Connecting across difference in environmental governance: Beyond rights,recognition,and participation

Theorizing difference and its importance in environmental governance

The concept of “difference” is used disparately and deployed in seemingly opposing ways in scholarly literature. One body of scholarship treats difference as a social construct that creates categories and hierarchies to justify and advance the superiority of powerful actors. Others treat difference as real and as lived through distinct histories, ontologies, and values, and call for a more emancipatory and celebratory theorization of difference (Klenk, 2018).

Theories framing difference as socially constructed reveal how difference is often used to categorize humans into hierarchies and deployed as means of oppression and dispossession (Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Simpson, 2014; Wynter, 2003). These hierarchies of difference were historically used to justify colonialism and contemporarily manifest as part of the ongoing white supremacist and Western imperialist project in settler colonial nations and beyond (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Melamed, 2015; Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Socially constructed differences, then, are used to create binaries (van Houtum and van Naerssen, 2002), reify otherness (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Hacking, 1986; Omi and Winant, 2009), dehumanize and subjugate (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Simpson, 2014), and further entrench uneven power dynamics (Blaser, 2013). These hierarchies tend to have negative material consequences (van Houtum and van Naerssen, 2002) and serve as a form of cultural erasure and essentialization (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Blaser, 2013; Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, 2014). This body of literature further explores how such constructs are deployed to naturalize hierarchies of knowledge and authority, and in so doing, to justify intervention by those occupying privileged positions in these hierarchies (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, 2014).

In the environmental governance arena, difference is similarly used to justify intervention in the name of “conservation” and “development” and establishes hierarchies of expertise and governing modalities that position Western expertise as superior (DePuy et al., 2021; Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Simpson, 2014). These strategies of categorizing cultural “others” obscure political differences, serving to legitimize (neo)colonial power structures while undermining (an)other group's rights and ability to govern (Blaser, 2013). They are also used to justify environmental non-governance, wherein degraded landscapes are considered expendable (Pulido, 2000).

Although rejecting supremacist conceptions of difference, Black, Asian, and other scholars of color have warned against ignoring difference altogether (Chen, 2007; Lorde, 2007; Shiva, 1993). For these scholars, it is not difference that is the problem but rather hierarchies that have been superimposed to structure and justify uneven power relations, whereby any human not a mirror image of the white Western bourgeois male is likened to the subhuman (Weheliye, 2014; Wynter, 2003). As Audre Lorde explained in a 1980 speech, fear of difference is foundational to hierarchical systems:

“As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals” (Lorde, 2007).

An intersectional feminist lens demonstrates that to ignore difference would be to fail to see the complex and interlocking axes of gender, race, history, culture, ability, class, and situated knowledges which shape the way we experience and understand the world (Combahee River Collective, 1983; Haraway, 1988; Lorde, 2007).

Writings on ontology also center on difference as both real and central to more emancipatory politics. We focus here on Indigenous ontologies, which affirm diverse relationships to the world, in contrast to Western and masculinist “one-world” conceptions that present a singular, objective and all-encompassing reality (Burow et al., 2018; Law, 2015). Indigenous ontologies of land and place tend to be defined not in terms of ownership and rights, but of duty, reciprocity, care, and kinship (Burow et al., 2018; Kimmerer, 2013). These forms of relationality are oriented around “alternative citizenships to the state that are structured in the present space of intra-community recognition, affection, and care, outside of the logics of colonial and imperial rule” (Deloria, 2001, cited by Simpson, 2014: 109). Coulthard and Simpson (2016) put forward the concept of “grounded normativity” to describe the ethical frameworks of Indigenous place-based practices, based on reciprocal relationships that teach us how to be in the world in a “profoundly nonauthoritarian, nondominating, nonexploitative manner” (254).

In order to create a more just future, difference must be reconceptualized beyond its hierarchical and often colonial deployments (Blaser, 2013; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Simpson, 2014). Moves toward the normalization of pluralism are crucial, where more emancipatory ways of conceiving of difference are centered (Kimmerer 2013; Klenk, 2018). Difference does not form from unlocatable histories and cultures but from lived, embodied experiences, through lines of becoming that have stories to tell and learn from, enabling the “flourishing of life along diverse lines” (Klenk, 2018: 320). Thinking about difference through a lens of reciprocal responsibilities dismantles hierarchies and makes possible just futures that embrace and work across difference without erasure or homogenizing outcomes (Coulthard, 2010; Kimmerer, 2013; Klenk, 2018; McLerran, 2019; Sepulveda, 2018). As Kimmerer states in reference to the three sisters’ reciprocal relationship of corn, beans, and squash, “[t]he gifts of each are more fully expressed when they are nurtured together” (Kimmerer, 2013: 140).

