The Colombian government has issued a decree that recognizes Indigenous peoples as environmental authorities in their territories.
The decree gives new powers to Indigenous peoples to protect ecosystems, manage and conserve their territories and resources, plan budgets and make decisions about land use.
Indigenous peoples have welcomed the decree, which they told Mongabay is a key step toward historical justice.
The government has received some pushback from peasant farmers who feel ignored and government agencies that argue this could negatively impact environmental management in the country.
Indigenous peoples in Colombia have been granted the authority to protect, manage and conserve biodiversity within their territories according to their knowledge.
On Oct. 15, Colombian President Gustavo Petro issued the decree (1275), which lays out the standards required for Indigenous authorities to issue regulations regarding the protection, preservation, use and management of natural resources in their territories and effective coordination with state authorities. These powers will be exercised according to their self-government structures.
Many Indigenous peoples in Colombia have welcomed the decree, saying it is a key step toward historical justice that “not only benefits Indigenous peoples but the rest of society,” as Darío Mejía Montalvo, an Indigenous leader of the Zenu people of Colombia and former president of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told Mongabay over text messages.
Indigenous authorities have controlled, conserved and protected these territories for millennia, without recognition by decree or law, Angel Aquileo Yagarí Vélez, a leader of the Emberá Chamí peoples from the Cristianía Indigenous reservation in Jardín who also welcomed the decision, told Mongabay via voice messages.
With these new powers, Indigenous peoples will have greater control over the granting of environmental licenses to multinational companies to extract natural resources on their lands, Yagarí said. However, it is unclear how projects that require environmental licenses and are currently the responsibility of the National Authority of Environmental Licenses and the Regional Autonomous Corporations will be managed.
On Oct. 16, the Regional Autonomous Corporations and the Sustainable Development Corporations issued a statement criticizing the decree, which argued that it violates their autonomy and powers. They expressed “their rejection and concern, since these decrees do not contribute to the solution of the regional environmental situation, rather they hinder and generate regional conflicts and affect the management of environmental authorities.”
Nury Martínez, president of the National Agricultural Trade Union Federation in Colombia and member of La Vía Campesina, an international movement that advocates for the rights of peasant farmers, criticized the decree for its failure to consider other groups. She told Mongabay that peasant farmers, or campesinos, have lived in rural areas for millennia and have conserved biodiversity and guaranteed food security but have not been recognized.
“Only the Indigenous peoples of the region were taken into account, and that creates territorial conflicts,” Martínez said. “Indigenous peoples say that the territory is theirs because they are the ancestral ones, but where there are boundaries of peasant reservation zones, we are going to face problems, which have already started.”
The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.
Miguel Chindoy, a leader of the Kamëntsá Indigenous people, told Mongabay that this decree is a first step toward legal pluralism in Colombia, which refers to the coexistence of different regulatory systems in the national territory. Despite being recognized in the Colombian Constitution, it has never been guaranteed, as higher courts have repeatedly overturned or dismissed decisions by Indigenous legal authorities.
“State institutions must adapt so that communities can fully exercise these powers,” Chindoy told Mongabay over voice messages. “Many of them still have not understood the scope of this type of decree, and we believe that this exercise will allow us to create or generate other types of legal instruments in the future.”
The decree was announced just days before the country hosted the latest U.N. biodiversity conference, or COP16, in the city of Cali, where Indigenous leaders and representatives of communities gathered to advocate for the recognition of their rights as part of the solution to the Earth’s biodiversity crisis.
For the Cañamamo Lomaprieta Indigenous community, this decree will allow them to move forward with their Indigenous Life Plan and Environmental Management Plan, which lay out their collective vision for the recovery, protection, preservation and conservation of their territory, Juan Sebastián Arango González, a leader from Cañamamo Lomaprieta, said over voice messages.
But with greater authority comes greater visibility. Colombia is the world’s deadliest country for land and environmental defenders, with 79 murdered in 2023, Global Witness found. It is the highest annual total for any country documented by Global Witness since the NGO began documenting cases in 2012. “The threat is real,” Yagarí said. “Today, talking about the defense of Mother Earth has cost lives.”
In response to the Global Witness report, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development published a statement outlining its strategy to improve the safety of environmental defenders. It said the Ministry of Interior had increased the budget of the Human Rights Directorate by nearly 400% and established the National Guarantees Roundtable and the development of the Comprehensive Public Policy of Guarantees for Human Rights Defenders.
The Ríos Vivos movement in Antioquia, Colombia. The communities affected by the Hidroituango dam mobilize and protest in defense of the climate and against the use of fossil fuels. Colombia has topped the list of deadliest countries for human rights defenders for years. Image by Mauricio Mejia Muñoz/350.org via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
The environment ministry is also working on the implementation of the Escazú Agreement, a regional treaty that aims to protect the environment and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean, which the country ratified Aug. 28.
“With the recent ruling of the Constitutional Court ratifying the constitutionality of the Escazú Agreement in Colombia, the Government will continue to strengthen its tools to decisively confront this situation with actions in the territories and provide guarantees to leaders in their defense of the environment, because nature and its defenders cannot be spoils of war,” the Ministry of the Environment wrote in a press statement.
Given the challenges, “it is time to act in a joint manner,” Arango González said. “It is necessary to continue training our community, to continue learning different methods of measuring, working, exercising authority and control within the territory.”
Citation:
Romana-Rivas, Y. A. (2022). Legal Pluralism, Transitional Justice, and Ethnic Justice Systems: The Story of How Colombia is Building a Transitional Justice System Observant of Legal Pluralism. McGill GLSA Research Series, 2(1), 24. doi: https://doi.org/10.26443/glsars.v2i1.190
Banner image: Indigenous man in Puerto Nariño, Colombia, fishes following the flooding cycles in the Amazon rainforest. Image courtesy of the Global Hub On Indigenous Peoples Food System.
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