Colombia River Stories Datasets Archive, 1994-2020

Hume, Mo and Mount, Nick and Teeuw, Richard and Argyriou, Nasos and Burnside, Neil and Montcoudiol, Nelly and Gillies, Allan (2022). Colombia River Stories Datasets Archive, 1994-2020. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-855298

Colombia is in the process of transitioning from one of the most protracted civil conflicts in the world to peace. However, one of the major societal issues for post-conflict transitions in Colombia is how to ensure the inclusion and participation of vulnerable and marginalised groups in transition processes so that their knowledges, abilities and capacities are represented, and so that they can influence post-conflict development. This raises questions of how innovative community- engaged and participatory processes can achieve greater inclusivity in peace building processes. It also raises the question of how different conflict actors can be encouraged and facilitated to articulate their knowledge and experience of conflict in ways that enable their actions to be explained to one another, and that support a shift from narrow understandings of the causes of conflict based on personal experience to more expansive understandings that are based on collective experiences. In this research, we focus on riverine communities along the Atrato River - the main artery of Choco. These communities have been deeply impacted by armed actors who are engaged in widespread, illegal alluvial gold mining which is a key factor in their forced displacement and the loss of traditional, sustainable livelihoods. Despite a 2017 Colombian Constitutional Court ruling to empower riverine communities with 'bio-cultural rights' that protect their land title and livelihoods, they remain marginalised. They struggle to make their voices heard and to influence and inform peace building processes. This marginalisation has also been experienced by the river itself, whose voice has been silenced through the abandonment of state-sponsored environmental monitoring programmes at the height of the conflict. As a result, the effects of conflict and alluvial mining on the form and function of the river, and the impacts of these on interactions between armed actors, the river, and the communities it sustains are poorly understood. This will only be addressed if marginalised voices of communities and the river are articulated and amplified so that their knowledges, abilities and capacities can be integrated into sustainable peace building processes. Achieving this is the primary aim of this project. Conceptually, our project builds on a key emphasis of peace processes worldwide: the capture and re-telling of testimony so that conflict actors can better appreciate the complexities of the conflict in which they are engaged, and the inter-relationships and feedbacks between their actions, and those of others, which fuel the conflict. Such knowledge is a fundamental precursor to the development of sustainable and feasible strategies for peace. The project is structured and designed to elicit, analyse and co-produce testimonies as an integrated 'river story', sourced from multiple participants and perspectives - including marginalised human actors and the river itself. The project therefore uses an innovative and multi- disciplinary methodology that brings social scientists and natural scientists together - integrating their research methods and techniques to capture human stories through community-level, participatory research and the river's story through field- based scientific monitoring and environmental reconstruction and mapping. The story books that are produced, and the policy briefs that they underpin, will be the vehicles through which policy-makers are bought into dialogue with the marginalised voices of both riverine communities and the river itself, and thorough which they improved understandings of the key actors and drivers of conflict in Choco' and the priorities and strategies for sustainable peace building, will be gained.

Data description (abstract)

The goal of the project is the environmental monitoring of water resources using an innovative and multi-disciplinary methodology that brings social scientists and natural scientists together - integrating their research methods and techniques to capture human stories through community-level, participatory research and the river's story through field-based scientific monitoring and environmental reconstruction and mapping. The social science data of the project includes in-depth life history style interviews with individuals from the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities of the Atrato. The project used purposive sampling, recruiting participants through local contacts and then ‘snowballing’ for additional participants. As part of our citizen science programme, monitoring of the Rio Quito was carried out on a weekly basis by a local community. The monitoring consisted of measurement of in-situ parameters (turbidity, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and temperature) and water sampling of Rio Quito. They also monitored the bacterial contamination of their drinking water. The hydrogeochemical data sets were based on a range of analytical results carried out on water (river and rain) and soil (riverbank and river bottom) samples, predominantly from the Rio Quito and the town of Quibdo. The parameters being acquired were the water temperature, pH, specific electrical conductivity (SEC), total dissolved solids (TDS), oxidation reduction potential (ORP), dissolved oxygen (DO), alkalinity, major anion and cations, water stable isotopes and suite of dissolved and total metals in water. The satellite images archive consists of temporal satellite images between 1994- 2020 that were pre-processed and processed in order to highlight changes that were observed along the river bank due to anthropogenic action. A temporal change detection analysis has been evaluated by highlighting the observed changes through time. Atrato Subcatchment Sediment Load Estimation & analysis of mining impacts on the planform of the Rio Quito quantifies the ways and extent to which alluvial gold mining in the Chocó has impacted the geomorphological form and function of the rivers in which it occurs. It specifically focusses on the assessment of mining impacts on: 1. total river sediment loads; 2. river suspended sediment concentration and turbidity; 3. river channel planform. The results presented contribute to the wider project objective of understanding the ways in which mining-driven changes to river form and function intersect with, and influence, the socio-economic, social-political, and socio-cultural systems that drive alluvial gold mining and conflict in the Chocó.

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