Colombia has 59 National Parks that represent 11.27% of the continental land. These protected areas are managed by National Parks of Colombia (NPOC), which has the main responsibility of not only to conserve the natural resources of the protected areas, but also to protect the traditional cultures that live inside or surrounding the protected areas, as well as to contribute to their sustainable development. NPOC coordinates with other governmental institutions from local, regional, and national level that have a relation in their territories with protected areas. In this way, NPOC promotes development, and environmental conservation policies, articulated with national, regional, and municipal development plans. However, managing protected areas and its surrounding areas often generates conflicts among institutions since interests and objectives of each institution might be contradictory.
The research focused on the National Natural Park Amacayacu (NNPA) located in the south Colombian amazon, between the jurisdictions of Leticia and Puerto-Nariño. This national park is interesting, since it has overlaps with four indigenous territories from different ethnicities, which have formulated or are in process to formulate their own management plans for their territories. The NNPA administration has developed a Co-Management (CM) strategy for including communities as active subjects of the conservation; strategy that recognizes indigenous traditional use and management of their territories.
Different studies have analyzed this CM process using qualitative analysis, however, none of this research has used a quantitative approach that identifies the structural properties of the CM of the NNPA. This research uses a social network analysis for describing the current network governance structures of the NNPA and establishes three networks that show the sharing and collaboration processes between institutions and indigenous communities. In addition, this research uses quantitative analysis in each identified network for identifying underlying properties of the networks structures and the institutions related to it.
To get the relational data necessary for the social network analysis, 27 interviews were done to institutions related to the NNPA, among which six were to indigenous communities having overlaps or surrounding the NNPA. Three networks related to knowledge, resources and cooperation were identified and analyzed, using the software Pajek. The analysis was carried out in two different levels related to CM. First, at network level to understand overall characteristics of the network, and second, at agent level to understand positions of institutions in the network. In addition, an Exponential Random Graph model was done for understanding the creation of connections among institutions and indigenous communities.
The networks exposed the institutional complexity related to the CM of the NNPA. Each network revealed its own particularities and provided valuable information for identifying structural and agent characteristics. In addition, the analysis revealed that the CM of the NNPA has strengths in the actual collaboration process between indigenous communities with overlaps and the management of the NNPA. In contrast, the analysis also showed some lacks in the governance of the NNPA surrounding areas, since indigenous communities that do not have overlaps with the NNPA are not engaging with resources or knowledge about conservation.
