeated. In the case of the Guayuriba River, the POMCA has been in perpetual reformulation for 20 years. Each phase of the process has been drawn-out, from the initial studies developed by technical consultants to the legal stages of signing and approving the documents. Despite rarely being implemented, the planning process itself has had its own consequences. Technical procedures, expertise and public participation and their “tacitly authoritarian political ritual[s] of rationality” (MacKerron and Wynne 2011) became ways to assert the authority of Regional Environmental Authorities (Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales, CARs), whose relevance has been fading. As I discuss in this article, perpetual planning not only leads to a perception of authority but becomes a form of delivering order by allowing uncertainties to take root in favor of extractive interests. The Joint Commission (Comisión Conjunta) of the POMCA of the Guayuriba was formed in 2002 and was comprised of four different environmental authorities (CARs) with jurisdictions within the river-basin. It was not until 2005, however, that the planning process was formally initiated through legal documentation. It took another three years to get the budget approved to hire the consultants that began the six phases of the POMCA: operational readiness, diagnostic, exploration and zoning, formulation, execution, and implementation and evaluation. 70 The first reports of the formulation stage, which came out in 2009, included a neighborhood census, a characterization of basin actors and socioenvironmental problems, an inventory of available geographic information, and records of announcements across newspapers and radio programs. Its 366 pages were suggestive of the similarly excessive Environmental Impact Assessments analyzed by Li (2009), where “mapping, measuring, and classifying elements of the landscape” created a “sense of technical rigor” that allowed assessments to circulate as authoritative sources of scientific knowledge (2009, 222–23). By 2010, the national oil company (Ecopetrol), was also listed as a sponsor on POMCA diagnostic reports, further complicating the neutrality of the planning process. New information was added, including water quality measurements from oilfield discharge studies conducted by Ecopetrol. By mid-2010, the prospection phase had also been completed, including future scenarios, project proposals and financial schemes. In May of 2012, when the POMCA was finally signed and approved by the Joint Commission, conversations were already happening at the state level to update national POMCA guidelines and include more detailed risk assessments following the 2011 flooding events related to La Niña6. A state-level decree dated August 2012 established that, for POMCAs that had already been approved, these should proceed to revise and adjust the instrument within 5 years of initial publication. Although the 2012 POMCA had approved budgets for 12 years’ worth of projects, the Joint Commission did not hesitate to suspend the plans that had been made. Just one year later, a new team was appointed, and a year 6 The El Niño/La Niña southern oscillation periodically causes a change in winds and sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean, which can impact tropical climates. In 2011, Colombia experienced the cooling phase (La Niña), resulting in abnormally abundant rainfall, flash floods, landslides, infrastructural damage, and long-term flooding of agricultural land in the floodplains. 71 after that, the POMCA was officially declared “in revision and adjustment.” Those who had been involved in the original planning phases had moved on to other jobs and institutions, and new officials were left to restart the process. Five more years of contracts, committee meetings, Basin Council7 elections, studies and consultations ensued, until finally, in October of 2019, the newly revised POMCA was signed and approved. At the time of my fieldwork in 2021, the basin council’s four-year term was up, and representatives were sending in applications to be considered for a new election. The endless timeframe and continual revision and adjustment of the POMCA is reminiscent of the “perpetual timeframe” of the watershed assessment studied by Hébert in her analysis of Bristol Bay, Alaska. Hébert proposes that “a perpetual timeframe seems not a time frame at all, but rather time’s un-bounding.” Planning becomes complicated by time because resources have “different rhythms, tempos, and durations” (Hébert 2016). Processes that span geological and ecological time are often overlooked by rational scientific observation (Sayre 2005). In addition to the resources themselves – their formations, circulations, renewals, and degradation - scholars have demonstrated how extractive activities also have their own temporalities (D’Angelo and Pijpers 2018; Ferry and Limbert 2008; Halvaksz 2008). Both companies and communities have used time as a political strategy (Fent and Kojola 2020; Kirsch 2014). Companies have manipulated the velocity of extraction (Hitchcock 2015) or stalled and delayed extraction to control supply and prices (Mitchell 2011). Activists have delayed mining development (Hébert 2016), by dragging out environmental licensing (Gedicks 1994). Pablo, a 7 The Basin Council is made up of elected representatives from regional and local government, river-basin communities, industry, non-profits, and researchers, who go through an application process before being eligible for election. 72 local environmental activist, maintained that the POMCA’s continual revision and lagging implementation was intentional. It was a pattern he clearly recognized: “When the next new standard comes out, they cover up what they did not do before, and they revive [the POMCA] and give themselves a new date to do it… nothing has happened… they incorporate some minimal element and continue to worry about rigorously evaluating… the most precious resource we have [the river].” Pablo claimed that the Environmental Authority was only interested in “legalizing… juicy contracts” through various planning instruments. The plan’s implementation only ever reached a “maximum of 5 per cent” of proposed actions. When things were done, they “had nothing to do with what was prioritized.” Because of this, Pablo stated, many communities felt abandoned by the environmental authorities: “We simply don’t see them again, they do not show up, except only when there is some… emergency or some disaster.” This was complicated by the fact that 80% of the Environmental Authority’s staff contracts were being funded by Ecopetrol. Li (2009) discusses how the shear level of investment poured into producing information by extractive sectors (in her case, mining companies in Perú), makes it difficult to produce counter-information with limited resources in an “uneven playing field” (229). Although the lack of implementation could be interpreted as an absence, the mere ritual of the planning instrument allowed extraction to continue through “airs of rigor and engagement with uncertainty, all while leaving blind spots” (Nost and Goldstein 2022, 11). The data collected and published in POMCA reports “ma[de] subjects and resources legible… selectively spotlight[ing] for the state” (Nost and Goldstein 2022, 11). 73 The state, however, is also a heterogenous entity. Local government officials were also frustrated by the Environmental Authority’s lagging implementation. Clara, Villavicencio’s Secretary of the Environment, explained that she, too, had no idea if anything had been done. Finding out would be much easier “if the Authority had that information at hand.” For Clara, the POMCA was “quite outdated” and lacked “the real context of the situations that are lived in this river.” Mariana, the president of a riverside neighborhood8, was sure that the POMCA’s execution had been null. “And do you know what else bothers us?” she asked, “it would be one thing if they at least came and did a study, but they just take [the information], [and they] copy and paste, copy and paste. They don’t really come to do a serious environmental study.” Mariana’s observation points to a common structural deficiency in environmental assessments that rely on “under-qualified independent consultants” and their “disingenuous or poorly prepared… evaluations” (Blair 2022, 69). Similar “boxchecking” practices have been documented elsewhere, including among British oil consultants in the Falklands who had “literally copied and pasted sections from previous statements” (Blair 2022, 69). Studies have shown how participatory spaces in environmental impact assessments have been used to legitimize a prioritization of market growth under the guise of liberal democracy (Horowitz 2015; Tironi and Barandiaran 2014). The POMCA, on the other hand, allows the state to claim authority for planning in a landscape governed by extractive markets. The Basin Council (Consejo de Cuenca), the participatory mechanism of the POMCA, is used to legitimize the state’s performance of orderly decision-making. The Council is, according to the guidelines, 8 In Colombia, each “neighborhood” (vereda) has a neighborhood council (junta de acción comunal) with elected officials (president, secretary, etc.). 74 “the pinnacle of the formulation, management, evaluation and follow-up of the POMCA… the maximum order of participation, in which its members act as propositional and advisory entities for planning decisions.” They are expected to meet periodically, to hold consultations to inform decision-making processes (at the level of the Joint Commission) and, once the POMCA is approved, they are responsible for overseeing implementation. Although the Basin Council is meant to elicit participation, community members often feel disempowered and excluded. As Ángela, a member of the Basin Council and representative of a riverside neighborhood stated: “The communities that were there participated with great enthusiasm… we generated the expectation that the perspectives of the river… would become incorporated into the document. But there were many things that we realized were already agreed upon between the companies and the [Environmental] Authority.” This experience of disempowerment has been documented in participatory processes related to mining (Li 2009; Perreault 2015). In his study of mining consultations in Bolivia, Perreault showed that “consultation is a regimented, choreographed, and formalized practice, which can be considered a kind of political performance” (Perreault 2015, 434). Locals were additionally disheartened by the participation of consultants who flaunted their expertise through their technical language and presentations. Despite her advantage of local knowledge and lived experience, Mariana felt there was nothing she could do or say in Basin Council meetings: “Unfortunately, we don’t have the knowledge… and we don’t have the studies. And that 75 is why they see… through us… we simply… go to the meetings, we don’t agree with some things… but we don’t have… professional knowledge.” In the sections that follow, I demonstrate how these rituals of expertise (“professional knowledge”) and public participation are not only performative and delay planning, but also increase uncertainties and the complexity of their interactions. I have divided uncertainties into three categories: those related to 1) flooding and risk management, 2) water quality, and 3) water use. The first category is concerned with uncertainties regarding the river’s natural geomorphological attributes and its relation to sediment load, river gravel mining activity, and the infrastructures of flood protection. The second category, water quality, is concerned with the true extent of contamination derived from the direct discharge of oil production waters, as well as the impact of pollution on fish populations. The third category, water use, refers to streamflow volumes and changes in water availability due to increased withdrawals during the past 20 years. The sections that follow describe the biophysical and sociopolitical factors that produce these three types of uncertainties, and explore how they play out, increase, and become consolidated through the process of delaying order through perpetual river-basin planning in the Guayuriba. 3.3 The business of floods and uncertain infrastructures “There has never been anything comprehensive … an analysis of the dynamics of the river, of the main causes of what is happening downstream, of what is leading to the floods. It has never been done.” (Federico, Regional environmental comptroller, procurador ambiental) 76 Around 2010, the Guayuriba River began receiving an influx of gravel mining companies operating within and around the river channel, which offered the perfect geological conditions for cement and construction materials. Due to state level policies promoting sediment removal for risk reduction purposes, soon the entire stretch of the Guayuriba became licensed to mining companies. The economic demands of construction materials have since determined when and how much mining occurs. Settlers claim that miners do not do their job properly, allowing sediment to accumulate, and sometimes intentionally excavating in ways that strategically flood out community members who are antagonistic to the miners. Some riverside dwellers are even convinced that the river’s braided-ness can be attributed to mining activity. A restaurant owner who had lost half a hectare of land and 250 fruit trees to flooding explained to us that “unruly” miners were intentionally “mov[ing] the river” to farmlands that lacked property titles. At one point, he began to say that it is difficult to control a braided river, but a community leader who was with us interjected. She argued that the river was only that way “because they tear it up wherever they like… the miners have made it braided.” This confusion regarding the river’s braidedness and flooding dynamics reveals how “uncertainties have concrete, material features… produced from complex, non-linear unpredictable systems” (Scoones and Stirling 2020, 4). The Guayuriba River is has it headwaters in the Andes. It descends from the mountainous settlements of central Colombia, transforming into a braided river and finally meandering through the floodplains of the Llanos orientales (Eastern Foothills), in the department of Meta, Colombia. The headwaters experience abundant rainfall with an average of 8,000 mm of precipitation a year, along with steep slopes and an unstable rock structure. This combination of factors, along with the deforestation of slopes for 77 cattle-grazing, created the perfect recipe for large-scale erosion, leading to a substantive sediment load, frequent landslides, and flooding in the flat, braided section of the river channel. The material origins of the river’s geomorphology have become a source of advantage for mining companies. The river’s braided-ness also demonstrates how uncertainties are not experienced in the same way by diverse actors (Scoones and Stirling 2020). Whereas riverside dwellers have formed antagonisms with gravel mining operators due to their association with flooding, in contrast, state officials from the Office of Risk Management claimed that “the mining titles help reduce the threats that arise, because they are constantly… maintaining the channels.” Other officials, such as the regional environmental comptroller (Procurador Ambiental) explained that from his perspective, “areas lacking material exploitation” experienced greater flooding. He claimed that the mining was improving river dynamics and “should not be demonized.” The river’s movements highlight the “radically vulnerable and precarious” nature of human agency before the “volatile forces we can hardly make sense of – let alone govern” (Tironi and Calvillo 2016, 210). Against the realities of flooding, planning must make “incommensurable fluids knowable” to create a “hospitable conviviality” between human settlement and natural forces (Tironi and Calvillo 2016, 210). As Camilo, a local geologist commented, “it’s almost impossible to say where… the river will go… we can do a multitemporal analysis of flow recurrences… but to predict is impossible…” But for Camilo, the effects of extensive gravel mining are also inconclusive. He stated that, even if mining can seem beneficial from a hydraulic point of view, assigning mining titles to the entire 100 kilometers of river is irrational and “absolutely grotesque.” 