“They Are Taking the Sea from us” - Maritime Extractivism,Dispossession and Resistance in Rural and Ethnic Communities of the Colombian Caribbean

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the impacts of the current Colombian extractivist development model on peasant, Afro-descendant, and Indigenous communities’ territorial seas (maritorium) in the Colombian Caribbean. We reflect on the implications of a gradual penetration of concepts such as the blue economy in national public policy. The impacts of activities such as port infrastructure, oil drilling and mining, tourism and industrial fishing, are briefly analyzed, using examples gathered in different parts of the region where growing dispossession is evident. The article ends with a reflection on the various forms of resistance employed by these communities today to confront the plundering of their living spaces associated with coastlines and the sea.