La Declaración de los derechos del campesinado y la resolución de conflictos en áreas naturales protegidas en Colombia

Abstract

The environmental policies and conservation of natural ecosystems in Colombia had excluded human populations and their economic activities. In these protected areas (PA) lives Afro-descendant and indigenous communities which struggle to remain in those territories where they have built their life and culture. In this context of social conflicts related to protected natural areas, “the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas” represents an opportunity for the management of PAs, guiding inputs in the resolution of conflicts from an intercultural perspective. The investigation collects the background that gave rise to the Declaration, the actors and scenarios of its construction. It raises the problem elements derived from the management of the PAs, the conditions of vulnerability and exclusion of the peasantry and the weaknesses in the international instruments to defend their rights. It makes a justification of the project considering peace construction in the context of the Havana`s Agreement implementation. It is qualitative research, from a historical hermeneutic approach, for the critical analysis of the Declaration and a Case Study of the Protected Area Parque Nacional Natural PNN el Cocuy, in which an environmental conflict involving a peasant community was described. The results of the research make it possible to demonstrate the fields of application of the Declaration as an international legal instrument with a triple function: as a generator of new legal approaches to the peasant rights in Colombia, to specify / culminate public policy processes, especially in PA and, can be declarative of the customary law linked to the peasantry from the recognition of this as a historical subject that is constituted from multiple dimensions. Faced with the management of PAs, their relationship with an ecosystem approach and the contribution to governance from an intercultural perspective, basic for the construction of mechanisms of incidence and development of capacities around conflict resolution in PAs and the rights of the peasantry defence.