Territorial planning for peace and statebuilding in the Alto Cauca region of Colombia

Following the signing of the 2016 peace agreement and the demobilization of the FARC-EP, the Colombian state is trying to re-establish its authority in conflict-affected areas through developing new instruments for territorial planning and decentralization. This process of entails a reconfiguration of the governance structures built during the conflict - which involved a mix of local actors including the FARC-EP, pro-government paramilitaries and local communities - and the construction of a new 'social pact' between citizens and the state. In order to facilitate this process, the national government is formulating a series of planning tools to be implemented at the local level, the most important ones being Development Programmes with a Regional Focus (PDET) and the National Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Cultivations (PNIS).

This project will explore the formulation and implementation of territorial planning via the PDET and PNIS, which are both crucial to the success of the Colombian peace process. The location selected for the project is the Alto Cauca region, one of the areas identified by the Colombian government as particularly affected by the armed conflict. Research will be conducted in three rural municipalities in the region, all of which have been targeted as priority areas for the government-led process of territorial planning: Buenos Aires, Miranda, and Corinto. The state has long had only a weak presence in these areas resulting in the ethnically diverse local communities reacting to this absence by developing their own planning instruments and, in some cases, their own governance institutions. The process of territorial planning has thus become a process of negotiation between the state and local communities, and between the local communities, which sometimes have diverging interests. Through engaging the active participation of long marginalized actors, including landless peasants, Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples, this project will bring the voices of these communities into the territorial peacebuilding process in an attempt to ensure that it is truly participatory and long lasting.

The project will primarily use ethnographic and participatory approaches to map the socio-economic actors, production systems, rural transformations and territorial power relations in the three areas under study, and explore the instruments, institutions, and government strategies being used to build peace. An important element of the project is to strengthen the communities' capacities for negotiating with the state and contribute to the [re]construction of the bonds of trust between communities and local government institutions. This will be achieved through an innovative participatory strategy including a series of community exchange workshops and a capacity building training programme. In addition, producing participatory videos with community members will allow for the articulation of alternative, non-academic and non-written narratives on experiences of territorial planning in relation to the peace process. These videos will widen the potential impact of the project, in particular in other communities and municipalities with a similar history and facing similar challenges related to implementing the Peace Agreements. All partners will participate in all aspects of the research from design, to execution and dissemination.

Through multidisciplinary collaboration between human geographers, political scientists, education and design specialists based both in Colombia and the UK, this project will facilitate the generation of innovative understandings of the process of territorial peacebuilding in Colombia and lead to important new knowledge on how territorial rights and access, social relationships, and state power interact in the transition from war to peace.

The project will directly benefit local communities, grassroots organizations and local government actors in the three municipalities of Colombia where we are intervening (Miranda, Corinto and Buenos Aires). In partnership with local organizations, we will hold a series of community exchange workshops and a specially tailored training programme. The workshops will aim at restoring confidence among different communities. The training programme will build the capacity of local populations to participate in territorial planning. The programme will be offered to around 20-30 people from each of the three study areas, including representatives from indigenous, Afro-descendent and peasant communities, as well as former FARC-EP combatants and representatives of locally based institutions. Participation in the project will help to tackle local conflicts among different communities. Through participation in the community workshops and the training programme, and with the support of the researchers in dealing with the authorities, communities will build their capacity to negotiate a participatory and sustainable territorial planning process.

The Colombian government and local communities in other regions of Colombia will indirectly benefit from this project. The participatory process in the Alto Cauca region will inform the PDET and PNIS planning process at the national level and in other regions. They will be able to learn from the pilot protocol for participatory territorial planning and participatory videos issues which national and regional stakeholders will be involved in disseminating.

Given its focus on post-conflict territorial peacebuilding, the potential impact of the proposal goes beyond the Colombian case. Tackling conflict and state fragility and helping to rebuild states and foster positive state-society relationships in the aftermath of conflict, especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, are a key priority for British aid, as underscored by the 2015 UK ODA strategy and by the creation of the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF). Rebuilding local authority and productive state-society relations in areas that have been territorially contested and have experienced a prolonged occupation from armed groups is likely to be a major challenge in the next five years for British ODA recipients. Officials from DFIF and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, particularly those involved in the management of the CSSF, will be invited to the final dissemination meeting and will receive all outputs and publications arising from the project.

The project will also benefit London based think tanks such as Chatham House and the International Crisis Groups, which analyse peace processes in Colombia and other countries. These organizations have little capacity to collect evidence from rural local areas, which our project can offer. NGOs with a more practical orientation, such as International Alert and the Peaceful Change initiative (PCi) can take inspiration from our participatory methodology and implement a similar strategy in support of other decentralization and territorial planning processes in post-conflict countries. All of these stakeholders will be involved in the dissemination of the findings of the project.