Skip to content
Column

Did the Amazon’s lifesaver get punctured?

The Santos adminsitration’s good intentions in the Amazon have been undone by its own actions. As told by La Silla Vacía, in August 2012 ex-Minster of the Environment Frank Pearl, before leaving office, threw a lifesaver for the Amazon. Pearl released Resolution 1518 of 2012, which establishes that no one can drill any part of the Amazon classified as Forest Reserve (according to Law 2 of 1959) for mining activities, until the Ministry of the Environment zoned the territory. In other words, until it defined which areas of the Amazon territory classified as Forest Reserve– the large majority (see Map 1)– should be protected and which can house economic projects, among them mining.

Read More
Column

Schizophrenic Environmentalism

Seeing President Santos in one screen promising “historic” actions against climate change at the UN, en in another his Environmental Minister promising to dismantle environmental controls through the creation of “express” licenses, I remembered García Márquez’s speech about Colombian contradictions when he presented the Sabios Mission report.

Read More
Column

A New Development Plan?

While the Government has revisited the mining development plan because it has not performed as well as it originally hoped, a new development plan seems to have come to the fore: “fracking” or unconventional gas extraction. We still have time to stop it.

Read More
Powered by swapps
Scroll To Top