Title: The Governance of Protected Areas and Overlapping Extractive Interests in Latin America
Author/Institution: Julia Gorricho – PhD Thesis, University of Freiburg
Publication Year: 2018
Environmental Protection Meets Extractive Expansion
Julia Gorricho’s doctoral research offers one of the most comprehensive examinations of the growing friction between conservation mandates and extractive development in Latin America. Through in-depth fieldwork in Colombia and regional comparative analysis across the Andes–Amazon corridor, Gorricho shows how mining, oil, and infrastructure concessions increasingly overlap with national parks, Indigenous territories, and other protected landscapes. Rather than depicting this as a simple regulatory failure, the thesis reveals a deeper governance tension: states seeking economic competitiveness through resource extraction while simultaneously committing biodiversity protection and climate obligations. The result is a complex territorial mosaic where “double commitments” clash on the ground.
Institutions, Power, and the Limits of Protection
Methodologically, the study combines institutional ethnography, spatial analysis, and environmental governance theory to understand why protected areas often fail to shield ecosystems from encroachment. Gorricho documents how fragmented institutions, weak inter-agency coordination, legal loopholes, and political interference make it possible for extractive interests to enter zones theoretically off-limits. Local communities, conservation rangers, and Indigenous authorities often lack the resources or legal leverage to enforce boundaries, even as companies present exploration as low-impact or “compatible” with conservation. The thesis highlights how conflicts emerge not only from ecological impacts but from the unequal distribution of authority—who decides, who protects, who benefits.
Lessons for Governing the Energy Transition
The study concludes that Latin America’s push for energy-transition minerals and new infrastructure will intensify governance pressures unless countries resolve the contradictions embedded in their territorial management systems. Gorricho argues that effective protection requires more than maps and decrees—it requires coherent legal frameworks, empowered environmental agencies, free-prior-and-informed consent mechanisms, and robust cross-sector coordination. As global demand for copper, nickel, oil, and clean- energy infrastructure expands, these governance gaps become increasingly consequential. The thesis provides an essential warning: unless protection and extraction rules are harmonized with transparent, participatory processes, Latin America risks reproducing a development model where conservation exists on paper but is eroded in practice.