What Is at Stake? The Ontological Dimension of Environmental Conflicts (2024)

Introduction
Environmental conflicts are commonly understood as human struggles over the ownership, accessing, and distribution of natural resources (Martinez-Alier 2002). “Nature” appears therein often as a predefined given, where conflicts take place and “natural resources” are managed and taken as mere goods to be exploited, developed, or protected by humans. This view suppresses social systems where rivers, mountains, and animals are conceived as living beings with agency (Blaser and de la Cadena 2018; de la Cadena 2015; Collard et al. 2018; Escobar 2015; Wilson and Inkster 2018). This is particularly present in struggles over the extraction of natural resources, large-scale development projects, and conservation areas overlapping with indigenous peoples’ territories or the lands of peasant communities. In contrast, an ontological perspective on environmental conflicts suggests that neither the objects nor subjects in these conflicts are predetermined facts or entities; rather, defining them is a crucial dimension of this very struggle itself. The aim of this special issue is hence to make “ontological politics” visible and to investigate the oftentimes overlooked ontological dimensions of environmental conflict by focusing on the contested question of: What is at stake? The contributions show that the conflict dynamics in the context of resource extraction, conservation projects, and devel- opment initiatives cannot be fully explained or understood without unraveling dissent about knowledge production, power asymmetries, and the political economy at play in managing nature. These are deeper struggles ultimately rooted in different ways of under- standing what both nature and human-nature relations are according to the respective parties involved.
Special Issue Introduction: Flemmer, Riccarda; Gresz, Verena, and Jonas Hein (2024): ‘What Is at Stake? The Ontological Dimension of Environmental Conflicts.‘ Society & Natural Resources 37 (5): 608–622. (Open Access)

Contesting State Monologues. Indigenous Grassroots’ Struggles with Prior Consultation Norms in the Peruvian Amazon (2023)

Flemmer, Riccarda (2023): ‘Contesting State Monologues. Indigenous Grassroots’ Struggles with Prior Consultation Norms in the Peruvian Amazon.‘ International Studies Quarterly 67 (3). (Open Access)
Abstract
Prior consultation (PC) has been an internationally enshrined norm for indigenous peoples’ rights since the 1980s. Indigenous peoples have called for PC for decades, but when governments finally begin implementation, a paradox results: previous advocates increasingly turn away from consultation processes. I argue that only with the perspective that norms are and should be contested “on the ground,” we are able to understand this contradiction. Therefore, the article presents a new conceptual and methodological interpretive framework for studying indigenous grassroots contestation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon (2013–2016), I hone in on three layers of contestation—explicit contestation, attitudes and perceptions, and political implications—and demonstrate that (1) non-contestation confirms state monologues and is an alarming sign for silenced voices, not for norm support; (2) contested consultations reproduce asymmetries within indigenous groups replicating negotiations about extractive industry projects; and (3) opposition to consultation may be the most powerful tool for indigenous peoples to change narrow state interpretations and make use of veto rights. Scaling up these insights, the structure of PC accommodates two irreconcilable understandings: PC is either interpreted as an end in itself or as a means of indigenous self-determination.

A political ecology perspective on resource extraction and human security in Kenya, Bolivia and Peru (2020)

Abstract
This paper analyzes how the governance of non-renewable natural resources affects different dimensions of human security in local sites of extraction. We show how the analysis of human security can be embedded in a multi-scalar political ecology perspective to combine the strong suits of both approaches: a detailed, multidimensional assessment of impacts on the local scale with a critical transformative view on the interplay of power asymmetries mediating the distribution of costs and benefits across actors and scales. More specifically, we look at four of the most prominent ‘glocal’ governance instruments in extractive industries: participatory environmental licensing processes, indigenous prior consultation and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and legal formalization initiatives. In theory, these governance initiatives should ensure local benefits and contribute to human security in three dimensions: (1) environmental security, (2) livelihood security and (3) safety and political security. However, our comparative analysis of ‘glocal’ governance institutions in oil and gas extraction in Bolivia and Kenya as well as in artisanal and smallscale gold mining (ASGM) in Peru shows that these institutions are rather ineffective in protecting the human security of local communities.
Schilling, Janpeter, Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Riccarda Flemmer, and Rebecca Froese. 2021. “A Political Ecology Perspective on Resource Extraction and Human Security in Kenya, Bolivia and Peru.” The Extractive Industries and Society 8 (4): 1–12.  (Open Access)