Review of current environmental governance paradigms to connect across difference

In this section, we discuss dominant approaches for connecting across difference in present-day environmental governance, centering on three prominent concepts and fields of practice: rights, recognition, and participation. For each, we review the history of the concept, purported benefits of its deployment, and where it shows up across environmental governance arenas.

Why these paradigms for connecting across difference need to be challenged

Despite claims that rights, recognition, and participation facilitate meaningful engagement with marginalized peoples, there is a large and growing literature highlighting the shortcomings of—and harms committed through—these same practices. Here, we review the critiques of each of these concepts and conclude with a reflection on the underlying structures that help account for these failures that reinforce current power structures.

Recent attempts to move beyond colonial environmental governance

More recently, nation states and nongovernmental and conservation organizations have attempted to redress these histories in biodiversity governance through the extension of newer manifestations of rights, recognition, and participation. Although PAs are historically situated within a strictly enforced human-nature binary, the definition of PAs has expanded to mean an area designated “to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values” (IUCN, n.d.). The mechanisms within PA management are often dubbed “rights-based approaches” as they emphasize local and Indigenous participation in decision-making (Büscher and Fletcher, 2020; Myers et al., 2018), equitable sharing of economic benefits (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2007), and a limited array of procedural rights to reconcile land loss (Merino Acuña, 2015; Merino, 2018; Paavola, 2006). At times, these so-called “rights” are extended or withheld depending on the recognition of Indigeneity.

Yet in Sarawak, while the Malaysian state attempts to connect across difference through recognition of Native Customary Rights (NCR), a formal system for recognizing Indigenous land tenure (Nelson et al., 2016), these rights do not apply to state land designated as a PA. When land is transformed into a PA in Sarawak, “hunting rights, along with customary practices and self-determination, are erased and restricted in order to save one charismatic species [the orangutan]” (Rubis and Theriault, 2020: 973). Although the Batang Ai National Park encompasses the territories of seven Iban longhouses, these families only reside there because they returned to the area following the government's efforts to resettle them elsewhere (Horowitz, 1998). Further, Indigenous people's NCR is typically recognized in ways that confer only limited access for subsistence land use within PAs (e.g. foraging) as well as benefits from development projects such as ecotourism, community-based conservation, and the promotion of alternative resource use (Hitchner, 2010). The park works alongside Indigenous Iban communities to foster a comanagement strategy for sustainable resource use and self-enforcement of wildlife protection. The participatory practices in this state-owned enclosure are said to foster a “sense of ownership” (Horowitz, 1998: 393), and conservation education was said to help prevent orangutan poaching (Rubis and Theriault, 2020). This suggests that communities are being enrolled in supporting exogenous conservation objectives, and efforts have been made to align local interests with these objectives by finding economic alternatives to activities deemed to threaten the park's wildlife (Horowitz, 1998). Conflict stemming from the government's transferal of management from the Forestry Department of Sarawak (FDS) to the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC), the private sector arm of the FDS, illustrates how private profits have been prioritized to the detriment of local employment (Gumal, 2007).

Meanwhile, communally reserved forests (CRFs) that Indigenous Iban communities deliberately preserve within their shifting cultivation areas, and which have tree species diversity equivalent to primary forest, are ignored within conservation actions and at risk of conversion under the pressure of economic incentives provided by the state and local governments and current market trends (Takeuchi et al., 2017). One village even converted part of their CRF to palm oil as a means to retain their land, for fear that they would lose their land to the government or plantation companies if left “unused”—a trend that is apparently widespread (Takeuchi et al., 2017). Forms of Indigenous relationality to nonhuman beings extend beyond the economic to the sacred and include prohibitions on the felling of trees within sacred forests; the harvesting of certain tree or bird species with recognized spiritual, medicinal, or ecological values; the disturbance of known breeding grounds; and prohibitions on certain species of animal known as tua thought to be their deceased ancestors who continue to provide assistance to their living descendants (Horowitz, 1998). Although tua tend to vary by family, the orangutan was found to be a tua for all families in Batang Ai's seven longhouses—challenging the very foundation and relevance of fortress conservation in this landscape and the nature/culture dichotomy within Western ontology.

