TY - JOUR
T1 - Anticipating futures through enactments of expertise
T2 - A case study of an environmental controversy in a coal mining region of Colombia
AU - Carmona, Susana
AU - Jaramillo, Pablo
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Universidad de los Andes and Universidad de Antioquia, 2015.
Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the officials in the institutions that kindly gave their time for the interviews that made this article possible. We also thank the blind reviewers whose suggestions improved this article and a special thanks to Dr Gavin Hilson and Dr Gerriet Janssen for providing language help and proof-reading the article. This work was supported by the Universidad de los Andes and Universidad de Antioquia, 2015.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - In a water-scarce, coal-producing region of Colombia, frictions are intensifying over the environmental impact of the diversion of a creek. Through ethnographic observation, this article examines the different positions on what this article refers to as the Bruno Creek Controversy and the enactments of scientific expertise deployed to influence decision making. On the one hand, there are officials from the mining company, who believe the risks associated with the creek diversion are negligible and manageable, potentially offset by interventions implemented under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. On the other hand, a group of activists, equipped with local knowledge and partnered with experts, claims the project would cause unacceptable damage, furthermore arguing that the creek is a part of a sensitive broader ecosystem. At the same time, environmental authorities reveal how their enactment of expertise is bounded to political relations. This article argues that expertise is a performative, ideological, and interactional phenomenon that is authorized by existing power relationships. Controversies such as Bruno Creek, therefore, are highly productive sites for shaping environmental governance, whether through the increasing influence of local communities in decision-making, activist scientists' ability to inform policy, or through a shifting of temporal and geographical scales to better understand the implications of resource extraction.
AB - In a water-scarce, coal-producing region of Colombia, frictions are intensifying over the environmental impact of the diversion of a creek. Through ethnographic observation, this article examines the different positions on what this article refers to as the Bruno Creek Controversy and the enactments of scientific expertise deployed to influence decision making. On the one hand, there are officials from the mining company, who believe the risks associated with the creek diversion are negligible and manageable, potentially offset by interventions implemented under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. On the other hand, a group of activists, equipped with local knowledge and partnered with experts, claims the project would cause unacceptable damage, furthermore arguing that the creek is a part of a sensitive broader ecosystem. At the same time, environmental authorities reveal how their enactment of expertise is bounded to political relations. This article argues that expertise is a performative, ideological, and interactional phenomenon that is authorized by existing power relationships. Controversies such as Bruno Creek, therefore, are highly productive sites for shaping environmental governance, whether through the increasing influence of local communities in decision-making, activist scientists' ability to inform policy, or through a shifting of temporal and geographical scales to better understand the implications of resource extraction.
KW - Coal mining
KW - Ethnic groups
KW - Expertise
KW - Latin America
KW - Local knowledge
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087480102&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.exis.2020.06.009
DO - 10.1016/j.exis.2020.06.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087480102
SN - 2214-790X
VL - 7
SP - 1086
EP - 1095
JO - Extractive Industries and Society
JF - Extractive Industries and Society
IS - 3
ER -