78 Gravel extraction in the braided river has brought to the fore a mixture of uncertainties regarding the causes of erosion and flooding, the areas of highest risk, the role of gravel mining and road constructions, and the extent to which these hazards may have accelerated in recent years. The uncertainties related to flood dynamics and gravel mining impacts on the Guayuriba have led to ambiguous planning for risk management and flood mitigation. In 2015, POMCAs started requiring an incorporation of risk. Much has been written about the social construction of risk calculations (Beck, Lash, and Wynne 1992; Callon 2009) and their attempts to bring into being “otherwise untameable entities” (Tironi and Calvillo 2016, 213). For the process of river-basin planning, the incorporation of risk implied that new consultants had to be hired, and new data collected and analyzed, to determine risk-prone areas that would inform environmental zoning. Many actors complained that the newly incorporated information was irrelevant because it had been included at a course scale and did not reflect the situation on-the-ground. Federico, the regional environmental comptroller, had previously worked on the formulation of POMCAs and claimed that, even before risk was incorporated, scale and precision had always been a challenge: “… since the areas are so large, since there are so few resources, since there is an information deficit… the detail is lost, and the information is not reliable. That is the general rule of the POMCA. That’s how it was when I worked in their formulation… and I believe that has not changed.” Ángela, a member of the Guayuriba Basin Council (Consejo de Cuenca) for the updated POMCA, claimed the risk maps “look[ed] like a butcher shop.” She expressed that these maps 79 should have been created at a much more detailed scale (1:2,000 instead of 1:25,000). As it was, the situation was getting worse “year after year” with “farms mutilated by that river.” She viewed this lack of precision as a sign that “no one… sympathizes with the poor farmers who are trying to survive here.” Pablo, an environmental activist who had recently started working for the municipal government, echoed Ángela’s concern regarding the course scale of map layers used for risk analysis. According to Pablo, the maps were far less precise than the 1:25,000 scale mentioned by Ángela. He revealed that “they identify risk at a scale of 1:100,000 and if they perhaps get detailed, they get to 1:50,000.” For Pablo, these technical “inconsistencies” lead to an “incomplete formulation” of the planning document, directly increasing the number of flood victims. The obsession with scale and precision reflects a view that, if only the data were more representational, planners would be able to “take an inventory of the possible states of the world” (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2011, 227). As Nost et al. (2022) state, precision should not be equated with objectivity, and more data does not necessarily mean a better model of the future. The problems of analysis “are not reducible to getting the [data] infrastructure ‘right’” – rather, “data’s political effects stem from what is asked of it” (Nost 2022, 119). And what is asked of data that informs risk maps? The imprecise studies of risk zones mentioned above are the basis for approving or barring infrastructural projects for risk reduction. In his study of risk and urban planning in Bogotá’s perifery, Zeidermann details how both geology and politics co-constitute risk governance. His ethnographic account demonstrates how the discourse of landslides and natural risk is employed by planners to legitimize the relocation of residents of “high-risk zones” (2012). In the case of the Guayuriba, risk maps developed for the POMCA also have political and financial implications, complicated by the uncertainties involved in determining and mitigating risk. Yasmin, from the municipal office of risk 80 management, described the complexities of dealing with communities in high-risk zones, and the constraints she faced to improve their situations. The neighborhood of Puerto Tembleque, she told us, was signaled as high-risk “according to the studies done by the corporation.” For that reason, “long-term works are not authorized, neither are structural designs that could serve as protection barriers.” She explained that as a public entity, they could only offer “contractual work, channels, [and] temporary works” which left the community dissatisfied. We experienced this dissatisfaction first-hand when we visited Río Negrito, another neighborhood situated in one of the POMCA’s high-risk zones. Manuel, a community leader, saw the designation of high-risk zones as an excuse not to invest in the community. He told us that about five years ago, a 3.5 km dyke had been constructed, only to become completely damaged shortly after. Because of the new zoning, the dyke could only be replaced by temporary structures. He was frustrated with what he perceived as a lack of commitment: contractors were hired for “1,000 hours” of work, all of which the river would destroy “in an hour.” Manuel explained that the best time to build barriers was during the dry season, because “when the river gets big, no machine can do anything to the river.” Instead, he said, risk management would always work in the rainy season, so that they could legalize money that was never spent and blame the losses on the river. This sentiment was echoed by other community leaders. Ángela had also mentioned the 3.5 km dyke to us and had been furious about the “12 billion pesos… lost as if they had thrown the money bags downstream.” “We are landowners, we have property titles, we pay taxes,” Manuel argued, “we… would rather have a permanent structure,” “something well done… to live in peace.” We brought up these concerns when we talked with Yasmin from risk management. She explained that the 3.5km dyke had been designed and constructed with funding from 81 Environmental Authority and Ecopetrol. They had pooled resources, worked on studies, and come up with the best options for infrastructure along the river. The 3.5km dyke was constructed in Rio Negrito in 7 phases, but only six months in, 33 points of damage had been registered. As Yasmin explained, because “it was very fast for such a large-scale structure to have collapsed immediately,” a litigation was set in motion to determine if the damage had been caused by natural forces or by Gravecon, a mining company that was operating in the river. The litigation has not been resolved, due to the difficulty of presenting conclusive evidence: “The mesh could have been affected by… the clash of the elements... the friction with the mesh and the rock... it is very unlikely that it would have failed due to natural phenomena... you would need a really good lawyer... [to prove that]” Scholars have studied infrastructural maintenance and repair, illustrating how routine breakdown (Barry 2002) and infrastructural failures (Humphrey 2020) raise questions about the legitimacy of state and corporate actors responsible for their management and design. Users can interpret these failures as the product of political and economic interests (Barry 2002), inferring the broader context that led to a particular failure (Barry 2013). Others have studied the nonhuman or material elements of infrastructures, explaining that they “are not smooth surfaces that perform as planned; instead, they are flaky, falling apart forms that constantly call out for projects of management, maintenance, and repair” (Anand 2017, 12). The failure of the 3.5km dyke showed us that biophysical uncertainties, such as the Guayuriba’s fluvial dynamics, were also implicated in the technopolitics of planning and risk management. Not knowing whether its breakdown was largely due to gravel mining activity, the force of the river, or a combination, made it impossible to determine an orientation (Müller-82 Mahn, Everts, and Stephan 2018) for navigating risk management. The POMCA’s course-resolution maps and controversial designation of high-risk zones added to the confusion. The difference in “rhythms, tempos, and durations” (Hébert 2016) between actual flooding events, risk designation, the signing of POMCAs and the building of infrastructures and their breakdown, contributed to delaying order and leaving questions open. Whereas risk was determined by the static analysis of map layers, flooding dynamics obey processes spanning geological and ecological time (Sayre 2005). Gravel mining also operated on a separate temporality and legal horizon, following market fluxes and construction materials demand, and receiving licenses at the state level. The perpetual timeframe and ambiguity of river-basin planning allowed the Environmental Authority to continue approving dykes financed by Ecopetrol in areas of undefined risk, “producing legitimacy” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011, 13) amidst deepening uncertainties. 3.4 Monitoring loopholes and uncertain water quality In 2018, during one of our first field visits to the rivers of the Llanos, Carolina, a local environmental activist, took us to a pipe that was discharging production waters from nearby oilfields into the river. She told us how difficult it was to monitor the contamination, because the oil companies would let out all their untreated waters late at night when no one was watching. During the day, all you could see was a small stream of clear water. It was Carolina who, about two years later, encouraged us to conduct research in the Guayuriba. There was a point of direct discharge of production waters that had become the site for recent community tensions with the oil company. Carolina had filed a complaint to suspend the discharge license, after riverside communities had discovered oil-stained sediment in the riverbed. She told us about the 83 contamination they had uncovered, the meetings they had held with state and municipal officials and the press, and the legal challenges involved in proving an offense and suspending the discharge permit. Despite the community’s concerns about oil production waters, these did not figure as main sources of pollution in the POMCA. According to Pablo, a local environmental activist, these were strategically absent to displace Ecopetrol’s responsibility for water quality impacts. Scholars have observed the manipulation of uncertainty in favor of industry (see Langston 2010; Michaels 2008; Oreskes and Conway 2011; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008), highlighting how “strategic ignorance and social unknowing” allows actors “to deny awareness of things it is not in their interest to acknowledge” (McGoey 2016, 4). Pablo claimed that the Cubarral oilfield contributed a significant volume of production water discharge through “an artificial pipe that is constantly flowing to the Guayuriba River.” Therefore, the oilfield should have been included in the POMCA’s analyses. The fact that it wasn’t, was to Pablo an act of “extreme… corruption and flexibility,” a result of Ecopetrol “financ[ing] the POMCA and seek[ing] to exclude… the field… so that [the contamination] was not taken into account.” Excluding the Cubarral oilfield and its production waters from the POMCA is what Simon (2022) calls a “disavowed known-known” – knowledge that individuals, groups or communities choose not to know, that escapes society’s conscious awareness through the “intentional denial and repudiation of information” (166). Once production waters were excluded from the analysis, the top polluters reported in the POMCA became, as Pablo stated, “villages without treatment plants… conflicts with mining… [and] increments in sedimentation due to inappropriate agricultural practices.” The POMCA’s choice of water quality indicators also contributed to detracting attention from heavy metals and 84 hydrocarbons. As Pablo explained, total coliforms were used as the main indicator, so that the primary culprits of water pollution were “citizens that occupy the territory, peasants, poor practices - and in no way the oil industry.” As Sawyer demonstrates in her analysis of the 2003 lawsuit against Chevron in the Ecuadorian Amazon, “the interrelations among regulatory, scientific, and molecular processes” matter for determining toxicity (2015, 6). She details how different chemical compounds came to matter for US environmental regulation, and how shifts in the classification of molecular processes have favored industry by reducing what can be counted as toxic. In the case of the POMCA, at a very basic level, a focus on total coliforms obscured the oil industry’s inordinate impacts on water quality.9 Although Carolina and others had seen, felt, and photographed black blotches of crude oil on riverbed sediments, they were still not able to prove that the oil company had released untreated discharge into the river. The blotches represented the “real things… in the world,” the “particularities, passions, richly textured lived experience, and immediacy” of daily life (Beauregard 2015, 121). Official accounts, however, did not acknowledge this reality. They regularly represented the company’s production waters as consistent with quality standards. Yasmin, the head of the Office of Risk Management, reiterated that “in theory, they are delivering… discharge free of any kind of impurity and contamination… and so you are left exposed because you don’t know how to counter that.” When we asked Federico, the environmental comptroller, how those samples could pass the test, he explained that the sampling and laboratory procedures “are part of a long chain of actions where it is very difficult 9 Elsewhere, my colleagues and I have documented the oil industry’s impact on water degradation during the dry season in a nearby river-basin (P. Rinaldi, Roa-García, and Brown 2021). 85 to maintain transparency at all stages.” The “knowledge chain” (Pelling, Müller-Mahn, and McCloskey 2020) started even before Ecopetrol’s oversight of “accredited” third-party labs. We spoke with an environmental engineering professor who told us that he had been contracted to sample water quality at a discharge site but had been accompanied by an industry representative who insisted he follow a rigid protocol for sampling. According to this professor, the protocol was “poorly designed” and involved sampling 50 meters away from the point of discharge - a site where mixing was not occurring. The industry representative had insisted, first gently, then forcefully, that the results would only be accepted if the protocol were followed. The professor had refused to comply and had been dismissed. He told us that in those remote oilfields, corporations ruled over science and “principles don’t work.” Science and technology scholar Hebe Vessuri has written that science in Latin America is entangled with industry and the state, and therefore lacks “sharp edges” (1987). Environmental crises lead to “powerful corporate and state interests seek[ing] to secure the edges around non-knowledge” (Porcelli 2022, 220). This is the case with Ecopetrol’s water sampling protocols, which created “spatially organized regulatory gaps” (Frickel et al. 2010, 4), evading the reality and true extent of environmental damage and ensuring control through denial, misinformation, and the suppression of dissent (Porcelli 2022). Subsequent steps along the knowledge chain amplified the unanswered questions of sampling procedures. Unmixed water samples were tested, resulting in laboratory-approved concentrations of hydrocarbons, thereby “compounding and accumulating ignorance” (Beck, Lash, and Wynne 1992). Faced with the uncertainties produced by a lack of reliable information, communities have had to depend on their own senses and experiences with pollution. The people we met, from fishermen to state officials, would repeatedly bring up the petroleum-like taste of fish as 86 evidence of contamination. One environmental leader referred to a meeting she had held recently with the ancestral fishermen of Bocas del Guayuriba, a small hamlet at the confluence of the Guayuriba with the Meta River. She explained that the fishermen were becoming “displaced… by industry mismanagement,” since “the fish are coming out with fungi, with mutilations, with a taste of phenols… [and] people are returning the fish.” One fisherman, who was now working as a car mechanic in Villavicencio, told us how, over thirty years ago, there was an abundance of fish in Bocas del Guayuriba. But around 8 to 10 years ago, when Ecopetrol began discharging its production waters into the river, the bocachico, the culo and other fish began tasting so strange that “not even the dogs [would] eat them.” The emphasis people placed on the taste of the fish represents how the presence of production water discharge has become an embodied, lived experience. It is also an emotional experience, in which people lament the change in flavor and abundance, through struggles that are “mediated through bodies, spaces and emotions” (Sultana 2011, 166). Inadequate regulation of production water discharge has given the perception of environmental protection while simultaneously authorizing contaminating practices. The collection and processing of water samples has become a ritual of technoscientific expertise, where corporations have more power over truth than the lived and embodied experiences of tasting oily flesh or touching viscous smears of oil on rocks lining the riverbed. Although Environmental Authorities are aware of the extent of the pollution caused by industrial practices, they choose to consider only official accounts, in which discharge meets quality standards. Eduardo, an environmental official, and ex-director of the Environmental Authority, told us that the river’s current dilutes the contaminants, and that the physicochemical and biologic processes completely transform whatever Ecopetrol dumps in. But as we continued our conversation, he 87 mentioned the stories of the rejected fish that tasted of oil, the black streams of discharge released in the night, and the discovery of oily rocks, demonstrating that he and others were aware of Ecopetrol’s questionable practices. Public participation has also become a ritual, contributing to the performance and delay of order. In 2021, environmental activists formally petitioned to suspend the discharge permit, and inhabitants from Vegas del Guayuriba connected with journalists to take photographic evidence of untreated waters and greasy rocks. As a result, the Office of Risk Management declared an environmental emergency. As one resident stated, declaring an environmental emergency gave the Office of Risk Management an excuse to pressure Ecopetrol into handing over funds for other purposes (“16 billion pesos to build a mega school in… Alto Pompeya which does not share any suffering with the Guayuriba river-basin”). In the end, the licensing for an expansion of the discharge permit was blocked, but the original permit allowed Ecopetrol to continue operating. Blocking the amplification also gave the semblance of order and action, channeling the outrage and controversy into concrete results that did not change present practices. By mobilizing the “politics of time” (Kirsch 2014), environmental authorities were able to self-represent, “producing legitimacy in the eyes of both actual individual citizens and other corporate entities” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011, 13) without posing a serious threat to industry, perpetuating the already well-established regimes of uncertain water quality. 