Similarly, in trying to move away from colonial environmental practices, the settler nations of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States (notorious for initially not ratifying the UNDRIP) began the “Indigenous Guardians Programs” (IGP) in the 21st century as means to safeguard Indigenous peoples’ natural and cultural resources and further Indigenous-led governance (EcoPlan International, 2016; Reed et al., 2020; Thompson et al., 2019). These programs are predicated upon the recognition of the unique relationship and crucial knowledge Indigenous communities have with the nonhuman world and are said to be “used increasingly as Indigenous-led efforts to reassert jurisdiction over their ancestral territories” (Reed et al., 2020: 2), despite competing claims to land and natural resources. Canada, for instance, began the Indigenous Guardians Pilot Project in 2017 as a four-year funding opportunity that recognizes Indigenous people's customary rights to land and enhances participation in conservation through various financial support mechanisms like “good-paying” jobs for Indigenous experts, which is said to support families and local economies (Pearlman, 2021). For example, the Ni Hat’ni Dene peoples are full-time environmental and wildlife Guardians of the Thaidene Nene protected area, ensuring appropriate harvest of caribou and “document[ing] visitor activity, cultural features, and environmental/wildlife values” (Nature United, 2021). This program is said to help “assert Lutsel K’e Dene First Nations Indigenous rights and authority in Thaidene Nene” wherein the Guardians maintain traditional lifestyles (Nature United, 2021). Although Indigenous Guardian Programs are widespread and often experienced positively by tribal nations (EcoPlan International, 2016; Reed et al., 2020), in many cases, the settler colonial nation maintains territorial authority, controls much of the governance process, and creates a “colonial entanglement” that requires further investigation around the ability of IGP to promote Indigenous self-determination (Dennison, 2012; Reed et al., 2020: 186).

Indigenous agency “beyond” coloniality

There are several documented instances of Indigenous people either expanding spaces of sovereignty within existing paradigms or refusing state authority outright, illustrating both the limitations of dominant paradigms for connecting across difference and Indigenous agency. Often, rights, recognition, and participation are understood as mechanisms for achieving “institutional ‘visibility’ as a form of empowerment for socio-politically ‘invisible’ populations” (Rubis and Theriault, 2020: 965). However, some communities engage with biodiversity conservation beyond these standard practices in ways that center the interests of the Indigenous peoples against the interests of the state and foreign conservation interests. Iban people involved in the conservation of Batang Ai National Park seek empowerment by co-opting the conservation narratives that often conflict with their lifeways and experiences. The selective cultural narrative the Iban present is one that is reflective of what they know conservationists and tourists want to hear. They tell romanticized stories evoking the importance of orangutans to their culture, not the stories reflecting the reality of the contentious relationships between Iban and orangutans. For example, Iban does not reveal the situations in which it is acceptable to cull an orangutan, such as when one “is eating your hard-won crops or moving to attack you” (Rubis and Theriault, 2020: 972). Strategically, concealing aspects of their culture to outsiders are interpreted as an effort to maintain some form of territorial control and prevent more restrictive forms of state surveillance.

In Victoria, Canada, the Indigenous Lekwungen take a radical approach to environmental governance by refusing non-Indigenous authority over the use and conservation of their ancestral homelands—including what is now called Beacon Hill Park. The Lekwungen managed these lands for millennia, and their ways of tending are in opposition to the local conservationist group Friends of Beacon Hill Park, causing “tensions and conflicts with both local conservationists, who consider their actions to be ecologically disruptive, and the parks officials, who claim sole jurisdiction” (Simpson and Bagelman, 2018: 565). Friends of Beacon Hill Park eradicate non-native plants in order to preserve native species, while the Lekwungen maintain a more reciprocal relationship with the land, one that includes both native and non-native species (Simpson and Bagelman, 2018). The Lekwungen-led group does not seek state permission to maintain the biodiversity of their territory, with respect to native or non-native flora species (Simpson and Bagelman, 2018); rather, they “recognize this land as the rightful territory” of their own people and tend to it in their traditional ways (Simpson and Bagelman, 2018: 565), emphasizing place-based reciprocity, supporting biocultural diversity and restoration of human relationships with the nonhuman in a form of “grounded normativity” (Coulthard and Simpson, 2016).

