Environmental Protection On Behalf Of The New Colombian Generations
In recent decades, the protection of the environment in a country as diverse as Colombia has drawn the attention of civil society and NGO´s who have come together to fight against practices that negatively affect the ecosystem.
The good news is that in recent years lawyers and judges have set themselves the task of defending environmental resources with the available legal instruments, exposing the very serious conditions and the multiple threats that the delicate natural balance of the Colombian ecosystem faces.
Colombia has important legal tools to defend the fundamental rights of citizens. This is the case of the Accion de Tutela, one of the most popular and effective instruments for the protection of constitutional rights and represents one of the most invoked articles of the 1991 Constitution. From its appearance, it became a commonly used measure, in the landmark of the new Constitution and, at the same time, as the mechanism that made the Political charter widely known by getting it closer to all Colombians. The Accion de Tutela was instituted as an action, not as a recourse, and can be used before any judge of the Republic when there is a violation of a fundamental right. It is a simple mechanism, without major technical considerations, to the point that it can be invoked orally and without a lawyer.
For these reasons and by making use of this legal instrument, in 2017 a group of 25 children, adolescents, and youngsters living in five departments of the Colombian Amazon decided to present an “Accion de Tutela” in second instance before the Supreme Court of Justice arguing the violation of the fundamental rights of life, health, food, clean water and healthy environment based on the principle of precaution and intergenerational equity due the in diligence of the national and local authorities by not taking the necessary measures to stop the main causes of deforestation such as the excessive expansion of illicit crops and illegal mining, failing to prevent and mitigate the growing fires, the irrational expansion of the agricultural frontier; lack of prevention of the consequences inherent to the opening of roads, the granting of titles of territorial property and mining concessions and the expansion of large-scale agroindustry and livestock farming.
In the past years, different rulings of the Supreme Court of Justice sets a historical precedent in the framework of Colombian environmental law and judicial actions against climate change as this represent a fundamental step in the direction that other courts around the world have already been giving, which have ordered governments to comply and increase their commitments against global warming.
Likewise, it is important to mention how new generations are requesting agreements to be included in the decision-making process in this matter by using legal and legitimate instruments to claim the power to work for the environment that they will inherit. The 25 plaintiff children have been the inspiration for more initiatives oriented to the protection of the environment setting a voice of not resign themselves to the world that belongs to them. In this case, in addition to gathering the scientific consensus on the importance of forests in mitigating climate change, the advances by declaring the Amazon as a subject of rights allow real protection of this ecosystem which is essential nor only for Colombians but for the humanity as a whole.
Learn more about SDG # 15: Life on Land HERE
