The Colombian Caribbean has historically suffered underinvestment and political neglect, especially when it comes to education. This trend is reversing to some extent, as Colombia both becomes more democratic, and focuses on the lucrative prospects of the tourism industry.

“From this Archipelago I invite the Colombian people to direct their gaze towards our maritime spaces and towards the rights of the Caribbean communities settled in a fundamental territory for their development. This Archipelago means peace, unity and sovereignty”, highlighted the head of the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and emphasized that the communities, their practices and rights are inherent to jus cogens as a universal principle and that their protection and guarantee are not the prerogative of the State or any institution, they are a universal mandate: “This government undertakes to defend that beginning,” said Leyva. “The great Caribbean is inserted today as a fundamental part of Colombian foreign policy.” 

Taylor’s resumé says she was born in 1966 on the small English-speaking island of Providencia, and studied marine biology at the Universidad del Valle in Cali before earning a masters degree in marine environmental protection from the University of Wales. She has had a career in the public sector from the local sustainable development agency (Coralina) to the Ministry of The Environment, and most recently serving as part of Colombia’s team litigating its territorial case against Nicaragua before the International Court of Justice.

“I understand that my appointment is not only a recognition of the women of our country in all its diversities and regions, but also of the Raizal community as a whole. I thank President Petro and Foreign Minister Leyva for this vote of confidence to promote, from this vice-ministry, a transforming foreign policy on the different issues of interest to our country. The reintegration strategy with the Caribbean using the Raizal community of the Archipelago as a center is a high priority and I will work on it with great dedication,” said Taylor.

“With the same commitment, recognizing the important advances that our government has made to achieve gender equity and equality, our task is to continue developing the road map for the construction of our feminist foreign policy. This is an institutional policy and a commitment of the Government of Change. We are assisted by the certainty that Total Peace extends beyond our borders and that is why my commitment will be to continue strengthening our multilateral relations, contributing from our experience as a laboratory for peace and sustainable development derived from the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve to the rest of the world.”

The archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia, nominally under Spanish control, began to be settled by British islanders from Bermuda and other islands in the 17^th century, and like the rest of the Caribbean, imported African slaves. In the 18^th century, Spain went to reassert sovereignty over the islands, and in 1786, all loyal English subjects were ordered to leave. Former slaves who accepted Spanish sovereignty were allowed to stay and keep both English and their mostly Protestant religion. To this day, Raizales, as their descendants are known, still speak a Caribbean dialect of English at home and the islands are religiously pluralistic with everything from a large mosque to a Baptist church imported piece by piece from Mississippi in the USA.

Late last year, a group of affected Indigenous communities presented a lawsuit against the government in a superior court in Bogotá, claiming the violation of their constitutional rights, El Espectador reported.

The communities say that the government has, either actively or by omission, permitted illegal gold mining and mercury dumping that has led to a humanitarian crisis affecting some 66 Indigenous communities.

“Although [the mercury contamination] is recognized by the state, it is negligently overlooked,” the Amazon Indigenous Peoples Organization (Organización Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas de la Amazonia Colombiana – OPIAC) stated.

Mercury is frequently used by small-scale gold mining operations to extract gold from ore and to find small pieces of gold mixed in sediments. The chemical is toxic to humans and can have devastating effects on the environment.

This article originally appeared in InsightCrime, and was generously shared with Finance Colombia under the Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Click here for the original.

Reports of mercury contamination within the Caquetá river (above photo), as well as the Apaporis and Cotuhé waterways, have been seen since at least 2014. A study conducted by the national natural park service, the Ministry of the Environment and the Universidad de Cartagena recently identified an unusually high mercury content in 17 species of fish from the Caquetá river.

Another report by government agencies and Corpoamazonia also found that the hair of inhabitants of the Caquetá, Apaporis and Cotuhé river basins exceed the mercury concentration threshold established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

High levels of mercury have also been detected among children younger than two years old, indicating the consumption of breast milk with a high mercury content, according to Semana. An increase in children born with birth defects and illnesses has also been reported along the Caquetá river.  Reported symptoms of mercury poisoning among these populations include increased heart rate, fatigue, weakness and decreased muscle strength.

OPIAC claimed it is less about the government not having the economic resources to confront mercury contamination, but rather that it lacks the will to do so. “The current administration does not have the will to respond to the situation of the Indigenous people, but it does show its interest in talking on international stages about protecting the Amazon and its inhabitants,” said the Indigenous organization.

InSight Crime Analysis

The effects of mercury contamination on Indigenous groups in Colombia reflect a growing concern regarding the environmental devastation of illegal mining and other certain criminal economies, and the challenges governments face in combating it.

In August 2019, the Colombian government re-signed the Minamata Convention, an international agreement to stop the production, importation and exportation of products containing mercury, with the goal of reducing domestic use of mercury by 180 tons per year and being mercury free by 2023. As around 55 percent of the mercury used in Colombia goes to gold mining, fulfilling that goal depends largely on the government’s ability to control gold mining — particularly illegal gold mining.

While most large-scale regulated gold mining operations do not use mercury, it is common among small-scale and illegal operations that lack the capacity, funds and incentive to adopt cleaner and safer alternatives.