3.5 Incomplete data and uncertain flows The National Institute of Renewable Natural Resources and Environment (Inderena), established in 1968, was the first state entity in charge of water allocation. At first, water quality and scarcity were not considered and Inderena would license large concessions to rice 88 plantations, since the rivers were abundant, and users were few. They would base their decisions on a few flow measurements, often during the rainy season. In the early 1990s, when more and more companies began to arrive in the area, officials representing the Environmental Authority realized that water allocation was becoming more complex. State-building and modernity (Sneddon 2015) meant ensuring that the newly installed companies would not dry up the rivers. Officials became more interested in understanding how much water was available for allocation, and thus began taking occasional measurements of river flow during the dry season. Between 1980 and 2004, the Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) set up hydrological stations across the country, which worked through a volunteer network of local “observers” who lived near the stations. Observers would go down and take manual measurements and report these by phone to IDEAM. Officials and observers knew each other well, so the reporting became consistent and reliable. After 2004, IDEAM established an automatic monitoring system which relied on satellites rather than volunteers. The new technology was part of a global trend towards “technological advances that reduce operational costs” and “do more with less” (Hamilton and Moore 2012, 15). Although it seemed promising at the time, the local hydrologists reported that there were often technical difficulties: stations would break, and specialists would not be available to fix them for months at a time. Others were flooded out and too expensive to replace. Carlos and the other hydrologists at the regional IDEAM office recounted the fate of each automatic station, down to the date of the flooding events that had swept many of them away. For Carlos, it had been obvious that these hydrological stations would break down – they were infrastructures that demanded continuous maintenance and repair (Barry 2002) and he was aware of their “instability, vulnerability and 89 even ‘liveliness’” (Barry 2020, 92). As he stated, they had been designed for “European environmental conditions and other latitudes.” The hydroclimatic conditions of the Llanos were the concrete, material features of uncertainty (Scoones and Stirling 2020), leading to the complex surprises (Taleb 2005) of unpredictable technological failure. Where automatic stations broke down or were swept away, observers were still called on to report stream levels. Volunteer observers were reincorporated into the infrastructural network (Larkin 2013) of streamflow monitoring to maintain the semblance of an uninterrupted data series. But without accurate stream section measurements, hydrologists could no longer create flow level curves or estimate flow volumes. Thus, continuing to record streamflow data without repairing the main hydrological station or generating accurate flow level curves became another instance of delaying order and increasing uncertainties in the Guayuriba. When we were back in the capital, we asked about this challenge at IDEAM’s Bogotá office. Marcos, an engineer who worked on the water monitoring network, confirmed what we had heard in Villavicencio: “The continuity of hydrological data is being lost…. Series with… 30 or 40 years are beginning to have gaps because we have no way of validating that the information is true… we do not have information from the field… the construction of those flow level curves is directly associated with the number of gauges… if I don't validate my curves, I am filled with uncertainty… I have not verified that the stream sections are stable… [and] continue to preserve their geometry.” 90 The validation of flow level curves is additionally complicated by the constant flow of sediments and the changing geomorphology of the channel. As Kroepsch and Clifford (2022) state, geographers are increasingly identifying such biophysical dynamics as “important agents in knowledge absences” (173). However, it is in their interactions with political-economic and epistemic factors that “inscrutable spaces” are produced. In the case of streamflow measurements in the Guayuriba, the lack of will or desire to fill knowledge gaps (Hess 2020; Turner 2013) as well as the contractual labor arrangements of regional environmental authorities (CARs), played a role in producing and maintaining uncertainties. Although we focus here on streamflow, we also acknowledge the severe challenge of uncertainty regarding groundwater. In the Guayuriba river basin, as in other extractive regions, oil production wells have become the main window into the subsurface (Kroepsch 2018), with Ecopetrol generating the only available groundwater estimates associated with these wells. A lack of will to address uncertainty was evident when we spoke with Eduardo, the ex-director of the Environmental Authority, about his institution’s use of IDEAM data. Whereas Marcos had been concerned that data generated by IDEAM was not being used enough to inform decisions, Eduardo complained that the data was too difficult and cumbersome to access. Often, they would end up accessing this data through their own users’ water permit applications. As Eduardo stated: “[Streamflow data] is not easy to access… sometimes we need information fast and easily accessible… Many water users… when they solicit water concessions, are asked to provide basic information about the river… [they] include data they have solicited from IDEAM. So, we… look and get information from there.” 91 Industry representatives, on the other hand, seemed keener to address knowledge gaps regarding streamflow, admittedly for their own benefit. As Óscar, a representative of the largest palm oil company in the region (Manuelita) explained: “it is very important to be able to identify, in a timely manner, any impact against the crop, against the business.” Óscar explained that because of data gaps, his company “had to do a lot of transposing of information” from far off stations, along with “a series of statistical maneuvers to be able to consolidate… information that [could] somewhat represent the reality of the watershed.” In doing so, Manuelita became engaged in what Kroepsch (2018) has called world-building, creating models that “seek to approximate reality but are only as good as the input data and, therefore, sometimes can produce the reality they attempt to represent” (Mannix et al. 2022, 183). The uncertainty surrounding streamflow volumes was additionally confounded by uncertainty regarding water use. Carmen, another company representative, was frustrated with other industries and illegal water users in the Guayuriba. She told a story about a drone that the palm oil company had flown over their plantations. After looking at the footage, she had realized that there were about 14 undocumented water intakes upstream of their source. She said that since they did not know who was using the water, the company brought it to the attention of the Environmental Authority, along with coordinates for each intake. Officials never went to see what was going on. One employee told her later, off the books, that “if we [were to go] there… they [would] pull out a shotgun on us.” Unruly water users and powerful corporations present environmental authorities with a “neoliberal attack on their autonomy,” leading them to self-represent as a means of “producing legitimacy” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011, 13). Despite the presence of chaotic, unregulated withdrawals, the Environmental Authority continued to self-92 represent and create the perception of authority through its permitting procedures. Carmen complained that obtaining a water permit was a costly process and that other water users did not have to go through as much trouble as the palm oil company. The rice industry, for example, consistently evaded regulation. Carmen stated that most planters only rented land for the planting and harvest months because rice was a perennial crop. The biophysical needs of the crop, together with land tenure dynamics, made it hard to have oversight over water use since the crop owners were never around. She said that by the time the representatives of the Environmental Authority tracked down the lease holders, they had “already harvested and left.” Although Carmen was worried about undocumented water users competing with Manuelita’s irrigation permits, community and environmental leaders would often bring up the issue of the palm industry’s water transfers and trenches, which they believed to be the source of water scarcity during the dry season. Oil palm is most productive over a 2-month period during the dry season, when 50% of its fruit production occurs. These two months are also when it is most important to irrigate the plantations so that the trees do not abort their flowers. Eduardo, the ex-director of the Environmental Authority, explained to us that “at first, [Manuelita] would take the whole river and use it all without any floodgates…” Now, the company has about 7000 hectares of palm oil plantations. Even though most of this land is in the neighboring Acacías-Pajure watershed, three of the palm company’s four water permits come from the Guayuriba River and are transferred through “immense channels.” Besides these water transfers, environmental leaders are concerned about the trenches (zanjas) that are characteristic of the palm plantations. These trenches are present on every field, collecting runoff from the fields for additional irrigation. Because of the extent of the fields, locals claim that the companies are 93 “intervening with the water table”: they feel they have no way to know how much water is being diverted away from groundwater recharge and streamflow through these ditches. The uncertainties of streamflow and water use volumes derived from monitoring and management challenges may have been overlooked in the past, especially in a region where water is perceived as abundant. However, because hydrological stations became less reliable while extractive activities were on the rise, water availability and the drivers of seasonal water scarcity became increasingly uncertain. As Pablo, a local environmental activist explained to us, this uncertain information became the basis of the POMCA, which presented erratic estimates and outdated secondary data with confidence: “Part of that information is… secondary… there is no [hydrological] station that is… useful or validated… they may go and take some measurements during the course of the contract… but the rest are reports based on extrapolations based on precipitation… from far away, scattered stations… we would question this kind of information a lot.” Although Pablo understood that the streamflow values were not reliable, others viewed the data, presented in long technical reports, as robust enough to form the basis for decision-making. When we talked to Natalia, a representative of the Business Assocation of the Orinoquia, she told us about a water fund initiative they were supporting in the region. We wanted to know what information they were using for their analyses, and how data quality might be impacting their project. Natalia explained that they had been hired by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), who had been contracted by Ecopetrol to develop the water fund approach in Villavicencio and Acacías, since the model had been so successful across Latin America. TNC had hired the Association as 94 the local organization in charge of the viability study, and the Association had in turn hired contractors to compile and analyze data for the study. Natalia was happy with the study, especially because, through the POMCA process in the Guayuriba, the Environmental Authority had produced a lot of “updated… available data”: “Cormacarena [the Environmental Authority] gave us lots of data… We got information from all directions… we contracted some expert consultants, people who know about the topic… Right now, I can’t remember [who they were], but they knew about it… I’m not a consultant, I’m an administrator. And I know who knows what you don’t know. But I don’t know what they know.” The repetitive use of unreliable data leads to a foreclosing of research obscured by original omissions and blind spots (Birkenholtz and Simon 2022). The POMCA becomes a patchwork of unreliable data that is replicated and reutilized to make the planning instruments appear legitimate, compounding and accumulating ignorance (Beck, Lash, and Wynne 1992). The perception of having updated and available data at hand prevents further inquiry (Frickel and Edwards 2014), forming a “regime of imperceptibility” (Murphy 2008, 698) and “organized ignorance” (Frickel and Vincent 2007, 184) that can “delay meaningful policy action” (Birkenholtz and Simon 2022, 156). Thus, the POMCA becomes a way to delay order by allowing the uncertainties of streamflow values to persist, without addressing or acknowledging the biophysical complexities, lack of will, and political economic factors that have coalesced to make the waters of the Guayuriba obscure and “inscrutable” (Kroepsch and Clifford 2022). 95 3.6 Conclusions In this paper, I have shown how the drawn-out river-basin planning gives and imposes order through the perpetuation, accumulation, and obscuring of uncertainties. In discussing the river’s geomorphology and flooding dynamics in relation to gravel mining and risk management, I showed how uncertainties interact in ways that are beneficial to the state and mining companies. The state promotes mining as a solution to the river’s sediment load, while river-side dwellers blame the river’s “braided-ness,” its flooding dynamics, and resulting displacement or property damage, on haphazard mining practices. The POMCA fails to address these uncertainties, complicating the question of flooding further through the incorporation of course-resolution risk maps, used to determine risk zoning and to approve the installation of flood protection infrastructures. When these infrastructures fail, the causes of breakdown are obscured, leading people to doubt the motivations for infrastructure projects. The “rhythms, tempos, and durations” (Hébert 2016) of flooding events, risk designation, gravel market fluxes, and infrastructural installation and breakdown, differ from each other and from the perpetual timeline of river-basin planning, allowing uncertainties to accumulate. Meanwhile, the state and companies benefit through the approval and financing of dykes that hold the promise of flood control, despite almost immediate breakdown. Water quality was a second lens of analysis into the delay of order and accumulation of uncertainties. I discussed the inadequate regulation of production water discharge through the corporate-controlled collection and processing of water samples. Even when the river changed course, exposing the evidence of untreated discharge on oily bedrock, regulatory procedures relieved Ecopetrol from blame. Community organizing and media attention led to blocking the licensing of an expansion of the discharge permit. Blocking the amplification, however, did not 96 change present practices, since the original permit allowed Ecopetrol to continue operating as before. The reality of discharge contributions to water quality was additionally complicated by excluding the oilfield from the POMCA. The oilfield that contributed its production waters to the Guayuriba was located outside the boundaries of the river-basin. By excluding the field and focusing on total coliforms as the main indicator of water quality, the POMCA contributed to the perpetuation of uncertainties regarding the contribution of production water discharge to water quality in the Guayuriba. This muddling of the main source of pollution was key to allowing the continuation of oil extraction in the river-basin. The POMCA contributed to the consolidation of uncertainties regarding water use and availability. Although hydrological stations and the data they produced had become unreliable starting in 2004, data series and extrapolations continued to be incorporated into planning documents with a semblance of certainty. Unreliable and out-of-date data produced by national and regional environmental authorities, and major corporations like Ecopetrol and Manuelita, was used repeatedly, published in official reports, and circulated among industry and state actors. The POMCA became a patchwork of hydrological uncertainties that were replicated and reutilized to provide legitimacy to other planning instruments. Regulations such as water allocation are proceeding without a clear sense of how much water is being used, despite the perception of having updated and available data at hand. These examples have shown that the continual revision and adjustment of the POMCA have given and imposed order without ever implementing the planning document. The POMCA has had real, material, and immaterial implications for the river-basin throughout the experience of delay. As Pablo’s comments at the beginning of this article pointed out, the semblance of “evaluating with scientific rigor” through rituals of expertise and public participation have 97 allowed resource extraction to continue with increased force, aided by the accrual and system consolidation of the uncertainties described above. In the case of the Guayuriba, the river is “being made to endure the runaround by state officials” (Auyero 2012, 2) through the bureaucratic slowness of river-basin planning. As Environmental Authorities impose order through delay and produce legitimacy in the neoliberal landscapes they find themselves in, their tacit authorization of the status quo inflicts slow violence (Nixon 2011) on the peoples and natures that are left waiting. 98 Chapter 4: Everyday river extractivisms: The cruel optimisms of environmental democracy in an extractive frontier The promise of environmental democracy enshrined within the Colombian Constitution of 1991 has led citizens to hold on to a hope of self-determination, participation and environmental protection, even in regions dominated by the presence of private companies dedicated to resource extraction. The logics of the extractive development model produces tensions with the fundamental principles of environmental democracy. Its procedural focus on rights of access to information, participation and justice is easily appropriated by extractive interests, leaving residents unsatisfied yet hopeful. Through ethnographic evidence gathered in the Guayuriba river-basin in the Eastern Foothills of Colombia, a territory marked by multiple extractivisms, I demonstrate how environmental democracy in extractive frontiers produces cruel optimisms. The struggles, hopes and promises of democracy are cruel because the pursuit of access offers only partial solutions, while consistently evading the complexities of the defense of life, water and territory. They are cruel, also, because pursuit of environmental democracy becomes sustaining in itself, so that it is difficult to leave the relationship, even though it is not a functioning one. To move away from this cycle, citizens can choose to define democracy from the bottom up, while paying greater attention to the affective dimensions of democratic participation. 4.1 Introduction Environmental democracy can be understood in two ways: procedural and fundamental. Fundamental democracy is based on the idea that every citizen has an inherent right to 99 participate in the decision-making process that affects their lives, regardless of their social or economic status. This type of democracy emphasizes the importance of equal rights, active participation, and civic responsibility. It is characterized by a sense of community and collective action, with citizens playing an active role in shaping the policies and laws that govern their society. Procedural democracy, on the other hand, is focused on the rules and procedures that govern the democratic process, such as elections, constitutions, and legal frameworks. It emphasizes the importance of fairness, transparency, and accountability in the decision-making process. This type of democracy is more focused on the mechanisms of democratic governance, rather than the underlying values and principles that motivate citizens to participate in the democratic process. With regards to fundamental environmental democracy, this can be understood through the concept of Earth democracy, as described by Vandana Shiva (2008). Earth democracy is a philosophy that recognizes the interdependence of all life forms and prioritizes the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants. It is grounded in the understanding that we are part of a larger ecological family, and that our actions have profound consequences on the natural world. Earth democracy encompasses three key principles: a democracy of all life, which recognizes that all life has a right to water and that we have a duty to other beings; a democracy from the ground up, which prioritizes decision-making power in local communities that are closest to natural resources and ecosystems; and a democracy that recognizes our ecological nature, which seeks to re-embed our economic and ecological actions within the earth family and the diversity of species on this planet. By emphasizing the importance of water cultures and community decision-making, earth democracy offers an alternative to procedural environmental democracy, which prioritizes regulations and policies over the well-being of the Earth and its inhabitants. 