Evaluation of case studies using the conceptual framework

Biodiversity conservation practices do exist that recognize difference through the acknowledgement of unique relationships to—and knowledge of—place and territorial rights. However, these practices fail to fully value and respect difference without imposing hierarchies. Customary “rights” are often limited to the procedural realm or are compensatory in nature, restricting Indigenous agency and reproducing inequality in resource access, ownership, and authority. In this way, state sovereignty over territory is also reaffirmed through the continued de jure dispossession of Indigenous territory, through the maintenance of state authority over territory and environmental governance, and by tightly curtailing Indigenous self-determination over territory and ways of life. Although the protected area in Sarawak is considered a procedurally just approach due to Indigenous participation in conservation decisions, there is a continual centering of state sovereignty in decision-making regarding land use, and Iban residents must employ creative ways to maintain territorial control. As evidenced by the privatization of PA management to the private arm of the SFD and the resulting prioritization of private profits over local employment benefits, the interests of private elites are also advanced as capitalist relations are expanded into PA governance.

Although Indigenous groups in Canada are asserting their sovereignty through acts of refusal, nongovernmental conservation groups and the park service alike continue to undermine these efforts through discursive tactics and claims of exclusive jurisdiction. In so doing, they center the interests of the state by advancing settler hegemony over territory and lives. In terms of ontology and relationality, the current paradigm of conservation continues to operate through the fundamental ontological assumption that nature is separate from people, people are harmful to nature, or people preside over nature as stewards or guardians. In the Malaysian case, this is seen in the continued assumption that the Iban presence is inherently antithetical to orangutan conservation, in spite of widespread cultural norms prohibiting their hunting and ontologies which erode the human/nonhuman binary. Protected areas and wider economic policies aiming to open up frontiers (and their implications for cultural and economic change) are contributing to the erosion of relations that might otherwise advance sustainability and conservation of endangered species. Similarly, Lekwungen practices of place-based reciprocity with native and non-native species are suggestive of forms of relationality that move beyond hierarchical relations between humans and other species or ecological processes. Such relations do not just go unrecognized by state and nongovernmental conservation actors but continue to be undermined through both discursive and political-administrative means. Thus, efforts to connect across difference in biodiversity conservation remain entrenched in coloniality, as they fail to address the repatriation of land to Indigenous people and continue to advance state interests and sovereignty at the expense of Indigenous self-determination and place-based relations of reciprocity and care.

Recent attempts to move beyond colonial environmental governance

In an attempt to connect across both difference and competing territorial interests during extractive development projects, governments have instituted participatory mechanisms largely focused on recognition of property rights and sovereignty. These are mechanisms through which national polities and multilateral institutions claim to facilitate a more equitable process of natural resource extraction (Merino, 2018; Perreault, 2015; Szablowski, 2010). These include international guidelines like the ILO 169 Convention, the UNDRIP, and the standards set by authoritative bodies like the World Bank; participatory processes such as consultations that take place in the context of Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIA); and variable forms of consultation with Indigenous peoples. These mechanisms purport to make a more “legitimate and effective” environmental governance that “empowers marginalized social groups” (Leifsen et al., 2017: 1043).

Several South American countries are viewed as models for local engagement and empowerment in the context of extractive industries. For example, in response to a bloody confrontation between Indigenous peoples and the state in the context of extractive activities on Indigenous lands, Peru implemented the first generalized prior consultation law in Latin America—the Law of the Right to Prior Consultation of Indigenous or Original Peoples, Recognized in Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (Law No. 29785) (German, 2022; Monterroso et al., 2017). The country recognizes the land rights of “native communities,” and through participatory processes such as ESIAs, claims to redress these violent histories of discrimination and create pathways for participation in the extractive development process (Merino, 2015; 2018). The law establishes a legal duty to consult Indigenous communities prior to “taking any administrative or legislative action that directly affects their collective rights, physical existence, cultural identity, quality of life or development” (German, 2022) as well as financial compensation for extractive use. Since the passage of the law, the Peruvian government consults with various groups (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) affected by oil extraction in recent years, with some state departments advocating for stronger consultation frameworks (Gúzman-Gallegos, 2017).