Attempts to regulate mining-related mercury contamination in Colombia have been ineffective. In 2014, the Constitutional Court issued a judgment to protect Indigenous lands in the Sierra Nevada in Santa Marta by requiring reviews of mining permits. But the new regulation triggered a surge in illegal, unregulated mining operations. Two years later, in 2016, Indigenous groups in the Sierra Nevada filed a plea to extend the regulations to small-scale miners. To date, the judgment remains pending.

The government’s ability to protect the environment and vulnerable communities from organized criminal activities seems to lie not in environmental regulations, but on their ability to crackdown on criminal operations.

The harmful effects of illegal mining-related mercury contamination are not only a concern in Colombia. Indigenous communities in Brazil and Peru are also denouncing the rising mercury levels caused by gold miners.

In March 2019, authorities in Peru launched an operation to catch illegal gold miners and loggers that had cleared some 10,000 hectares of Amazon forest, leaving behind pools of mercury.

Headline photo of Rio Caqueta credit: Hernia, Wikipedia, Creative Commons

The goal of the initiative is to begin reversing the negative effects that logging and agricultural clear-cutting have had in more than 60 million hectares of the world’s largest jungle. Ongoing deforestation is a “major driver” of pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity loss, said the World Economic Forum in a statement, and the group’s efforts will push to halt those factors while promoting sustainable development.

“We are pleased to have a critical mass of companies and organizations joining these efforts.” – Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombian environmental minister

By 2020, the partnership is hoping to achieve “zero net deforestation” in the Colombian Amazon, and, by 2030, “to have stopped all natural forest loss,” according to the World Economic Forum.

Colombia has joined 14 other governments that have signed on as official Tropical Alliance 2020 partners, including Brazil, the United States, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

More recently, through a new domestic platform of public and private stakeholders, the country has launched the TFA 2020 Colombia Alliance. The first task in Colombia will be to tackle deforestation caused by the palm oil industry, which has come under fire in recent years in Colombia for harming the environment. In time, the efforts will extend to confront damage done by the timber, beef, and dairy sectors.

The alliance’s work will largely follow principles laid out in its “Commodities and Forests Agenda 2020,” which is supported by the partner governments and environmental groups such as World Wide Fund for Nature, Fondo Acción, and the Nature Conservancy. Several private companies operating in the country have also supported the efforts, including leading Colombian retailer Grupo Éxito, consumer goods giant Unilever, dairy firm Alqueria, and agricultural companies Poligrow and Yara International.

According to the World Economic Forum, Éxito was the first Colombian company to join the alliance in 2014. It has since worked to promote reforestation and sustainable agricultural development efforts within the Andean nation.

READ MORE: Exploration Projects in Colombia Face Uncertainty as Another Town Bans Mining

“We are pleased to have a critical mass of companies and organizations joining these efforts,” said Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development (MinAmbiente).

He highlighted recent governmental initiatives, including the “Palm Oil Zero Deforestation Agreement” and “National Forest and Carbon Monitoring System,” that have aligned with the goals of a Tropical Forest Alliance 2020. Such work “represents a key effort in bringing down international commitments to the Colombian context,” said the minister.

With around 1,900 different species of birds (the most of any country in the world), more than 50,000 species of plants, and many other forms of life, Colombia is the second most biodiverse nation after Brazil. In all, the medium-sized country is home to around 10% of the known species of plant and animal life on Earth.

Environmentalism has become increasingly common in the country over the past decade and advocates continue to clash with the private sector. A series of popular referendums have placed a prohibition on mining in various municipalities and more and more advocates are waging campaigns to protect cloud forest, páramo, and coastal ecosystems across Colombia.

Photo: The Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 is looking to stop deforestation in parts of the Amazon, such as this swath of jungle in the department of Vaupés near Mitú. (Credit: Jared Wade)

The latest group of crocodiles released includes 12 females and 8 males, all approximately 1 meter long.  Fully grown, the crocodiles can exceed 5 meters (17 feet) in length. As with the first group released, the crocodiles, known locally as Caimans, carry radio transmitters for tracking and to monitor their wellbeing. The area of the park selected for their release is on the right bank of the Tomo River, in the Colombian department of Vichada.

The area of Tuparro National Park is rich with biodiversity, including jaguars, pumas, otter, tapir, and curassow, as well a wide variety of the crocodile’s main food: fish. The area of the Tomo River where the crocodiles were released is near the Marandúa Air Force Base, which will help guarantee the security of the habitat, along with facilitating access to the area for researchers monitoring the crocodiles’ progress.

This release is part of the Proyecto Vida Silvestre, that has worked since 2014 for the conservation of 10 endangered flora and fauna species in Colombia’s eastern plains and middle Magdalena (River) region. The program is led by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) Colombia and financed by Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state-controlled petroleum producer, along with the help of the Mario Santo Domingo Foundation. Vida Silvestre works with ten organizations, one for each species.

In the Orinoco Crocodile’s case, the Fundación Palmarito has been working to save this species since 2011, with cooperation from the government of the Casanare department, Corporinoquia, the Colombian national park system, and Grupo GHL, a large Colombian hotel operator.

The Colombian environment ministry, Minambiente, has been trying to save the Orinoco Crocodiles since 1998. Intense commercial hunting of the crocodiles for their hides during the middle of the 20^th century demolished populations to a critical level, with the reptiles facing extinction. The Orinoco Crocodile lives exclusively in the lower reaches of the Orinoco river watershed, in Colombia and Venezuela. It reproduces once a year.

Photo credit: Pato Salcedo; Courtesy of Ecopetrol