100 Procedural environmental democracy, on the other hand, is defined by the rights of individuals and communities to participate in decision-making processes that affect the environment and the use of natural resources. Its origins can be traced back to the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. On the international scale, Principle 10 from the 1992 Rio Declaration established three fundamental rights (access to information, public participation, and justice) as key pillars of sound environmental governance. In Colombia, the country's 1991 Constitution recognized the right to a healthy environment and established the principle of participatory democracy. From its beginnings, procedural environmental democracy has been conceived to promote the interests of sustainable development, allowing economic growth to continue, albeit transparently and with community consent. However, extractive industries have been able to wield significant influence over environmental policy-making and regulatory processes in the country, leading to the erosion of environmental protections and the suppression of local voices (Roa-García and Murcia-Riaño 2021). In Colombia, there are several regulatory mechanisms in place to promote (procedural) environmental democracy and to ensure community participation in decision-making processes related to the environment. The 1991 constitution implemented several mechanisms for popular participation, such as the bill of rights, the tutela10, the establishment of a strong, independent Constitutional Court, referendums, and independent regulatory agencies (Urueña 2012). These changes came as the result of a political trend in Latin America addressing fears of corruption, 10 A tutela is a mechanism granted under Article 86 of Colombia’s Constitution, through which “every individual may claim… immediate protection of his/her fundamental constitutional rights when the individual fears the latter may be jeopardized or threatened by the action or omission of any public authority.” (1991 Constitution translated by Max Planck Institute) 101 the desire to depoliticize and therefore decentralize, and the view of constitution as regulation (Urueña 2012). Environmental impact assessments (EIA) and licensing are two areas that require public consultation to determine the potential impact or grant permission for development projects to take place. The state also has independent Environmental Ombudsmen (Procuraduría Ambiental) at the national, regional and municipal levels, that are responsible for monitoring the compliance of public and private entities with environmental regulations, including laws related to the protection of natural resources, pollution prevention, and waste management. The Ombudsman (Procurador) also investigates and prosecutes environmental crimes and protects the rights of communities affected by environmental degradation. If community members suspect an incompliance, for example, discharge waters that do not meet regulatory standards, they can contact the Environmental Ombudsman and file a report, gather evidence, and demand a popular consultation to revert or suspend the company’s environmental license. Extractivism11 produces imaginaries of wealth and progress (Auyero and Swistun 2009; Guerriero 2006; Watts 2001), while simultaneously destabilizing communities, ecologies, and daily life. Under precarious conditions, territorial actors are restricted in their ability to challenge the hegemony of extractivist logics. Their lives and livelihoods may also depend on the material and financial flows enabled by extractive economies. Oftentimes the only option for retaining agency and normality is afforded by finding ways to live on. Others have turned to mechanisms 11 Scholars have increasingly used the term extractivism to refer to, not only the process of extracting natural resources from land for sale on a global market, but an entire economic model that can be traced back to European colonial expansion: “a form of accumulation that began to be massively forged 500 years ago” and has since grown with the demands of capitalism and the implementation of neoliberal reforms (Acosta 2013, 62). Scholars have defined extractivism as a style of development based on the extraction and appropriation of nature (Gudynas 2015) as well as “a structural feature of capitalism as a world-economy” that creates “mere spaces of looting and plundering done for the provisioning of the others” (Aráoz 2013, 131). 102 of environmental democracy to challenge the destructive impacts of extractive industries, such as those related to water use and disposal practices. In recent years, social and environmental leaders in the Guayuriba River basin of the Eastern Foothills of Colombia have brought attention to water impacts from multiple extractive industries. These include toxic discharges of oil production waters and palm oil residue, as well as the changing flood dynamics brought on by intensive and haphazard river gravel mining. But a focus on the legal and technical aspects of environmental licensing and rights of access (to information, participation, and justice) has led to actions that are easily coopted, arguments that devolve around the availability or accuracy of data, trivial or irrelevant compensations that put an “end” to injustices, or cases that are relegated to the endless minutia of bureaucracy. In the process, affective states are exhausted and overwhelmed, yet the process of accessing information, participating, and activating legal rights has strangely become sustaining, recreating an ambiguous cycle of satisfaction and harm, hope and promise in a system that consistently disappoints. To shed light on this issue, I borrow the term "cruel optimisms," coined by cultural theorist Lauren Berlant (2011). The concept serves as a general framework for understanding the ways in which people's desires and aspirations can be thwarted or frustrated by larger social, economic, and political structures. Berlant explains how people navigate the limitations of their circumstances, and how they try to find meaning and fulfillment in the face of structural constraints. According to Berlant, cruel optimism occurs when the object of someone's desire or the goal they are striving for is ultimately unattainable or harmful. For example, people hold onto the idea that hard work and thrift could get them a good job and salary, despite precarious job market conditions that make their dreams of living a good life unattainable. Or they may be optimistic about a relationship that is toxic or abusive, despite the negative effects it is having on 103 their well-being. In this case, the object of their desire (the relationship) is ultimately harmful, but they continue to hold onto the hope that it will improve or that they will be able to change the other person. There is a plurality of ways in which cruel optimisms play out in extractive territories. In this text, I explore the possibilities, promises and cruelties of environmental democracy, through empirical insights on access to information, participation and justice. In the sections that follow, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2018 to 2021 in communities of the Guayuriba River basin, the city of Villavicencio, and the capital of Bogotá. Research involved over 30 semi-structured field interviews with 48 participants, and the review of public hearings regarding environmental licensing, supplemented by an archival analysis of planning, licensing and regulatory documents. Interview participants included fishermen, riverside residents, industry representatives, environmental activists, representatives of multi-level state agencies, and academics. 4.2 A river in the Llanos frontier The Guayuriba River has its headwaters in the Andes. It descends from the mountainous settlements of Cundinamarca, central Colombia, transforming into a braided river with many channels and a heavy sediment load, spanning several towns and villages, and finally meandering through the floodplains of the Llanos Orientales (Eastern Foothills), in the department of Meta, Colombia. Nancy Espinel, an anthropologist and historian we met during our fieldwork in Villavicencio, described these floodplains with passion, citing the poet José Eustacio Riveras, author of La Vorágine (1989), who looked back at the Llanos upon arriving at the coast and offered a single line: “vasto, colosal e infinito” (vast, colossal and infinite). 104 The idea of the Llanos Orientales as a vast spatial extension of possibility has come with the assumption that these spaces were empty of culture and society, but full of natural resources. The Llanos has been historically considered a frontier, and its borders were established as a spatial strategy to annex and appropriate new spaces for exploitation. According to Margarita Serje (2011), Colombian frontier regions represented "conditions of possibility of the colonial and imperial project" and were not regions where the State was “absent,” as commonly claimed. Instead, frontier regions where essential to the formation of the State, allowing the highlands to function as the center, and frontiers as the periphery, mirroring the dependency model of the world-economy. Thus, the Llanos Orientales became essential to this relationship of exclusion and inclusion, cementing a particular form of social order (Ardila-Luna 2022) The Llanos had a complicated relationship with the Andes, which marked a contrast between two geographically close yet distant regions. The absence of gold meant that the region was not a priority for the Spanish conquest and colonization (Ardila-Luna 2022). However, the Llanos became a frontier region through the work of Jesuit missionaries who described it as "a desert" (Gonzalez-Penagos et al. 2014) that was nevertheless rich in water, fishing, and other forms of sustenance. The Jesuits called it "an immense territory similar to a calm sea" (Rivero 1883). This apparent contradiction between emptiness and resource wealth was the basis for strategies designed from the center of the country to integrate the region into Andean and global markets. Between the 1850s and 1900, ranchers and landowners with connections to the central government began soliciting land titles to large expanses of unclaimed territories. With access to vast plots of land, they began to consolidate large coffee plantations and cattle ranches. During the late 20th century, wealthy and powerful investors from Santander and the Cauca Valley began purchasing land that once belonged to ranchers with vast herds of cattle. Their 105 companies attracted people from all over the country, who came in search of jobs. In the early 1990s, the national oil company (Ecopetrol) and a major sugar cane company turned palm oil producer (Manuelita) became major economic players within the region. Ecopetrol had several quotas for workers from incorporated neighborhoods. People would settle in the cheapest land, often by the banks of the river, and invite friends and family to settle nearby, to consolidate hamlets, elect neighborhood councils, and gain quotas for labor contracts with Ecopetrol. Despite the initial motivation to work in the oil industry, many settlers were not incorporated into formal labor and established communities around land- and water-based livelihoods. Manuelita also brought its own wave of settlers. Laborers who had worked Manuelita’s sugar cane plantations that transformed the Cauca Valley, migrated to plant palm oil trees, often directly within the braided river’s historical channel. In this way, the Colombian State was able to continue handing over the Llanos into private hands: first to the Jesuits, then to the cattle ranchers, and finally, to large extractive companies. These landowners have represented the governing strategy of the Colombian State in the Llanos. Amidst the acceleration of oil extraction and palm oil cultivation in the region, the Guayuriba River began receiving an influx of gravel mining companies operating within and around the river channel. Around 2010, stone quarries closed in the capital city of Bogotá. Companies started moving to the Guayuriba, which offered the perfect geological ingredients for cement and construction materials. Due to state level policies which promoted the concept of gravel removal for risk reduction purposes, soon the entire 100 km stretch of the Guayuriba became licensed to mining companies. The economic demands of construction materials have since determined when and how much mining occurs. While some companies extract materials at 106 a rapid pace, others do not intervene in their licensed areas for years, letting them accumulate worth for investment purposes. Gravel extraction licenses authorize riverbed alterations throughout the entire channel, and hydrocarbon and biofuel production utilize the river to dilute industrial waste and supply intensive water use. The acceleration of global demands for energy and materials, along with the region’s consolidation as a major contributor of exports, has degraded the lives and livelihoods of riverside dwellers, left with polluted waters, seasonal scarcity, and increased flood risk. These conditions have turned the river into a site of socioenvironmental conflict between state, industry, and local actors. Extractivisms and the mindset they bring with them have had a significant impact on the Guayuriba River basin in Colombia. When I began studying the Guayuriba River from the safe distance of Bogotá, its predicament seemed obvious. The Llanos constituted what Patel and Moore (2017) term extractive frontiers, territories that fix the failures of capitalism “by siphoning life from elsewhere.” Global demands for material and energy resources, fueled by the acceleration of societal metabolism, as well as pressures to increase extraction for domestic use and export, was resulting in socioenvironmental conflicts (Martinez-Alier and Walter 2016). The Llanos, including the Guayuriba river basin, also had local populations directly dependent on agricultural, land and water resources - a combination resulting in “geographies of uncertainty and risk” (Cuba et al. 2014). The expansion of the extractive frontier was legitimized as being in the best interest of local peasant populations, regardless of the territorial dispossession that accompanied extractive activities (Arsel, Hogenboom, and Pellegrini 2016). Marginalized populations, such as fishermen and subsistence farmers, who depended on water for their 107 livelihoods, were the organic protagonists of “distributive conflicts,” calling for change through what Martínez-Alier has termed the “environmentalism of the poor” (2003). But what I found in the field was not a clear conflict between a coherent group of “poor” marginalized environmentalists who live off the land and water, versus a coherent group of pro-extractivist state and industry actors. The reality on the ground was much more subtle and complex. On one hand, the extractivist model has also colonized collective imaginaries of the good life, crises have been normalized into everyday dimensions, and people have found ways to adjust to this “crisis ordinary”12 by living on (Berlant 2011, 9). On the other, those who have sought to disrupt this crisis by accessing mechanisms for environmental democracy have been caught in another set of cruel, cyclical conditions, which offer both fulfillment as well as deepened frustrations. We can then conceive of a spectrum of cruel optimisms in extractive frontiers that are coproduced by both the condition of frontier and extractive territory. 4.3 Adjusting to the “crisis ordinary” of extractivism During the first day of field interviews, we were accompanied by Mariana and her husband. Mariana is the president of her neighborhood council and had been very active in supporting the national oil company’s environmental compensation efforts to build flood protection barriers in the Guayuriba. She wanted us to see some of the property damage that had been caused by the gravel mining companies, who were not being monitored and were extracting sediment wherever it was most convenient, and consequently allowing the braided river to eat up 12 Berlant observes that people gradually assimilate crises and traumas into their everyday lives, perceiving them as commonplace and incorporating their inconsistencies into new patterns of behavior, thereby forming new habits and social relations that become part of their new normal. 