Mobilising Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Below: A Typology of Indigenous Peoples' Agency (2020)

Schilling-Vacaflor, Almut and Riccarda Flemmer (2020): ‘Mobilising Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Below: A Typology of Indigenous Peoples’ Agency.‘ International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 27: 291–313. (Link)
Abstract
Based on rich empirical data from Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru – the three Latin American countries where the implementation of prior consultation processes is most advanced – we present a typology of indigenous peoples’ agency surrounding prior consultation processes and the principle of free, prior and informed consent (fpic). The typology distinguishes between indigenous actors (1) mobilising for a strong legal interpretation of fpic, (2) mobilising for meaningful and influential fpic processes, (3) mobilising against prior consultation processes, and (4) blockading prior consultation processes for discussing broader grievances. We identify the most prominent indigenous strategies related to those four types, based on emblematic cases. Finally, we critically discuss the inherent shortcomings of the consultation approach as a model for indigenous participation in public decision-making and discuss the broader implications of our findings with regard to indigenous rights and natural resource governance.

Stuck in the Middle: Indigenous Interpreters and the Politics of Vernacularizing Prior Consultations in Peru (2018)

Abstract
This article argues that, although promoted as such, consultation practices are not intercultural dialogues, but struggles over the meaning of rights. Often overlooked, not only in politics, but also in the literature, these struggles put intermediaries—here, indigenous interpreters—in the position of carrying out much more than a semantic linguistic translation. Applying Sally Engle Merry's idea of vernacularization as the translation of rights to this new ambit, the political pressure on vernacularizers becomes clear: they are political actors in positions of brokerage with regard to shaping the meaning of rights. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon (2013–2014), I show that indigenous interpreters are “stuck in the middle” of political tensions and must simultaneously serve as brokers of knowledge, culture, and power as they bear the weight of an (inter)national tug-of-war between state and indigenous interpretations of prior consultation.
Flemmer, Riccarda (2018): ‘Stuck in the Middle. Indigenous Interpreters and the Politics of Vernacularizing Prior Consultations in Peru’; Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 23 (3): 521–540. doi: 10.1111/jlca.12365. (Link)

Consenting the Hydrocarbon Frontiers: De-Politicizing State Strategies and Local Respones in Peru (2018)

Schilling-Vacaflor, Almut; Flemmer, Riccarda and Anna Hujber (2018): ‘Contesting the Hydrocarbon Frontiers: De-Politicizing State Strategies and Local Responses in Peru (2007–2012)’; World Development, 108: 74–85. (Open Access)
Abstract
Based on primary sources, this article analyzes 150 participatory events related to planned hydrocarbon projects in Peru (2007–2012). Therein, it sheds light on state depoliticizing practices and local populations’ contestations thereof. We argue that participation in the extraction sector has not enabled effective participation and has instead been used to pave the way for expanding the extractive frontiers. We find that the state entity responsible for carrying out the events applied three main depoliticizing practices: (a) the organization of exclusionary participatory processes, (b) the provision of pro-extraction information, and (c) the identification of critical actors and discourses in order to formulate recommendations on how to weaken resistance against the planned activities. This study also reveals that local populations often contested the participatory events and identifies subnational patterns of local contestation. We find that higher degrees of contestation were fueled by previous negative experiences with extraction activities and the existence of local economic alternatives. To assess the histories and results of contestation over specific extractive activities over time, the study draws on monthly conflict reports produced by the Peruvian ombudsperson (2007–2016). We find that local contestation was quite influential, leading to increased social investment programs in the affected areas, the withdrawal of several extraction corporations, and Peru’s adoption of the Law on Prior Consultation (2011). However, the long-term prospects of the transformations provoked by repoliticizing processes need to be evaluated in the years to come.

Other Peer Reviewed Publications

  • Flemmer, Riccarda and Almut Schilling-Vacaflor (2016): ‘Unfulfilled promises of the consultation approach: the limitations to effective indigenous participation in Bolivia’s and Peru’s extractive industries’; Third World Quarterly 37 (1): 172-188. (Link)

  • Schilling-Vacaflor, Almut and Riccarda Flemmer (2015): ‘Conflict Transformation through Prior Consultation? Lessons from Peru’; Journal of Latin American Studies 47 (4): 811-839. (Link)

  • Flemmer, Riccarda (2015): ‘Lecciones de los primeros procesos de la consulta previa en el sector de hidrocarburos en Perú’; Iberoamericana, 15 (58): 166-171. (Open Access).