In 2015, the Peruvian state consulted with Indigenous groups in regard to a “bidding process” for an oil field, a process that ultimately resulted in state-funded treatment facilities for contaminated waterways impacted by oil spills and “compensation for use of indigenous lands” (Gúzman-Gallegos, 2017: 1114). Here, the prior consultation law required the Peruvian state to consult affected Indigenous communities in the oil bidding process; however, various exogenous constraints (finances, communication, representation) limited the scope and reach of consultation, narrowing the reception of who was consulted and whose interests were represented (Gúzman-Gallegos, 2017). Although the consultation process resulted in both compensation and a much-needed state response to oil spills and water contamination in Indigenous territories, the process was largely viewed as exclusionary, bureaucratic, and overly political. Such a convoluted process was made worse by competing Indigenous communities and territories, some of whose leadership favored compensatory negotiations over meaningful participation and recognition. Ultimately, “…the communities who became important and who are benefitting from the slow and partial implementation of the agreements are those located near installations which are currently producing oil. In so doing, Peru's prevailing extractive model is reinforced” (Gúzman-Gallegos, 2017: 1123).

Bolivia is also heralded in some contexts as “revolutionary” in its progressive stance toward Indigenous rights and recognition (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012). The country is rich in hydrocarbon resources making it a target for fossil fuel extraction; indeed, this extraction is intimately tied to the country's socialized economies (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012: 104). Bolivia, like Peru, implemented new practices of consultation, modeled after tenets in the ILO Convention 169 and UNDRIP, in order to increase Indigenous participation in extractive development projects. In the state's attempt to build a new oil field in Indigenous and non-Indigenous territory (the Lliquimini oil block), the Bolivian government consulted with both groups in the region, although only consulting with Indigenous representatives ad hoc (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012). Nevertheless, the consultation process created an opportunity for the Indigenous groups to voice their concerns and put forth a list of demands with regard to oil exploration in their territory—a list that included compensation requirements, participation in the exploration process, and “co-monitoring of the seismic work” (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012: 111). Yet, despite these accomplishments, critics point to insufficient Indigenous recognition and participation, leading to conflict and compensation schemes that “weaken[ed] local and Indigenous resistance” (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012: 111). The Bolivian government failed to properly consult with multiple affected Indigenous communities prior to the hydrocarbon project, instead opting to consult non-Indigenous, “parliamentary majority” communities in an effort to expedite—and garner favor for—the multinational investment project (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012). Further, consultation processes were not carried out equally among affected Indigenous parties, with only some represented in the process, resulting in a weakened Indigenous representation (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012).

Indigenous agency “beyond” coloniality

Despite the proceeding failures, there are instances of affected local communities and Indigenous peoples who exploit these failings to move “beyond” colonial environmental governance practices. In their treatment of capitalism, resistant communities attempt to dismantle extractive capitalist power from institutions that enforce colonial relationalities between people and place. Although we recognize Indigenous resistance to extractive use is nonhomogeneous, as there are cases of affected communities whose grievance lies in unfair compensation in extractivism (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012), we present two examples from Indigenous scholars who document resistance to fossil-fuel extractivism as an analytic for understanding the “beyond” in environmental governance.

Nick Estes details Indigenous resistance to fossil-fuel extractivism in his account of the 2016 protests against the North American Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) (Estes, 2020). In solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux nation, whose reservation and water sources were directly threatened by the planned pipeline construction, the nine-month uprising drew thousands of Water Protectors from around the world, led by Indigenous peoples and supported by an array of social movements and organizations. Drawing on a long history of Indigenous resistance to colonial “infrastructures of dispossession” (Estes, 2020) on Turtle Island, these protests offered a look at a world beyond extractivism, one that works against capitalist economic systems. Although the Water Protectors experienced extreme militarized violence from the settler state throughout the protests, these were also sites of “anti-colonial place-making,” where “an emerging Indigenous future was actively under construction” (Estes, 2020). As Estes explains:

“Access to food, education, health care, legal services, a strong sense of community and community security were guaranteed to all. Most reservation communities in the U.S. don't have access to these services, and neither do most poor communities. Yet, in the absence of empire with Indigenous governing structures in the camps, people came together to help each other, to care for one another as relatives” (Estes, 2020).

