FINDING THE BALANCE: TRANSFORMATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE AND VALUATIONS IN BIODIVERSITY OFFSETS POLICIES IN COLOMBIA

While 'awareness' calls for a greater consideration of biodiversity and a transformation of practices, the question arises for all actors, albeit in very different ways, as to what is this biodiversity that should be protected and how to act appropriately. This thesis examines the links between transformations of knowledge about biodiversity and the valuation of its meaningful properties, by drawing on the study of biodiversity offsets. The observation of the IPBES work during a plenary in 2018 allows first the analysis of the negotiations and perceived implications of global biodiversity knowledge. Then, the transformations caused by biodiversity offsets are studied by focusing on their emergence at a global level and then by taking as a case study the implementation of these policies in Colombia. For this purpose, a ten-month fieldwork has been carried out in the country in 2018-2019, including several months of ethnography within its national environmental authority — the ANLA, in charge of the licensing of projects. Instead of analysing whether offsets can actually fulfil their promises, which consist in compatibilizing conservation and development, this research articulates moral sociology with French pragmatic sociology to take a step back by looking at the multiplicity of contradictory effects that the development of this policy produces, and the struggles of actors to make sense of it and determine a coherent way to orient their inquiries and actions. Through its multi-sited character, this research shows not only the multiple reconfigurations of the notion of biodiversity and its components caused by global assessments, biodiversity offsets and impact evaluations, but also the actualization of environmental ethics in practices through valuations, and their inseparability from a web of valuations of knowledges, institutions, politics, procedures and actors. This work also contributes to understanding scales and scale-making as sites of contestation by showing their key role in the valuation of impacts and more largely in defining and articulating problems and solutions with regard to the biodiversity crisis. This thesis finally demonstrates how, while offsets are considered scientific or technical and based on stabilized conventions, actors constantly questioned the place and space that the ‘political’, that is the possibility of overcoming the hegemonic language of evaluation, may, should, or take in the processes in which facts and valuations are woven.