108 farms and houses on the riverbanks. She wanted to take us where we could see the evidence with our own eyes and to speak to some families who had recently suffered loss. Our first stop was the bridge between the towns of Villavicencio and Acacías, which had recently collapsed. She was sure the damage had something to do with the mining company that owned a license along that stretch of the river and had been causing problems for a family that lived right next to the bridge. When we arrived, we first spoke with a group of men who were fixing the side road that connected their homes with the main road and was the only way out besides the collapsed bridge. They told us the story of what had happened: about a week prior, several vehicles had crossed the bridge in preparation for a celebration at the family restaurant. Once they had parked, the bridge collapsed. Since the side road was also in a terrible condition, the vehicles were trapped. The men said that this had been a very fortunate circumstance, because otherwise, no one would have paid any attention to the matter or helped them fix the side road. Now that there was no way out, they were able to ask the owner of the mining company to donate materials to patch up the side road. A woman had come and “tried to cause trouble”, arguing that the state should have fixed the road, not the residents. Mariana also interjected, inviting the men to come to the upcoming public meeting, to bring up issues of flooding and precarious infrastructure. But the men were not interested in contesting the state. They wanted to live on by patching up the road and they were happy to have the cement and gravel donated by the mining company. To them, precarity was a condition they had accepted. As Furlong et al. state, scholars of everyday practices concur that “most people’s lives are restricted by a range of factors that make the everyday difficult and precarious” and therefore, they often exist in a space of constant negotiation with the state, where “sometimes they are able to challenge and sometimes they must 109 go along with hegemonic power” (2019, 8). In this case, the men were choosing to go along with power and get what they could take. Their dignity, agency and sense of normality was instead preserved through infrastructural maintenance and repair, a “persistent tinkering” (Mol et al. 2010, 91) and form of “care for things” that relies on embodied knowledge and practice (Denis and Pontille 2015). We then spoke to the next-door neighbors, who had a different stance on gravel mining and everyday precarity. They told us not only about the crisis of the collapsed bridge, but of the many grievances and injustices inflicted upon them by the owner of the company. Initially, their family would charge a fee for opening their property’s gates, since the mining company had rights to the stretch of river bordering their farm. Little by little, they noticed that the river was eating up more and more land. They started to suspect that gravel extraction was widening the river channel. The miner claimed that the property was included in his mining license, and that the family would have to leave. When they refused to, he began to threaten them. They claimed that he intentionally caused their home to be flooded so that they would have no other option but to leave. They told us about the fruit trees they no longer had, because their farmland had become a part of the river. Half of their house had also been washed away, but their grandfather still refused to leave because without his home he would be nothing. They had rebuilt the missing wall, and the grandfather continued to live in half of what his house used to be. The granddaughter told us how he would still wake up early in the morning, drink his tinto (black coffee), and look out on the river - practices and habits that allowed her grandfather to retain normality in the everyday (Berlant 2011). For him, staying in his house and continuing to enjoy these daily habits was the only way to practice agency amidst the crisis and violence of dispossession. 110 The collapse of the bridge and the destruction of half a house may not have been everyday crises… The group of men who were fixing the road and their next-door neighbors whose grandfather refused to leave his house were both finding ways to cope with conditions of precarity. But there were other crises which did not occur so suddenly and became incorporated into the daily struggles of livelihoods amidst extractivisms. The following excerpt from my field notes demonstrates how fishermen became accustomed to the “crisis ordinary” of ecological degradation and resigned to fishing until it was no longer possible: Further downstream, at the confluence of the Guayuriba with the Meta River, we visited a fishing village called Bocas del Guayuriba. Bocas was where all the other problems in the watershed came together. Because they were fishers, the people of Bocas noticed the diminishing size, quantity and quality of the fish, which was their source of livelihood. They told us the fish tasted like oil, that some species were getting sick from consuming the chemical residues of palm oil processing plants, and that biological cycles had surely been affected by all the river mining occurring upstream. Yet they also seemed tired of telling these stories. We were accompanied by a couple of local environmental activists – middle-aged women who had become community organizers. They encouraged the fishermen to participate in meetings and to speak up about the impact of all these practices on the fisheries. But the fish market owner was reticent. He said that the fishermen had all gotten worn out from repeating the same messages and not having anything done. They were especially weary of academics, who came and spoke to them but never changed anything or even gave them anything in return. He said they would 111 continue to fish whatever was left and sell whatever could be sold. They would continue to live with whatever conditions they could survive on, because what else could be done? The fishermen of Bocas del Guayuriba were slowly becoming displaced by the ecological conditions brought on by industrial pollution. Many had left the village and found informal employment in the nearby city of Villavicencio. But those who had stayed continued to fish, even though the fish were dwindling. Faced with the cruel optimism of an attachment to a livelihood that had become unsustainable, many had chosen to maintain agency by living on. To them, telling their story or attending community gatherings was just a source of exhaustion. At one point they had participated, but after witnessing how easily these spaces were coopted by political economic interests, they had given up. Living on was all they had left to navigate precarity and negotiate their own version of a life worth living. 4.4 The cruel optimisms of access While the previous examples were of people who had resigned themselves to the reality of environmental degradation caused by extractive activities, this section focuses on those who have inserted themselves within the framework of participatory mechanisms, with the hope that democracy would be delivered and water sources would consequently be protected. Although these mechanisms have been in place ever since the principle of participatory democracy became enshrined in the 1991 Constitution, these have largely been appropriated by economic interests. The general concern is that Environmental Authorities (Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales, CARs) hold excessive economic power, leading to corruption and alliances with private corporate interests, political leaders and NGOs (Canal Albán and Rodríguez Becerra 2008). In 112 extractive frontiers, large companies exercise disproportionate economic power over communities and regional environmental agencies. For example, in our study site, 80% of personnel at the Environmental Authority (Cormacarena) were funded by the national oil company Ecopetrol (interview with Cormacarena’s ex-director, November, 2021). Activists have pointed out that scientific and technical studies are often financed by major economic actors. Most of the time the only data on groundwater comes from the oil sector, and other aspects of knowledge production and environmental monitoring are likewise relegated to industry (Selfa et al. 2015). Environmental impact assessments require companies themselves to conduct the assessments, leading to a data monopoly. Even when transparency and accessibility is emphasized, the procedures in place rarely ever address biased information produced by industry-led or industry-sponsored technoscientific expertise. Mobilizing existing mechanisms for environmental democracy requires herculean effort on behalf of concerned citizens. Activists and community leaders need to gather evidence of environmental degradation that is acceptable to industry and regulatory authorities. Beyond gathering evidence, they also needed to be versed in legal and technical vocabulary and procedures. Pablo, a veterinarian turned activist, told us the story of how he first became involved with environmental activism. In 2012, when a new oilfield was being licensed in his neighborhood, he and a small group of concerned citizens became third party interveners (terceros intervinientes), and successfully blocked the licensing process. A friend invited him to share “what strange thing they had done to remove the threat of the field with minimal effort.” In the process of sharing experiences, they met others who had also blocked oil projects in other parts of the region. Together, they decided to create a civil society organization for the protection of water in the Eastern Foothills. Members of the organization began to study the ins and outs of 113 territorial planning, legal frameworks, licensing requirements, environmental impact studies, and the effects of oil extraction on groundwater resources. As they began to understand the regional and national significance of their surface and groundwater systems, as well as the economic importance of the oil industry, they began to consolidate a platform that sought to bring about water justice by challenging hydrocarbon licenses within the region: “When we saw the national government’s vast expectations in promoting oil extraction in the Orinoco basin... which is the area with the greatest aquifer recharge and water supply in the upper Foothills... we had to generate social commitment to defend it. And from then until now, we have been following up on these processes, trying to question the national government in its oil-dependent economic policy.” In one exemplary case13, activists tried to oppose the licensing of a new oil field, CPO-09, and were the first group in the country to activate a Public Environmental Audience (Audiencia Pública Ambiental) in 2012. Despite gathering 2,000 people and voicing concerns regarding the risks to water quality and availability, the environmental license was processed without any modifications. They decided to at least have a say in where the platform and oil well would be built. They directed their petitions toward the lowering of the elevation quota for oil extraction, from 575 to 500 meters above sea level, to protect their aquifer. The company announced a new 13 The case has been well documented in a publication titled “Como el agua y el aceite. Conflictos socioambientales por la extracción petrolera,” edited by Tatiana Roa Avendaño et al. (2017), which compiles 16 stories of women environmental activists from Colombia. The case has also been studied in two Masters theses of the Universidad de los Andes: “Del dicho al hecho: los retos de la democracia ambiental en contextos de extractivismo petrolero en Colombia” by Tatiana Rodríguez (2020) and “La democracia ambiental frente a la expansión de la frontera petrolera: el caso del Piedemonte llanero” by Esteban Navarro (2020). 114 location, which was now too close to their source of drinking water, a nearby river. They petitioned again, pointing out that regulations required platforms to be built at a distance of at least 200 meters from rivers. The company responded with new documents that claimed that their “river” was really a “creek,” so they could proceed. Of the 12 women that had petitioned, one by one each was either bribed or threatened to pull back her complaints. But one could not be convinced and finally took the matter to the Constitutional Court. The community placed pressure on the company by organizing a peaceful protest at the construction site, and the woman who persisted despite death threats finally won her case. Yet despite so much effort, the Court’s decision merely resulted in the relocation of the platform and oil well. The woman who had won the case continued to receive death threats, warning her not to use any legal mechanisms against the relocated oil well. Unfortunately, her legal victory did not result in tranquility or protection for her territory, water or life. More licenses have been approved since the court hearing, and internal factions and mistrust among community environmental leaders have weakened further collaborations. Yet this anecdote is far from the exception in territories governed by extraction. People often pursue access to procedural rights in the hope of achieving justice: hoping that openly available information, legal structures, and mechanisms such as referendums will lead to environmental protection and “the defense of life and territory.” Just like the elevation quota that could be evaded, the “river” that could be renamed a “creek,” the petitions which could be withdrawn through the force of threats and bribes, and the court decisions which could end up addressing only the smallest, most recent points of debate – once the precedent has been set through measurable, semantic, and legal technicalities, there would always be a way out. Thus, by attaining the desired access (to 115 information, participation, and justice), individuals and organizations often reproduce the same frustrations and ways of knowing that they were originally trying to address. Cruel optimisms refer to the attachment to an object, person, or situation that is damaging or oppressive, but that is perceived as necessary for survival. Berlant was interested in revealing the plural nature of the relationships between people and the objects or scenes that hold promises of flourishing. The optimistic attachment, for example, to the idea of a “good life,” is “cruel” because it “wears out the subjects who nonetheless find their conditions of possibility within it” (Berlant 2011, 27). It is a good life that is no longer possible, because its infrastructural support is no longer available. Yet pursuing the fantasy of the good life, while harmful, can feel sustaining, offering “resources for organizing... lives, rendering the present more habitable, and bringing a sense of the good life closer” (Anderson et al. 2023, 144). Because the configurations that built the promises are now fraying and unraveling, they become “significantly problematic” (Berlant 2011, 24), and flourishing and harm begin to blur. Exiting the relationship is equally damaging. As Berlant states: “… optimism is cruel when the object/scene that ignites a sense of possibility actually makes it impossible to attain the expansive transformation for which a person or a people risks striving; and, doubly, it is cruel insofar as the very pleasures of being inside a relation have become sustaining regardless of the content of the relation, such that a person or world finds itself bound to a situation of profound threat that is, at the same time, profoundly confirming.” (Berlant 2011, 2) Environmental democracy has become a fantasy just like Berlant’s “good life” fantasy. The world that once sustained the promise of democracy has become “significantly problematic,” 116 because the configurations that built the promise are fraying and unraveling through the extractivist logics that have imposed an impossible social order on the frontier. It is cruel because the object (the promise of democracy) ignites a sense of possibility in civil society, but pursuing it through procedural means makes it impossible to attain an expansive transformation in socioenvironmental relationships, enacting ways of being in harmony with water and the life it sustains. And it is doubly cruel since the pleasures of trivial legal victories and “winning” a legal adjustment after a hard, long battle, is sustaining regardless of the content. Extractive territories and their peoples find themselves “bound to a situation of profound threat” to water and life, yet accessing information, participation, and compensation can feel rewarding and “profoundly confirming.” 4.4.1 Access to information I have also been caught in this cycle of cruel optimisms and will illustrate how this occurred to me in my pursuit of information on water allocation in the Eastern Foothills. My first experience with Colombian Environmental Authorities was in 2018, when I was collecting and analyzing water allocation permits across two regions. This involved consolidating a database of permits by visiting the National Agency for Environmental Licencing (Agencia Nacional de Licenciamiento Ambiental, ANLA) as well as two regional Environmental Authorities (CARs) and collecting missing data. During the project, I realized how difficult it was to obtain information on water use, how this information was quite unorganized, and at times, completely absent. My research partner and I would visit the national agency and request environmental license documents to fill in data gaps. We could only “order” a few folders at a time from storage and had to wait a half hour or more, between information “orders.” When we received the 117 documents, we had a hard time finding the page with the exact water sources and volumes that had been allocated for a particular use. Each document had a different way of presenting the information so that oftentimes water volumes or dates were missing, and coordinate systems did not match up. At one regional agency in the department of Casanare, I had requested a meeting with the person who had sent us the original database that we were cleaning up and completing. This official avoided contact with me, and continuously asked me to come back at a different hour. I kept showing up until she finally met with me (briefly), only to lead me to another worker who could answer my questions. She explicitly told me that the documentation center was closed on Fridays, yet, on Friday, I showed up and the center was open. The documentation center itself had a strange aura of secrecy. You were not allowed to take pictures of the documents, and many times important documents would be missing entirely because they had been checked out indefinitely. A campesino couple had arrived after a day or two of travel, having left behind important farm work to dig up some local information on water use. Unfortunately, the document they had come for was checked out and they were told to come back the next week. They explained how difficult it would be for them to return, but the officials would not budge. A young man who was working at the center approached me once he knew no one was around. He told me that they had been instructed to tell people that there were no digital records. However, if I had a USB on me, he could copy these non-existent files onto my flash drive. Later, I would learn that even this data that I had collected with so much difficulty, which was now much easier to access online, was pathetically inaccurate and incomplete. I would learn through industry representatives that flow volumes rarely matched actual withdrawal rates, that 118 for every “official” permit, there may be about a dozen “unofficial” or illegal withdrawals, that streamflow volumes and environmental flow were based on faulty, old or improper measurements, and that data included in each folders Environmental Impact Assessment had been provided by the extractive companies themselves, without any cross-examination on the part of the Environmental Authorities. But before I learned these things, finally obtaining the data had felt so victorious. It had felt like a great accomplishment to have access to those numbers, yet, in reality, I had not been empowered either through knowledge or circumstances to do any more for the rivers whose water use we were investigating. 