El discurso ambientalista frente al discurso burocrático: humedal complejo cenagoso Bajo Sinú-Colombia

Objective: To analyze discursive practices on sustainable development (SD), understood as differentiated institutional and community genres, from the perspective of Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), using the Cenagoso del Bajo Sinú Wetland Complex as a case study. Methodology: A qualitative approach was employed based on the three-dimensional CDA model, combining a systematic literature review with empirical analysis of a discursive corpus. Databases such as Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and SciELO were consulted, prioritizing studies on sustainability, environmental policies, and wetland governance. The corpus included environmental regulations, public policy documents, and semi-structured interviews with rural farmers. The analysis was organized along the textual, practice, and sociocultural dimensions of the model, allowing the identification of power relations and tensions surrounding the discursive production of sustainability. Results: The analysis revealed that discourse on SD operates as a hegemonic bureaucratic device that, once institutionalized, legitimizes territorial appropriation in the Wetland Complex and renders community knowledge invisible. Within N. Fairclough’s framework, discursive asymmetries were identified that conceal processes of dispossession and environmental degradation beneath the rhetoric of sustainability. Conclusions: SD discourse imposes a bureaucratic logic that weakens its real implementation. This narrative obscures community knowledge.