Peace producing science. Biological expeditions in the replacement of war

Abstract

After the signature of the peace treaty with the FARC guerrilla [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], the Colombian government ended a 60-year conflict with one of the oldest guerrilla movements in the world. Alongside the signature of the peace treaty began a national project to conduct biological inventories of species through a series of expeditions called Colombia Bio. The idea behind these expeditions is to explore and register biodiversity in places formerly occupied by the FARC. I accompanied five of these expeditions as an anthropologist. My interest has been to understand the relationship between science and peace as they are specifically enacted in the post-conflict moment. More specifically, I aim to explore how concepts of biodiversity and transitional justice become intertwined in this particular scenario, bringing new understandings of peace and on the relation with nature in a post-conflict scenario.