4.4.2 Access to participation Mariana’s personal story of environmental activism demonstrates another dimension of the cruel optimisms of access in the Guayuriba River basin. Mariana came to live by the banks of the Guayuriba River because her parents owned a property that she took over. In 2010, when Ecopetrol was processing a new discharge permit for the Guayuriba, the environmental agencies called a meeting with local leaders from neighborhood councils (juntas de acción comunal) to come up with ideas for environmental compensation. As Mariana stated, “obviously we don’t agree with [direct discharge], but, given the circumstances, Ecopetrol had to do it no matter what.” The unavoidability of the direct discharge of production waters became an opportunity for Mariana and others to negotiate the building of flood protection barriers (dykes) for their neighborhoods. In her neighborhood, flooding generally occurred due to major diversions of flow from the main river channel into the smaller arms that bordered their riverside properties. According to Mariana, these diversions started happening about 30 years ago, “as soon as the [gravel] mining companies began to arrive.” Mariana claimed that the environmental authorities 119 began giving out mining licenses in the river basin without “consult[ing] with the people who lived here.” Now, the entire Guayuriba river was licensed to gravel mining companies who extract haphazardly “wherever they can send a machine” most conveniently. This practice is visibly changing the river’s course and flow, “pulling the river to the side” and “harming the people who live by the riverbanks.” On one level, Mariana already experienced a cruel optimism by holding onto the hope that her property and that of her neighbors could be protected from flooding. Her neighborhood is in the floodplains of a braided river, where a network of channels is separated by small, constantly shifting sandbars. These channels are prone to frequent and rapid changes in water level due to the variable and often intense precipitation patterns in the region. The Guayuriba’s heavy sediment load intensifies these dynamics, and, even without the haphazard mining along its banks, flooding is a constant hazard. The impulse Mariana received from the environmental compensation meeting led her to new avenues of activism. She began organizing and attending meetings, petitioning the state to intervene by desilting and dredging the river. Her work was not only limited to the river. She was also deeply concerned about the condition of the dirt roads in her neighborhood, which had been perceptibly damaged by the constant transport of heavy machinery. Petitioning for road repairs was another constant battle she was involved in. Here, she developed practices of care that would permit her to maintain a sense of agency amid precarious conditions. She told us that, to make sure that the workers sent by the state would get the necessary work done, she would often cook lunch and deliver it to them, so that they would have no excuse to leave their jobs at lunchtime without finishing the repairs. Mariana knew that workers had become increasingly unreliable, ever since the oil industry had transformed the labor landscape. 120 Yet, because she held on to the promise of participation, she continued to show up to meetings, learn as much as possible about the gravel licenses and flood barriers plans, and to petition for better infrastructure to protect her neighborhood. The more she participated, the more she began to consider herself an environmentalist and a community leader. These identities were placing her at risk, but they were also exciting, promising and confirming. So much so, that they sustained her desire to continue showing up, despite the fact that decisions were made top-down, demands were met with frustrations, and even when small victories were won (such as the construction of a dyke), these were short-lived (the dykes would be easily and quickly damaged due to the river’s dynamics and gravel mining activities). Another participatory space in the Guayuriba river-basin was the Basin Council (Consejo de Cuenca), an entity created to provide democratic participation for decision-making and territorial planning. Several of the environmental activists we interviewed expressed their disappointment in not having obtained access to this space. They mentioned that it was very difficult to go through the application process which required a long list of documents that were costly to gather, that you had to have a residence in your name within the river-basin, and that certain activists who were known to speak up too much were never invited to be a part of the Council. Yet, although some lamented their inability to participate in the Council, others who had access were also met with frustration. As Ángela, a member of the Bain Council, shared about the meetings she had attended, it became clear that to her, these spaces had also become appropriated by powerful economic interests. Ángela’s hopes and expectations for participation had changed since she initially became involved in the planning process: 121 “The communities that were there participated with great enthusiasm… we generated the expectation that the perspectives of the river… would become incorporated into the document. But there were many things that we realized were already agreed upon between the companies and the [Environmental] Authority.” Another Basin Council member also commented that she felt limited at the meetings, especially since she did not share the technical language spoken by consultants and felt that her own knowledge about the river was not respected. To her, the “technical team,” as they were called, were “a bunch of professionals that don’t even know what it is to get involved here.” But she felt there was nothing she could do or say: “unfortunately, we don’t have the knowledge… and we don’t have the studies. And that is why they see… through us… we simply… go to the meetings, we don’t agree with some things… but we don’t have… professional knowledge.” Industry representatives could back their claims with data and studies conducted by their own contractors. But local knowledge and experiences did not pull the same weight as technical studies. Even though everyone “participated,” all participation was not equal. For Basin Council members, sentiments of hope and expectation were mixed with annoyance, anger, rage, and sadness. The expectations placed on the planning process combined with inaction in the present eroded trust, bringing about what several community leaders referred to as “fatigue and desperation,” “worry,” and a “low morale” (la moral por el suelo). Ángela expressed that the drawing out of plans and solutions, and the feeling of being used by industry-sided politicians has left her and others enraged: 122 “Sometimes, as a community leader, you get tired of fighting and fighting and seeing year after year that politicians… play with the needs of the people… money is not everything in this life, because one day you will die and take nothing along… As leaders we are so disappointed, those of us who really seek community, social and environmental justice… because there is no solution to anything… I’m telling you from the heart that I feel the pain of rage.” The emotional challenges of participating in democratic spaces were repeatedly expressed by community leaders and environmental activists. Yet they also talked about their participation with a sense of pride, and clung to their titles as basin council members (consejera de cuenca), or third party interveners (tercera interviniente) as if it expressed their identity. Participation had become sustaining and pleasurable to some degree, while simultaneously deepening frustrations. 4.4.3 Access to justice The struggles of the residents of Vegas del Guayuriba, a neighborhood near one of Ecopetrol’s major points of direct discharge of production waters, offers an example of how a group of citizens were able to access justice in the case of an environmental liability, but the suspensions and compensations that were activated lacked relevance and closed the case without repairing the root of the situation at hand. Fernando, a neighborhood leader from Vegas, told us how the discharge pipe had started to affect sediment transport. Sediment would build up and accumulate around the pipe and push the river to the other side, affecting the volume of flow available for diluting production waters. Fernando described Ecopetrol’s dilemma in dealing with the constant changes in sediment and flow dynamics: 123 “What happens is that they say: ‘the river is going to pass through here’ and so over there, they unloaded the pipe and they never imagined that never mind, the river moved somewhere else, and the pipe was left dry. And when everything was exposed, all of that [untreated production waters]: ‘Oh, what happened here?’ So, ‘Oh! Let's move the pipe.’ So, they put it over there and once more it was left dry in the summer [dry season]. ‘Oh, what happened?’ This is how they’ve been dealing with it, the very force of nature.” Fernando recounted that in 2015, Ecopetrol solicited a license to lengthen the discharge pipe another 200 meters. Back then, he and his neighbors did not understand the implications. It was when Ecopetrol finally started executing the project in 2018, that Fernando and neighbors saw the work that was being done and decided to form the environmental oversight committee (veeduría ambiental). Members of the committee volunteered their time to observe the developments of the infrastructural project. Their observations led them to conclude that the project was causing greater erosion and increasing flood risk. They tried to intervene to stop the project, but it already had the necessary studies and licenses. “There was no human power that could detain them from lengthening that pipe,” Fernando lamented, “they haven’t recognized that they caused environmental damage and consumed all the green space [riparian buffer].” The environmental oversight committee that Fernando helped organize in 2018 around the pipe lengthening project had continued to monitor Ecopetrol’s activities through collective monitoring and surveillance. Members of the committee had been the first to notice when the gravel mining company stopped extracting material in the center of the river’s channel, causing sediment to build up and forcing flow to one side, which had left the lengthened pipe exposed. It 124 had become clear that the production waters had not been properly treated, because oily bedrock had been discovered at the site of discharge. The discovery had caused outrage, and many more people had become involved. At first, the charges had been denied. However, increased media attention soon made it impossible to continue business-as-usual. But instead of delivering justice to the members of the Vegas community, who had vigilantly monitored their river, the conflict had become an opportunity for diverse actors to stake their claims. Although they had succeeded in suspending the point of discharge in December of 2020, Fernando and others claimed that “two months after lifting the suspension, we once more noticed the oily film.” Other promises that had been made during a site visit with petroleum engineers and the mayor. These included a clean-up, regular follow-up, and water quality testing, all of which simply “wasn’t done.” But more frustrating than the empty promises was the cooptation of their efforts. As Ángela, a council president from a nearby neighborhood explained: “The mayor used the group of people who were evidencing the whole situation of environmental impact with Ecopetrol's discharges. And he used that only to pressure Ecopetrol. And there was another group of people who were fighting over goods and services… claim[ing] to be environmentalists… And Ecopetrol even uses that to divide the communities so that they squabble at each other… the mayor's office, the governor's office, even Cormacarena [the regional environmental authority] used us. They told some communities: "Say that the mayor's office is doing very well." Then they told some others: "Say that the government is doing things very well, say that Cormacarena..." And that was it… they even declared a state of emergency…just to pressure Ecopetrol to give 125 them 16 billion [pesos], to start a mega school in a village… which does not suffer much from the Guayuriba river basin… We [environmental leaders] are all uninspired, despairing, we don’t see, there isn’t like that light... they just use us politically, but there isn’t any real social justice here.” According to Ángela, this was not a rare occurrence. She claimed that it was a common tactic of Ecopetrol’s to pit community members against each other and “divide the communities so that they squabble at each other.” Since mechanisms for environmental democracy require unified communities to mobilize, make the necessary contacts and organize the required spaces for participation, any source of division can easily derail such efforts. Beyond these tactics employed by the state oil company, Ángela pointed out that the mayor, governor, and regional Environmental Authority all attempted to push their own agendas during a meeting convened at the point of discharge. In extractive territories such as the Guayuriba River basin, companies like Ecopetrol are the primary contributors to state funds. Since everyone had some interest in the distribution of compensation monies, they showed up to sway the sentiment, hoping to take advantage of the mess to fund their own projects. The whole situation led to the cooptation of the democratic space that had been convened. Ultimately, it did not serve the purpose of environmental protection, prosecution, and the defense of human rights, as the community of Vegas had hoped. 4.5 Conclusions “Maybe, like the proverbial lost key that does not lie within the seductive ring of the lamplight, we are looking to exercise democracy in the wrong places and by the wrong means. Maybe the creeping paralysis of the democratic deficit would be easier to remedy 126 if, instead of asking […] for good solutions, “we the people” would opt instead to bend our attention toward asking the right questions” (Jasanoff, 2022 Holberg Lecture)14. The cruelty of environmental democracy in Colombia’s extractive frontiers stems from the fact that these regions are first and foremost extractive frontiers, and democracy is invoked as a secondary concern, to identify and resolve the problems produced by this condition. As Jasanoff explains, democracy has become oriented towards problem-solving, and only experts are seen as equipped to find the right scientific and technological answers to peoples’ problems. This “raw solutionism… puts the cart of technocracy ahead of the horses of democracy.” Democracy needs redefining, so that it can address questions and frame goals “that define the directions and purposes of our collective life.” Procedural environmental democracy continues to center around technical solutions to inherited problems, instead of the fundamental questions of how we should live and relate to the natural world. In the context of Colombia’s extractive frontiers, environmental democracy becomes an empty exercise full of cruel optimisms since extractive activities have already been approved and projected onto the territory. The promise of environmental democracy in the Colombian Constitution of 1991 has given citizens hope for self-determination and environmental protection. However, the principal obstacle to self-determination, the extractive development model, is not up for democratic discussion. In the Guayuriba river-basin, which has multiple extractive activities, agency is exercised by living on amid precarity. Pursuing the fantasy of access to environmental democracy is doubly cruel because it can feel confirming and 14 Full text and video available at https://holbergprize.org/en/news/holberg-prize/2022-holberg-lecture-sheila-jasanoff 127 sustain a dysfunctional relationship. While communities may feel they are making steps towards justice and democracy, their battles often result in unsatisfactory compromises rather than transformative justice. Laura Quintana (2021) argues that emotions such as frustration, rage, sadness, and deception can complicate the hope that is often associated with the pursuit of democracy. Quintana suggests that these affective dimensions can either lead to resentment or to creativity and change. For instance, rage can either become an individual emotional resentment or a force that demands the restructuring of oppressive systems. This highlights the importance of recognizing rage as a potential driver for change, which can emerge in both violent and dignified expressions. The latter is characterized by a political and poetic affect that demands the imagining of alternative futures. Given the complexities of these affective dimensions, it is crucial to pay attention to those living in extractive frontiers and those attempting to access environmental democracy. This attention could facilitate the reclamation of democracy in ways that nurture and sustain all life. 128 Chapter 5: Conclusion Through the three articles presented in chapters 2, 3, and 4, this dissertation has interrogated the implications of extractive frontiers for water science and environmental democracy in Colombia. My research addressed how knowledge controversies play out at the water-oil nexus in Colombia, what is produced through the bureaucratic delay of watershed planning and what are the limits to environmental democracy in extractive frontiers. The extractive development model has increased scientific uncertainties, raised questions regarding the complexity of environmental decision-making, and raised questions regarding the role and bias of expertise. Meanwhile, communities have been promised environmental protection and made to wait through the bureaucratic slowness of planning, and pent-up emotions have multiplied through the failures and frustrations of procedural environmental democracy. Time will show whether these affective dimensions will mobilize a dignified rage into collective action for the reimagining of science and democracy in the territories presented in this study. In Chapter 2, I demonstrated how water science controversies regarding fracking and oil spills in Colombia are shaping conversations on the need for greater social license, local knowledge and democracy in the face of the complexities and uncertainties of Colombia’s hydrogeography and possible impacts of nonconventional oil exploration. In Chapter 3, I discussed how bureaucratic delay of the river-basin planning process gives and imposes order to the Guayuriba river-basin, permitting continued resource extraction through an accrual of uncertainties regarding flood dynamics, water quality and water availability. Finally, in Chapter 4, I illustrated how an emphasis on procedural environmental democracy in extractive frontiers leads to cruel optimisms for those who seek access. Through ethnographic evidence from the Guayuriba river-basin, I explored how rights of access to information, participation and justice 129 lead to greater frustrations and partial solutions, while continuing to hold promise in the eyes of the people. The chapters presented in this dissertation were informed by the experiences, thought-projects and community concerns I became aware of during the course of my doctoral studies. They represent a moment on a journey that will hopefully continue to develop through further collaborations and ruminations. 