Coulthard (2014) reflects on the Indigenous movement “Idle No More,” which provides another framework for moving beyond rights, recognition, and participation in environmental governance that decenters the settler capitalist state. This movement emerged as a response to a controversial suite of federal legislation that many Indigenous communities argued threatened their rights and livelihoods by enabling easier access to First Nation reserve lands for “economic development and settlement,” limiting the scope of projects that require environmental assessments, and reducing environmental protections for waterways (Coulthard, 2014: 160).

Grassroots resistance led to a blockade by the Aamjiwnaag First Nation, culminating in a meeting between the state and the Assembly of Nations. Yet this meeting prompted debate among members about the utility of meetings with the federal government, over the question of whether these were spaces to be heard, or spaces that seek to neutralize resistance. Days of oppositional action and resistance followed, and while the legislation passed thus ending hunger strikes among prominent First Nations chiefs, a “Declaration of Commitment” was issued, committing the state to improving Indigenous education, inquiries into murdered and missing Indigenous women, and a stronger commitment to UNDRIP (Coulthard, 2014).

These accounts demonstrate a move “beyond” contemporary environmental governance practices—moves that treat sovereignty and difference in ways antithetical to colonial relationships with the natural world. The above examples center place-making across differing identities and geographies, centering anti-capitalist resurgence, scaling up of localized direct actions, and economic alternatives that “seek to impede or block the flow of resources currently being transported to international markets from oil and gas fields, refineries….mining operations, and hydroelectric facilities located on the dispossessed lands of Indigenous nations” (Coulthard, 2014: 170). An abolitionist and anti-capitalist economy demonstrate anti-hierarchical understandings of land, property, and governance, thus redirecting our knowledge to Indigenous cosmologies of “equal access…to food and shelter; and equal access to pleasure and enjoyment of life” (Armstrong et al., 2020: 165). Abolishing imperial environmental governance requires following the lead of Black, brown, and Indigenous movements that decenter settler ontologies, positioning settlers as “guests” and in this way, “offer[ing] a decolonial possibility based on culture and tradition in which settler relations to land can be reformed and settler colonialism can eventually be abolished” (Sepulveda, 2018: 39).

Evaluation of case studies using the conceptual framework

The Peruvian and Bolivian governments used participatory mechanisms like prior consultation for extractive uses on Indigenous lands. This mechanism purported to create pathways for participation through bottom-up community engagement (Leifsen et al., 2017; Merino, 2018; Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012). Yet, the consultation process in Peru exacerbated, if not created, inter- and intra-community competition and hierarchies. We argue the creation of hierarchies is part and parcel of the colonial treatment of difference—a process that reifies socially constructed identities and uses these to reproduce inequality across axes of difference at diverse scales. In their treatment of difference, the Bolivian state similarly exploited socially constructed differences and identities among affected Indigenous communities. The state used these to reproduce inequitable representation in the consultation process, prioritizing a non-Indigenous majority and failing to grant equal representation in consultation practices. This is seen through the use of resolutions from certain minority community leaders as proof of consent in violation of the requirement for decisions to be made through representative organizations (Pellegrini and Arismendi, 2012).

In both instances, the consultation process claimed a desire to foster recognition of Indigenous territorial rights and center Indigenous sovereignty; however, the process resulted in centering of the pecuniary needs of the state, one rooted in extractive economies (Merino, 2018) and state sovereignty over territory and resources. Further, the Peruvian case demonstrates that although the state has a legal duty to consult Indigenous communities prior to extractive use, the law continues to advance state interests. Indigenous communities fought for decades for state recognition and remediation of contaminated waterways from oil projects; yet, their needs were not addressed until the state was legally required to consult with them for extractive purposes (Gúzman-Gallegos, 2017). Here, we argue that an advancement of state interests is aligned with the treatment of capitalism. Specifically, the consultation efforts prior to the extraction on Indigenous land ultimately facilitated the expropriation of natural resources for capitalist profit in the hands of national and global political and economic entities.

Finally, adjudicating state or Indigenous sovereignty over territory is ontologically rooted in colonial understandings of relationality with land and so-called “resources.” These cases speak to the way consultation processes can exacerbate socially constructed differences, center state (economic) sovereignty, and advance state interests. Ultimately, colonialism is at the root of new environmental governance mechanisms to connect across difference, mechanisms rooted in a colonial ontology that views humans as separate from—and dominant over—the natural world (McCreary and Milligan, 2021; Merino, 2018; Niederberger, 2020).