Boundary-making in Conservation: The Configuration of Environmental Ontologies in the Andean Páramos

Abstract

Unique high Andean ecosystems in South America as the “páramos” have been the object of conservation plans in the last decade. In Colombia, this spurred heated discussions when their conservation was promoted through the cartographic demarcation of their boundaries: what counts as “páramo” and what kind of activities should be allowed there have been highly contested topics. As part of a multisited ethnography that studies the case of páramos conservation with biologists, geographers, and campesinos in the Sumapaz region of Colombia, I argue that the analysis of boundaries is a crucial matter in the unfolding of conservation. By analyzing how boundaries are configured, coordinated, and contested in the conservation of páramos in Colombia, I advance an ontological approach to boundary-making as practices embedded in the concrete transformation of environmental worlds through the involvement of multiple agents such as humans, plants, and technologies.