5.1 Limitations When I began working on my first proposal, I was interested in interdisciplinary research that would glean insights from a combination of hydrological and social sciences. I explored several interdisciplinary frameworks, from socio-hydrology to political ecology, water metabolism, and critical physical geography. I wrote about how these diverse interdisciplines were grappling with issues of complexity, uncertainty and the role of the expert, and thus began my journey to understand these broad challenges in approaching water science and its role in society. The COVID-19 pandemic restricted my fieldwork and drove me to be creative with my data collection, by incorporating a discourse analysis of media sources as well as online semi-structured interviews. In the individual chapters, each methodology offers its own possibilities as well as its own limitations. In Chapter 2, relying on media sources for an analysis of water-oil controversies allows a broad picture of discourse frames and narrative structures of diverse coalition members, but it also limits the analysis to statements published in newspapers. Public events, social media, and more informal coalition-building spaces where discourse develops remained absent in the analysis. In Chapter 3, a major limitation was the difficulty we faced in 130 speaking with representatives of the gravel mining industry and the Regional Environmental Authority. In the case of the gravel mining industry, once representatives became aware of the general description of the project, they became hostile in their responses and unwilling to meet for interviews. The Environmental Authority delayed responses and, on two occasions, organized meetings with several representatives, only to cancel them once they had begun, because the chair or main representative was unavailable. Finally, we were able to speak with a representative through a personal contact. We also received sterile written responses to our interview questions, which appear to have been typed up by a temporary contractor to fulfill the requirement of having responded to our request for an interview. Even though the answers were superficial, their form and omissions also provided insights and context for the ethnographic study of the organization. Despite these limitations, the Chapters represent a contribution to the scholarship on science in the public sphere, territorial planning, and environmental democracy, and have resulted in public policy recommendations15. 5.2 Future research directions There are many unresolved questions left by the results presented in this study, and many more dimensions of water science and environmental democracy, and their interactions with extractivist logics, left to explore. As Colombia has entered a period of new political configurations and promises, many of the questions posed in this research gain prominence. 15 An analysis based on Chapter 3 has been submitted as a public policy memo titled “Una cuenca de todos y de nadie”: Análisis del Plan de Ordenación y Manejo de Cuencas Hidrográficas (POMCA) del Río Guayuriba” to the publication “Documentos de política pública y democracia,” jointly published by CIDER, Universidad de los Andes, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 131 What will happen to the proposed ban on fracking? How will the elements raised in the debate translate to the administration’s understanding of technoscientific expertise and ways of dealing with the complexities and uncertainties of water impacts? How will water and water science figure discursively within the unfolding just energy transition? Scholars will surely follow these processes closely as new developments arise and continue to evaluate the role and transformation of science in the public sphere. Research on territorial planning must also evolve. Beyond identifying the uncertainties produced through delay, further research is required to uncover alternatives to the current rigid structure, slowness and technocratic nature of river-basin planning. Where flexible and adaptive planning exists, we need to ask, are these tools appropriate in extractive frontiers? What does science for planning look like in regions with large private water users? Can local knowledge and deliberation lead to alternative modes of planning? Finally, research on the emotional dimensions of procedural and fundamental environmental democracy is lacking. Further studies could offer additional evidence on the contours and implications and interactions of affect and democracy in extractive frontiers. Furthermore, we must ask the question of how to move towards a definition of democracy that would sustain water and life rather than extractive economic interests. This question is fundamental for thinking about the moment we currently inhabit, and the challenges that climate change has imposed on the way we organize our societies and relate to one another, as well as to the natural world. It is my hope that others will read these questions and feel inspired to investigate new avenues of inquiry, so that our collective capacity to address the complex issues of our times will grow and advance through collaboration. 132 References Abram, Simone, and Gisa Weszkalnys. 2011. “Introduction: Anthropologies of Planning— Temporality, Imagination, and Ethnography.” Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 61: 3–18. Acevedo Guerrero, Tatiana. 2020. “Politics of Water Flows: Water Supply, Sanitation, and Drainage.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science (February): 1–24. Acosta, Alberto. 2013. “Extractivism and Neoextractivism: Two Sides of the Same Curse.” Beyond development: alternative visions from Latin America 1: 61–86. Anand, Nikhil. 2017. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press. Anderson, Ben. 2010. “Preemption , Precaution , Preparedness : Anticipatory Action and Future Geographies.” 34(6): 777–98. ———. 2023. “Encountering Berlant Part Two : Cruel and Other Optimisms.” (November 2022): 143–60. Aráoz, H Machado. 2013. “Orden Neocolonial, Extractivismo y Ecología Política de Las Emociones.” RBSE-Revista Brasileira de Sociologia da Emoção 12(34): 11–43. Ardila-Luna, Diana Carolina. 2022. “El Río Meta En El Proceso de Fronterización de La Frontera Colombiana, 1532-2016.” Agua y Territorio/Water and Landscape (19): e5520--e5520. Arsel, Murat, Barbara Hogenboom, and Lorenzo Pellegrini. 2016. “The Extractive Imperative and the Boom in Environmental Conflicts at the End of the Progressive Cycle in Latin America.” The Extractive Industries and Society 3(4): 877–79. Auyero, Javier. 2012. Patients of State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham, North 133 Carolina: Duke University Press. Auyero, Javier, and Débora Alejandra Swistun. 2009. Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford University Press. Avendaño, Tatiana Roa, María Cecilia Roa García, Jessica Toloza Chaparro, and Luisa María Navas Camacho. 2017. “Como El Agua y El Aceite.” Centro Nacional Salud, Ambiente y Trabajo, CENSAT Agua Viva. Baka, Jennifer, Arielle Hesse, Erika Weinthal, and Karen Bakker. 2019. “Environmental Knowledge Cartographies: Evaluating Competing Discourses in U.S. Hydraulic Fracturing Rule-Making.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109(6): 1941–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1574549. Di Baldassarre, Giuliano, Luigia Brandimarte, and Keith Beven. 2016. “The Seventh Facet of Uncertainty: Wrong Assumptions, Unknowns and Surprises in the Dynamics of Human–Water Systems.” Hydrological Sciences Journal 61(9): 1748–58. Barrios, Marta Milena, and Toby Miller. 2021. “Voices of Resilience: Colombian Journalists and Self-Censorship in the Post-Conflict Period.” Journalism Practice 15(10): 1423–40. Barry, Andrew. 2002. “The Anti-Political Economy.” Economy and society 31(2): 268–84. ———. 2013. Material Politics: Disputes along the Pipeline. John Wiley \& Sons. ———. 2020. “The Material Politics of Infrastructure.” In TechnoScienceSociety, Springer, 91–109. Beauregard, Robert A. 2015. Planning Matter: Acting with Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Beck, Ulrich, Scott Lash, and Brian Wynne. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications. 134 Bell, Martha G. 2022. “Geoforum Overlooked Legacies : Climate Vulnerability and Risk as Incrementally Constructed in the Municipal Drinking Water System of Lima , Peru ( 1578 – 2017 ).” Geoforum 132(March 2021): 205–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.02.016. Berlant, Lauren. 2011. “Cruel Optimism.” In Cruel Optimism, Duke University Press. Bernáldez, Joaquín, and Rocío Herrera. 2019. “‘94% of the Water Flows into the Sea’: Environmental Discourse and the Access to Water for Unconventional Oil and Gas Activities in Neuquén, Argentina.” In , 155–74. Birkenholtz, Trevor, and Gregory Simon. 2022. “Introduction to Themed Issue : Ignorance and Uncertainty in Environmental.” Geoforum 132(December 2021): 154–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.12.003. Blair, James J A. 2022. “Tracking Penguins, Sensing Petroleum: ‘Data Gaps’ and the Politics of Marine Ecology in the South Atlantic.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 5(1): 60–80. Boelens, Rutgerd, Esha Shah, and Bert Bruins. 2019. “Contested Knowledges: Large Dams and Mega-Hydraulic Development.” Water (Switzerland) 11(3): 1–27. Bomberg, Elizabeth. 2017. “Shale We Drill? Discourse Dynamics in UK Fracking Debates.” Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 19(1): 72–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2015.1053111. Boudet, Hilary et al. 2014. “‘Fracking’ Controversy and Communication: Using National Survey Data to Understand Public Perceptions of Hydraulic Fracturing.” Energy Policy 65: 57–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.10.017. Brasier, Kathryn et al. 2011. “Residents’ Perceptions of Community and Environmental Impacts 135 From Development of Natural Gas in the Marcellus Shale: A Comparison of Pennsylvania and New York Cases.” Journal of rural social sciences 26(1): 32–61. Brown, James D. 2010. “Prospects for the Open Treatment of Uncertainty in Environmental Research.” Progress in Physical Geography 34(1): 75–100. Brugger, Heike, and Adam Douglas Henry. 2021. “Influence of Policy Discourse Networks on Local Energy Transitions.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 39(April): 141–54. Callon, Michel. 2009. “Elaborating the Notion of Performativity.” Le libellio d’AEGIS 5(1): 18–29. Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe. 2011. Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy. MIT press. Canal Albán, Francisco, and Manuel Rodríguez Becerra. 2008. “Las Corporaciones Autónomas Regionales 15 Años Después de La Creación Del Sina.” Gobernabilidad, instituciones y medio ambiente en Colombia. Carmona, Susana, and Pablo Jaramillo. 2020. “Anticipating Futures through Enactments of Expertise: A Case Study of an Environmental Controversy in a Coal Mining Region of Colombia.” Extractive Industries and Society 7(3): 1086–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.06.009. Castro, José Esteban. 2007. “Water Governance in the Twentieth-First Century.” Ambiente e Sociedade 10(2): 97–118. Cavallo, Sara E. 2021. “Navigating Compounding Uncertainty: Farmer Strategies amid Biosecurity Crises in Western Uganda.” Geoforum 123: 136–44. Cilliers, Paul. 2002. Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. 136 routledge. ———. 2013. “Complexity, Modeling, and Natural Resource Management.” Ecology and Society 18(3). Coronado, Sergio. 2019. “Rights in the Time of Populism: Land and Institutional Change Amid the Reemergence of Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Colombia.” Land 8(8). https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/8/119. Cuba, Nicholas, Anthony Bebbington, John Rogan, and Marco Millones. 2014. “Extractive Industries, Livelihoods and Natural Resource Competition: Mapping Overlapping Claims in Peru and Ghana.” Applied Geography 54: 250–61. Cunningham, Sheryl. 2019. “The Story of an Emerging Energy Issue: National Television News Coverage of Fracking in the United States.” Environmental Communication 13(6): 804–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1548370. D’Angelo, Lorenzo, and Robert J Pijpers. 2018. “Mining Temporalities: An Overview.” The Extractive Industries and Society 5(2): 215–22. Denis, Jérôme, and David Pontille. 2015. “Material Ordering and the Care of Things.” Science, Technology, \& Human Values 40(3): 338–67. Dietz, Kristina. 2019. “Contesting Claims for Democracy: The Role of Narratives in Conflicts over Resource Extraction.” Extractive Industries and Society 6(2): 510–18. Duarte-Abadía, Bibiana, and Rutgerd Boelens. 2016. “Disputes over Territorial Boundaries and Diverging Valuation Languages: The Santurban Hydrosocial Highlands Territory in Colombia.” Water International 41(1): 15–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2016.1117271. Duffy, Robert. 2021. “Synecdoche and Battles Over the Meaning of ‘Fracking.’” Environmental 137 Communication 0(0): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1998178. Escobar, Arturo. 2017. “Complexity Theory and the Place of the Now.” Cultural Dynamics 29(4): 333–39. Espig, Martin. 2018. “Getting the Science Right : Queensland ’ s Coal Seam Gas Development and the Engagement with Knowledge , Uncertainty and Environmental Risks Getting the Science Right : Queensland ’ s Coal Seam Gas Development and the Engagement with Knowledge , Uncertain.” (March). Fent, Ashley, and Eric Kojola. 2020. “Political Ecologies of Time and Temporality in Resource Extraction.” Journal of Political Ecology 27: 819–29. Ferry, Elizabeth Emma, and Mandana E Limbert. 2008. Brandeis University Faculty Publications Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and Their Temporalities. 1st ed. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press TS - School for Advanced Research advanced seminar series. Frickel, Scott et al. 2010. “Undone Science : Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting.” Science, Technology, and Human Values: 444–73. Frickel, Scott, and Michelle Edwards. 2014. “Untangling Ignorance in Environmental Risk Assessment.” Powerless science: 215–33. Frickel, Scott, and M Bess Vincent. 2007. “Hurricane Katrina , Contamination , and the Unintended Organization of Ignorance.” Technology in Society 29: 181–88. Funtowicz, Silvio O., and Jerome R. Ravetz. 1993. “Science for the Post-Normal Age.” Futures 25(7): 739–55. ———. 1994. “Uncertainty, Complexity and Post-Normal Science.” Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 13(12): 1881–85. 138 Furlong, Kathryn, Marie Noëlle Carré, and Tatiana Acevedo Guerrero. 2017. “Urban Service Provision: Insights from Pragmatism and Ethics.” Environment and Planning A 49(12): 2800–2812. Furlong, Kathryn, Denisse Roca-servat, Tatiana Acevedo-guerrero, and Mar Botero-mesa. 2019. “Everyday Practices , Everyday Water : From Foucault to Rivera-Cusicanqui ( with a Few Stops in Between ).” water: 1–17. Gedicks, Al. 1994. 210 The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles against Multinational Corporations. Black Rose Books Ltd. Gonzalez-Penagos, Felipe, Isabelle Moretti, Christian France-Lanord, and Xavier Guichet. 2014. “Origins of Formation Waters in the Llanos Foreland Basin of Colombia: Geochemical Variation and Fluid Flow History.” Geofluids 14(4): 443–58. Grajales, Jacobo. 2017. “Private Security and Paramilitarism in Colombia: Governing in the Midst of Violence.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 9(3): 27–48. Gross, Matthias, and Linsey Mcgoey. 2015. Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies Learned Ignorance The Apophatic Tradition of Cultivating the Virtue of Unknowing. London: Routledge. Gudynas, Eduardo. 2015. Extractivismos: Ecología, Economía y Política de Un Modo de Entender El Desarrollo y La Naturaleza. Red Peruana por una Globalización con Equidad, RedGE. Guerrieri, Valeria. 2019. “The Spatiality of Hope : Mapping Canada ’ s Northwest Energy Frontier The Spatiality of Hope : Mapping Canada ’ s Northwest Energy Frontier.” 7731. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2018.1534467. Guerriero, Leila. 2006. Los Suicidas Del Fin Del Mundo: Cronica De Un Pueblo Patagonico. 139 Tusquets Editor. Gunster, Shane, and Paul Saurette. 2014. “Storylines in the Sands: News, Narrative and Ideology in the Calgary Herald.” Canadian Journal of Communication 39(3). Gustafsson, Maria-therese. 2017. “The Struggles Surrounding Ecological and Economic Zoning in Peru.” Third World Quarterly 6597: 1–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1255141. Habib, Sabrina, and Melanie Sberna Hinojosa. 2016. “Representation of Fracking in Mainstream American Newspapers.” Environmental Practice 18(2): 83–93. Hage, Ghassan. 2009. “Waiting out the Crisis: On Stuckedness and Governmentality.” Anthropological theory 5(1): 463–75. Hajer, Maarten A. 1995. Oxford University Press The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Halvaksz, Jamon Alex. 2008. “Whose Closure? Appearances, Temporality, and Mineral Extraction in Papua New Guinea.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(1): 21–37. Hamann, Julian, and Lisa Suckert. 2018. “Temporality in Discourse: Methodological Challenges and a Suggestion for a Quantified Qualitative Approach.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 19(2): 1–34. Hamilton, A S, and R D Moore. 2012. “Quantifying Uncertainty in Streamflow Records.” Canadian Water Resources Journal/Revue canadienne des ressources hydriques 37(1): 3–21. Hébert, Karen. 2016. “Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold : Scientific Risk Assessment , Public Participation , and the Politics of Imperilment in Bristol Bay , Alaska.” Journal of the Royal 140 Anthropological Institute: 108–26. Hedding, Kylah J. 2017. “Sources and Framing of Fracking: A Content Analysis of Newspaper Coverage in North Carolina, New York, and Pennsylvania.” Environmental Communication 11(3): 370–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2016.1269819. Hess, David J., and Benjamin K. Sovacool. 2020. “Sociotechnical Matters: Reviewing and Integrating Science and Technology Studies with Energy Social Science.” Energy Research and Social Science 65(January): 101462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101462. Hess, David J. 2016. Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions. MIT Press. ———. 2020. “The Sociology of Ignorance and Post-Truth Politics.” In Sociological Forum, , 241–49. Hesse, Arielle. 