Jesus Alejandro Garcia

Jesus Alejandro (Alejo) Garcia is a PhD candidate in environmental science, policy, and management at UC Berkeley. He is an environmental studies scholar trained in ethnographic and participatory methods, with expertise in water-based environmental conflicts, climate change mitigation and adaptation policy, and social movements. Alejo’s work sits at the intersection of political ecology, riverine territorialities, and environmental justice. His current research examines the histories, dynamics, and struggles to make and remake the riverine landscape of the Upper Magdalena River (UMR) in Colombia, as well as its political implications for peasant and fisherfolk communities. Alejo asks how the green capital’s attempts to stabilize, disrupt, or rework land-water interfaces shape and are shaped by peasants’ and fisherfolk’s longstanding struggles against dispossession. Native to the UMR region, Alejo uses community-engaged ethnographic methods to understand and contribute to the longstanding struggles for agrarian, environmental, and climate justice in the face of mounting pressure from hydropower, conservation, and REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries) projects in the UMR. Alejo is a graduate student affiliate with the Center for Ethnographic Research at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, UC Berkeley.