Ponente
Descripción
The biodiverse triangle of Santurban and Berlin, in northern Colombia, has been in the center of an environmental conflict since the 90s. Gold mining corporations, national and local governments and its inhabitants are clashing over economic development and the protection of the main source of water for more than 3 million people. Colombian legal framework provides individuals and communities with a set of tools to safeguard individual and communal rights. However, small communities face two large difficulties, on one side they usually lack the resources to set up legal teams; and on the other hand, the final decision by higher courts can be influenced by the public opinion. In this context it is paramount for both sides of the argument to control the narrative of public opinion. To understand this phenomenon, we scraped data out of twitter and built a network model for the ambientalist struggle of Santurbán over the last 10 years. The period of analysis coincides with, first, the existence of a civic organization called Comité para la defensa del agua y del Páramo de Santurbán, formed by social leaders, peasants and inhabitants of the region; and, second, the extent of the use of social networks as Twitter. The dynamics of our network model provides information on how the movement has shifted the narrative and strengthened the ties with other external actors forming an environmental coalition, and forced gold mining companies to drop the request of exploiting gold licenses.