2021. “Geographies of Uncertainty and Negotiated Responsibilities of Occupational Health.” Geoforum 123: 184–93. Hitchcock, Peter. 2015. “Velocity and Viscosity.” Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas: 45–60. Hoffman, Lindsay H., and Michael D. Slater. 2007. “Evaluating Public Discourse in Newspaper Opinion Articles: Values-Framing and Integrative Complexity in Substance and Health Policy Issues.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 84(1): 58–74. Hommes, Lena, and Rutgerd Boelens. 2017. “Urbanizing Rural Waters: Rural-Urban Water Transfers and the Reconfiguration of Hydrosocial Territories in Lima.” Political Geography 57: 71–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.12.002. Horowitz, Leah S. 2015. “Culturally Articulated Neoliberalisation : Corporate Social Responsibility and the Capture of Indigenous Legitimacy in New Caledonia.” Transactions 141 of the Institute of British Geographers 40: 88–101. Hughes, Sallie, Miguel Garcés, Mireya Márquez-Ram\’\irez, and Jesús Arroyave. 2017. “Rethinking Professional Autonomy: Autonomy to Develop and to Publish News in Mexico and Colombia.” Journalism 18(8): 956–76. Humphrey, Caroline. 2020. “Rethinking Infrastructure: Siberian Cities and the Great Freeze of January 2001.” In Wounded Cities, Routledge, 91–107. Jacquet, Jeffrey B. 2012. “Landowner Attitudes toward Natural Gas and Wind Farm Development in Northern Pennsylvania.” Energy Policy 50: 677–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.08.011. Jansen, Stef. 2016. “For a Relational , Historical Ethnography of Hope : Indeterminacy and Determination in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Meantime For a Relational , Historical Ethnography of Hope :” 7206. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1201481. Jasanoff, Sheila. 2003. “Technologies of Humility: Citizen Paiticipation In.” Minerva 41: 223–44. ———. 2004. “Reason in Practice.” In Science and Public Reason, Taylor & Francis Group, 1–22. Jepson, Wendy. 2014. “Measuring ‘no-Win’ Waterscapes: Experience-Based Scales and Classification Approaches to Assess Household Water Security in Colonias on the US-Mexico Border.” Geoforum 51(January 2014): 107–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.10.002. Kimura, Aya Hirata. 2016. Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists. Durham: Duke University Press. Kinchy, Abby, and Guy Schaffer. 2018. “Disclosure Conflicts: Crude Oil Trains, Fracking 142 Chemicals, and the Politics of Transparency.” Science Technology and Human Values 43(6): 1011–38. Kirsch, Stuart. 2014. “New Politics of Time.” In Mining Capitalism, University of California Press, 188–223. Kleinman, Daniel Lee, and Sainath Suryanarayanan. 2012. “Dying Bees and the Social Production of Ignorance.” Science, Technology and Human Values 38(4): 492–517. Kroepsch, Adrianne C. 2018. “Groundwater Modeling and Governance: Contesting and Building (Sub) Surface Worlds in Colorado’s Northern San Juan Basin.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 4: 43–66. Kroepsch, Adrianne C, and Katherine R Clifford. 2022. “On Environments of Not Knowing : How Some Environmental Spaces and Circulations Are Made Inscrutable.” Geoforum 132(June 2021): 171–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.05.009. Langston, Nancy. 2010. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. Yale University Press. Larkin, Brian. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 327–43. Leifsen, Esben, Maria-therese Gustafsson, Maria A Guzmán-gallegos, and Almut Schilling-vacaflor. 2017. “New Mechanisms of Participation in Extractive Governance : Between Technologies of Governance and Resistance Work.” Third World Quarterly 6597: 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1302329. Li, Fabiana. 2009. “Documenting Accountability : Environmental.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32(2): 218–36. Lindroth, Marjo, and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen. 2019. “Politics of Hope.” Globalizations 16(5): 143 644–48. Linton, Jamie, and Jessica Budds. 2014. “The Hydrosocial Cycle: Defining and Mobilizing a Relational-Dialectical Approach to Water.” Geoforum 57: 170–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.10.008. MacKerron, Gordon, and Brian Wynne. 2011. Rationality and Ritual : Participation and Exclusion in Nuclear Decision-Making. London: Routledge. Mannix, Devin H, Trevor L Birkenholtz, Daniel B Abrams, and Cecilia Cullen. 2022. “Uncertain Waters: Participatory Groundwater Modelling in Chicago’s Suburbs.” Geoforum 132: 182–94. Márquez Ramírez, Mireya, and Manuel Alejandro Guerrero. 2017. “Clientelism and Media Capture in Latin America.” In the Service of Power: Media Capture and the Threat to Democracy: 43. Martin, Jeff Vance. 2021. “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Environmental Governance and Illegibility in the American West.” Geoforum 123: 194–204. Martinez-Alier, Joan. 2003. The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation. Edward Elgar Publishing. Martinez-Alier, Joan, and Mariana Walter. 2016. “Social Metabolism and Conflicts over Extractivism.” Environmental Governance in Latin America: 58–85. Matthews, Julian, and Anders Hansen. 2018. “Fracturing Debate? A Review of Research on Media Coverage of ‘Fracking.’” Frontiers in Communication 3(September). McCormick, Sabrina. 2007. “Democratizing Science Movements: A New Framework for Mobilization and Contestation.” Social Studies of Science 37(4): 609–23. McGoey, Linsey. 2016. “Strategic Unknowns: Towards a Sociology of Ignorance.” In An 144 Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance, Routledge, 1–16. Michaels, David. 2008. Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. Oxford University Press. Mitchell, Timothy. 2011. Carbon Democracy : Political Power in the Age of Oil. New York: Verso. Miyazaki, Hirokazu, and Richard Swedberg. 2017. The Economy of Hope. University of Pennsylvania Press. Mol, Annemarie, Ingunn Moser, Jeannette Pols, and others. 2010. “Care: Putting Practice into Theory.” Care in practice: On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms 8: 7–27. Moore, Michele Lee, Karena Shaw, and Heather Castleden. 2018. “‘“We Need More Data!”’ the Politics of Scientific Information for Water Governance in the Context of Hydraulic Fracturing.” Water Alternatives 11(1): 142–62. Müller-Mahn, Detlef, Jonathan Everts, and Christiane Stephan. 2018. “Riskscapes Revisited-Exploring the Relationship between Risk, Space and Practice.” Erdkunde 72(3): 197–214. Murphy, Michelle. 2008. “Chemical Regimes of Living.” Environmental History 13(4): 695–703. Navarro Velásquez, Esteban Leonardo, and others. 2020. “La Democracia Ambiental Frente a La Expansión de La Frontera Petrolera: El Caso Del Piedemonte Llanero.” Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nost, Eric. 2022. “Infrastructuring Governance in Louisiana ’ s Coastal Restoration Plan.” EPE: Nature and Space 5(1): 104–24. Nost, Eric, and Jenny Elaine Goldstein. 2022. “A Political Ecology of Data.” Environment and 145 Planning E: Nature and Space 5(1): 3–17. O’Sullivan, David, Steven M. Manson, Joseph P. Messina, and Thomas W. Crawford. 2006. “Guest Editorial: Space, Place, and Complexity Science.” Environment and Planning A 38(4): 611–17. Olive, Andrea. 2016. “What Is the Fracking Story in Canada?” The Canadian Geographer/ Le Géeographe Canadien 60: 32–45. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M Conway. 2011. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Patel, Raj, and Jason W Moore. 2017. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Univ of California Press. Patterson, Alan, and Craig McLean. 2018. “The Regulation of Risk: The Case of Fracking in the UK and the Netherlands.” Science and Public Policy 45(1): 45–52. Pelling, Mark, Detlef Müller-Mahn, and John McCloskey. 2020. “Disasters, Humanitarianism and Emergencies: A Politics of Uncertainty.” In The Politics of Uncertainty, Routledge, 127–40. Pellizzoni, Luigi. 2011. “The Politics of Facts: Local Environmental Conflicts and Expertise.” Environmental Politics 20(6): 765–85. Pérez Castellón, Ariel, Astrid Puentes Riaño, Haydée Rodr\’\iguez, and Héctor Herrera Santoyo. 2016. “Principio de Precaución: Herramienta Jur{\’\i}dica Ante Los Impactos Del Fracking.” México, Greenprint, Fundación Heinrich Böll México, Centroamérica y El Caribe. Perreault, Tom. 2015. “Performing Participation : Mining, Power, and the Limits of Public 146 Consultation in Bolivia.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 20(3): 433–51. ———. 2018. “Mining, Meaning and Memory in the Andes.” Geographical Journal 184(3): 229–41. Phelan, S.E. 2001. “What Is Complexity Science, Really?” Emergence, A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management 3(1): 120–36. Porcelli, Apollonya Maria. 2022. “Geoforum After the Collapse : Evaluating Undone Science in the Wake of a Global Environmental Crisis.” Geoforum 132(October 2021): 219–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.10.011. Proctor, Robert N., and Londa Schiebinger, eds. 2008a. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Proctor, Robert N, and Londa Schiebinger. 2008b. “Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance.” Quintana, Laura. 2021. Rabia. Afectos, Violencia, Inmunidad. Herder Editorial. Reina, Jenniffer Vargas. 2022. “Coalitions for Land Grabbing in Wartime: State, Paramilitaries and Elites in Colombia.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 49(2): 288–308. Rettberg, Angelika, and Juan Felipe Ortiz-Riomalo. 2016. “Golden Opportunity, or a New Twist on the Resource--Conflict Relationship: Links between the Drug Trade and Illegal Gold Mining in Colombia.” World Development 84: 82–96. Richani, Nazih. 2005. “Multinational Corporations , Rentier Capitalism , and the War System in Colombia.” Latin American Politics and Society 47(3): 113–44. Rinaldi, Parisa Nourani. 2022. “The Age of Transition Postdevelopment and North-South Synergies.” Latin American Perspectives 49(242): 237–56. 147 ———. 2023. “Dealing with Complex and Uncertain Futures : Glimpses from Transdisciplinary Water Research.” Futures 147(January): 103113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103113. Rinaldi, Parisa Nourani, and Cecilia Roa-garc. 2022. “Like Harvesting Tarulla : The Decolonization of Being from a Petrolized Swamp.” Rinaldi, Parisa, María Cecilia Roa-García, and Sandra Brown. 2021. “Producing Energy , Depleting Water : The Energy Sector as a Driver of Seasonal Water Scarcity in an Extractive Frontier of the Upper Orinoco Watershed , Colombia.” Water International 46(5): 723–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2021.1955327. Rivera-Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2012. “Ch’ixinakax Utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization.” South Atlantic Quarterly 111(1): 95–109. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-1472612. Rivera, José Eustasio, and Isa\’\ias Peña Gutiérrez. 1989. José Eustasio Rivera. Procultura. Rivero, Juan. 1883. Historia de Las Misiones de Los Llanos de Casanare y Los Ríos Orinoco y Meta. Silvestre y compañia. Roa-garcía, María Cecilia. 2017. “Geoforum Environmental Democratization and Water Justice in Extractive Frontiers of Colombia.” Geoforum 85(July): 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.07.014. Roa-García, María Cecilia. 2017. “Environmental Democratization and Water Justice in Extractive Frontiers of Colombia.” Geoforum 85(July 2016): 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.07.014. Roa-García, María Cecilia, and Sandra Brown. 2017. “Assessing Equity and Sustainability of Water Allocation in Colombia.” Local Environment 22(9): 1080–1104. 148 Roa-García, María Cecilia, and Diana Milena Murcia-Riaño. 2021. “El Acuerdo de Escazú, La Democracia Ambiental y La Ecologización de Los Derechos Humanos.” Naturaleza y Sociedad. Desafíos medioambientales 1: 43–85. Rodríguez Morales, Sandra Tatiana, and others. 2020. “Del Dicho Al Hecho: Los Retos de La Democracia Ambiental En Contextos de Extractivismo Petrolero En Colombia.” Roth, Camille, and Paul Bourgine. 2005. “Epistemic Communities: Description and Hierarchic Categorization.” Mathematical Population Studies 12(2): 107–30. Saltelli, Andrea, and Silvio Funtowicz. 2017. “What Is Science’s Crisis Really About?” Futures 91(May): 5–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2017.05.010. Sawyer, Suzana. 2015. “Crude Contamination.” In Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, eds. Hannah Appel, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 126–46. Sayre, Nathan F. 2017. The Politics of Scale: A History of Rangeland Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sayre, Nathan F. 2005. “Ecological and Geographical Scale : Parallels and Potential for Integration.” Progress in Human Geography 29(3): 276–90. Scoones, Ian, and Andy Stirling. 2020. “Uncertainty and the Politics of Transformation.” In The Politics of Uncertainty, eds. Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling. London and New York: Routledge. Selfa, Theresa et al. 2015. “Interrogating Social Sustainability in the Biofuels Sector in Latin America: Tensions Between Global Standards and Local Experiences in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.” Environmental Management 56(6): 1315–29. Senanayake, Nari. 2021. “Searching for CKDu: Mystery Kidney Disease, Differentiated (in) 149 Visibility, and Contingent Geographies of Care in Dry Zone Sri Lanka.” Geoforum 123: 173–83. Senanayake, Nari, and Brian King. 2021. “Geoforum Geographies of Uncertainty.” Geoforum 123(July 2020): 129–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.07.016. Serje, Margarita. 2011. El Revés de La Nación: Territorios Salvajes, Fronteras y Tierras de Nadie. Ediciones Uniandes-Universidad de los Andes. Shiva, Vandana. 2008. “From Water Crisis to Water Culture.” Cultural Studies 22(3–4): 498–509. Simon, Gregory L. 2022. “Disingenuous Natures and Post-Truth Politics : Five Knowledge Modalities of Concern in Environmental Governance.” Geoforum 132(December 2021): 162–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.12.006. Skjott Linneberg, Mai, and Steffen Korsgaard. 2019. “Coding Qualitative Data: A Synthesis Guiding the Novice.” Qualitative Research Journal 19(3): 259–70. Sneddon, Christopher. 2015. “Concrete Revolution.” In Concrete Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stirling, Andy. 2018. “Uncertainty.” In Companion to Environmental Studies, Routledge, 120–26. Strambo, Claudia, and Ana Carolina González Espinosa. 2020. “Extraction and Development: Fossil Fuel Production Narratives and Counternarratives in Colombia.” Climate Policy 20(8): 931–48. Sultana, Farhana. 2011. “Suffering for Water, Suffering from Water: Emotional Geographies of Resource Access, Control and Conflict.” Geoforum 42(2): 163–72. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2005. The Black Swan : Why Don’t We Learn That We Don’t Learn ? 150 New York, New York: Random House. Tetlock, Philip E. 1993. “14. Cognitive Structural Analysis of Political Rhetoric: Methodological and Theoretical Issues.” Explorations in Political Psychology: 380–406. Tironi, Manuel, and Javiera Barandiaran. 2014. “Neoliberalism as Political Technology : Expertise , Energy and Democracy in Chile.” In Beyond Imported Magic: Studying Science and Technology in Latin America, eds. E Medina, I Costa Márques, and C Holmes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tironi, Manuel, and Nerea Calvillo. 2016. “Water and Air: Territories, Tactics, and the Elemental Textility of Urban Cosmopolitics.” In Urban Cosmopolitics Agencements, Assemblies, Atmospheres, eds. Anders Blok and Ignacio Farias. Routledge. Tognato, Carlo. 2017. “Colombia: Oil and Civil Society.” Public Brainpower: Civil Society and Natural Resource Management: 91–106. Turner, Chris. 2013. The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper’s Canada. Greystone Books Ltd. Urueña, Rene. 2012. “The Rise of the Constitutional Regulatory State in Colombia: The Case of Water Governance.” Regulation and Governance 6(3): 282–99. Valdivia, Gabriela. 2015. “Oil Frictions and the Subterranean Geopolitics of Energy Regionalisms.” Environment and Planning A 47(7): 1422–39. Vélez-Torres, Irene, and Fabián Méndez. 2021. “Slow Violence in Mining and Crude Oil Extractive Frontiers: The Overlooked Resource Curse in the Colombian Internal Armed Conflict.” Extractive Industries and Society (November): 101017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2021.101017. Vessuri, Hebe M C. 1987. “The Social Study of Science in Latin America.” Social Studies of 151 Science 17(3): 519–54. Walkem, Ardith. 2007. “The Land Is Dry: Indigenous Peoples, Water and Environmental Justice.” (February 2019): 1–13. Watts, Michael. 2001. “Petro-Violence: Community, Extraction, and Political Ecology of a Mythic Commodity.” In Violent Environments, eds. Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 189–212. Watts, Michael, and Anna Zalik. 2020. “Consistently Unreliable: Oil Spill Data and Transparency Discourse.” Extractive Industries and Society 7(3): 790–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.04.009. Wesselink, Anna, and Rob Hoppe. 2011. “If Post-Normal Science Is the Solution, What Is the Problem?: The Politics of Activist Environmental Science.” Science Technology and Human Values 36(3): 389–412. Westerberg, Ida K. et al. 2017. “Perceptual Models of Uncertainty for Socio-Hydrological Systems: A Flood Risk Change Example.” Hydrological Sciences Journal 62(11): 1705–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2017.1356926. Weszkalnys, Gisa. 2016. “A Doubtful Hope : Resource Affect in a Future Oil Economy.” : 127–46. Whatmore, Sarah J. 2009. “Mapping Knowledge Controversies: Science, Democracy and the Redistribution of Expertise.” Progress in Human Geography 33(5): 587–98. Willow, Anna J. 2016. “Troubling Water: Shale Energy and Waterscape Transformation in a North American Extraction Zone.” Anthropologica 58(2): 166–78. Yates, Julian S., Leila M. Harris, and Nicole J. Wilson. 2017. “Multiple Ontologies of Water: Politics, Conflict and Implications for Governance.” Environment and Planning D: Society 152 and Space 35(5): 797–815. Yearley, Steven. 2005. “Cultures of Environmentalism: Empirical Studies in Environmental Sociology .” https://go.exlibris.link/FlrB9Stx. Zeiderman, Austin. 2012. “On Shaky Ground: The Making of Risk in Bogotá.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 44(7): 1570–88. Zeitoun, Mark et al. 2016. “Reductionist and Integrative Research Approaches to Complex Water Security Policy Challenges.” Global Environmental Change 39: 143–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.04.010. Zwarteveen, Margreet. 2015. “Regulating Water, Ordering Society.” In Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Lavkulich, L. M.
Roa García, María Cecilia
Water science and democracy in Colombia's extractive frontiers
Text