Colombia boasts a small fraction of the Amazon rainforest (6%), but it makes up 40% of the South American country. In an effort to protect its biodiversity, particularly in the face of climate change, Colombia has announced that they will be banning new mining and oil projects in their portion of the Amazon rainforest, and plan to turn the area into a reserve for renewable natural resources.
The announcement was made during the 30th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30). This initiative will protect 186,487 square miles of Amazon biome. This sweeping move makes Colombia the first to safeguard the entirety of the rainforest within their national borders out of the nine countries that share the Amazon rainforest, which includes Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.
“Colombia has decided to take the first step,” said Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development. “We have been the first country in the Amazon basin to declare the entirety of Colombia’s portion of the Amazon biome a renewable natural resource reserve.” With this, 43 oil projects and 286 mining project applications have been paused indefinitely.
Vélez also called for her fellow leaders in neighboring countries to create the Alianza Amazónica por la Vida or Amazon Alliance for Life. “Caring for the Amazon is not an economic sacrifice, it is an ethical investment in the future of the region and of humanity,” she added. “There is only one rainforest, rivers have no borders, and neither does life.”
However, the initiative still has to overcome the red tape to go into effect. The Department of the National Authority for Prior Consultation of the Ministry of the Interior said that any measures of this kind must first be subjected to a consultation with local groups. After all, it could affect the lives of 566 Indigenous communities who call this area home. Still, the effort is a first step to safeguard the natural resources and endangered animals who live in the Amazon rainforest.
Sources: Colombia prohíbe minería y extracción de hidrocarburos en toda su Amazonía; Colombia prohíbe explotación minera y de hidrocarburos en la Amazonía, pero la medida queda en suspenso por falta de consulta previa
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