beyondbrics

By Edward Davey of Acción Social

Somewhat unusually, Juan Manuel Santos began his first day as Colombian president last year with the elders of the millenarian indigenous tribes that live on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the snow-capped Andean mountain range that runs down to the country’s Caribbean coast.

That same afternoon, having flown to Bogotá, President Santos told the nation in his inaugural presidential address of the moment of “transcendental significance” he had experienced that morning.

The mamas, or priests, he said, had given him a ceremonial staff and a collar with four stones, representing earth, water, nature “with which we must live in harmony”, and good government. “These prized symbols,” Santos said, “will form an integral part of the Administration, which we begin today”.

Almost a year later, many increasingly question whether Santos’s economic goals can be reconciled with the principles of the mamas’ four-stoned collar. The challenge is particularly acute in a country as biodiverse as Colombia.

On the one hand, “Colombia is sitting on a bed of coal”, as finance minister Juan Carlos Echeverry has said.

On the other, Colombia is home to 10 per cent of the world’s fauna and flora, the world’s highest number of bird species, and a breathtaking diversity of landscapes. As the noted Harvard biologist E O Wilson has put it: “biodiversity is to Colombia what oil is to Saudi Arabia”.

Those who believe environmental protection and economic development are compatible cite three arguments.

The first is Santos’s commitment to reinforcing Colombia’s environmental watchdogs, through the creation of a self-standing ‘ministry of environment and sustainable development’ and a revamping of local environmental authorities.

Second, the government argues that the damage caused by heavy winter rains – which affected over 2.4m people – is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild the country along environmentally-sensible lines, with ecologically-sensitive spatial planning.

And third, the government argues that its five “motors of development” – infrastructure, housing, mining, agriculture and innovation – are key to meeting the poverty reduction targets enshrined in its National Development Plan, as well as paying the financial costs of Santos’s signature piece of legislation, the Land Restitution and Victims Law, which will provide compensation for land and life lost during the past 20 years of conflict.

However, for the indigenous people represented by the mamas, there is a worrying overlap between Colombia’s indigenous territories and those areas earmarked for mining. Many experts fear an increase in local conflicts, as in Peru.

“While the Colombian Constitutional Court identifies 32 indigenous peoples as being at risk of extinction, there are situations in the country where mining and infrastructure projects have undermined their…very existence as a people,” says José Luis Barreiro, head of Oxfam’s territorial rights programme.

Meanwhile, Manuel Rodríguez Becerra, a former environment minister in the 1990s, argues that the “irreparable damage caused to biodiversity and water” by large-scale coal-mining projects such as Alabama-based Drummond’s operations in northern Colombia is “an image which we do not want for the future of the country”.

While applauding Santos’s attempts to combat illegal mining, he maintains that the country “cannot turn a blind eye to the impacts of large-scale projects”.

German Andrade, of the University of the Andes, similarly argues that Colombia is “not ready” for large-scale mining, due to poor institutions and a lack of data about the full environmental impact of extractive industries.

Guillermo Rudas, an advisor to the national planning council, agrees, noting that government spending on environmental institutions has declined over the past ten years to just 0.24 per cent of total expenditure.

Finally, Brigitte Baptiste, director of Colombia’s National Biodiversity Institute, shows there is a “huge overlap” between potential mining blocks and some of the country’s key ecosystems, including national parks, watersheds and forest reserves.

In a country of 114m hectares, some 40m hectares – or over a third of the national territory – have already been identified as potential mining zones. A further 48 million hectares – equivalent to four Englands – have been set aside for hydrocarbons.

Just in the páramos, Colombia’s high mountain wetlands which are crucial for water supplies and are excluded in principle from exploitation, the number of titled hectares rose from 70,000 in 2006 to 122,000 in 2009.

The country, Baptiste argues, needs to define those areas “which cannot be touched and communicate this information clearly to the private sector and government”. Once done, she adds, “we can negotiate proper local and national compensations for each project which is approved”.

Mining companies essentially agree. “It would help us immensely to have a strong Ministry of Environment and to count on clear guidelines as to which areas can and cannot be explored”, says Rafael Herz, who heads South African-based Anglo-Gold Ashanti’s operations in Colombia.

But echoing the government’s position, Herz adds: “Large-scale, responsible mining, with the highest international standards, can and must be an ally of Colombia in this important phase of its development.”

For Bernardo Toro, chair of the Colombian branch of Latin American think tank Avina: “There is an urgent need to construct a national narrative and meeting point in which all the actors can come together in the pursuit of common rules, understanding, trust and agreement.” Avina, which focuses on sustainable development, has established a national round table for the purpose.

What is certain is that the fulfillment of the mamas’ solemn invocation to Santos will depend on the clarity of the rules his government establishes, and on the strength of the environment ministry.

“We need clear rules…applied in a transparent way,” says Hernando José Gómez, director of Colombia’s national planning department.

Edward Davey of Acción Social is lead advisor on the environment in Colombia’s international cooperation directorate, Acción Social. This is the second of a two-part series.

Related reading:
Changing Colombia, part 1: From Tibet to Civet, beyondbrics
A CIVETS index: herding cats?, beyondbrics
Experian: Taking a bite out of the Columbian credit pie, beyondbrics
Colombia and Venezuela: friends again, beyondbrics