Producing nature and making the state: Ordenamiento territorial in the Pacific lowlands of Colombia

In this paper, we explore how ordenamiento territorial, a territorial zoning policy in the 1991 Colombian Constitution remakes nature and helps constitute the state in the “economically backward” but “biodiversity rich” Pacific lowlands region. We draw on Gramscian insights on hegemony and the importance of conjunctures to trace how changes in the new Constitution and global biogeopolitics reconfigure nature and state power through the mandates of sustainable development, economic growth, and the conservation of biological and cultural diversity. Finally, we contribute to the literature on political ecology by showing how the political power of the state, nature, and capital are interwoven materially and symbolically in complex and contradictory ways.