Landscape change and its environmental justice implications for Indigenous and local communities in Tubará, Colombia

Abstract The Tubará municipality, a forested landscape historically occupied by Indigenous communities, is located at the frontier of imminent and significant regional landscape transformations driven by urbanization, infrastructure development, and cattle farming. These landscape processes have impacted nature’s capacity to deliver survival resources for local people and the adaptive capacity of human–nature systems to deal with land use and climate change. Eighteen semi-structured interviews explored perceptions of local landscape change in Tubará and its associated potential environmental justice problems. Three themes emerged after using the content analysis method: (1) cascading effects of forest cover loss; (2) degradation of traditional food systems; and (3) exclusion from participation and a lack of recognition underlie distributive injustices. Narrative accounts also unveiled various forms of community resistance to these land structural and functional changes. Our study makes a valuable contribution to socio-ecological systems research by advancing the inquiry of environmental justice matters and shedding light on the role of knowledge and power in determining the environmental and social outcomes of human–nature interactions.