Search

This article presents a critical study regarding the existing articulation challenges in the policy of substitution of crops for illicit use and the policy of conservation and sustainable use in ethnic territories in Colombia from a casuistic perspective referring to the orders issued by the judges of restitution of lands where orders have been issued regarding the restoration of ecosystems and biocultural rights. The axis of analysis of this article is guided by the following question: What are the conditions for the strategies of substitution of crops for illicit use in ethnic territories to be effectively articulated with the conservation and forest restoration tools? One of the findings and inputs for the discussion refers to the low integration and coordination of actions available to solve the problems of environmental scope associated with the territorial affectations produced by events related to the armed conflict in Colombia. By way of conclusion, the conditions that must be modified to solve the legal problems of restoration of rights and administrative disarticulation in terms of environmental policy and the policy of reparation to victims are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green New Deal has been defined as "an unprecedented mobilization of resources to achieve 100% renewable energy to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions" (NEF, 2019, p.4). Currently there is consensus about its purpose, however, little has been theorized about its establishment in Colombia. In this sense, our objective is to identify the institutional changes required to establish a Green New Deal in Colombia, using a Delphi methodology, appropriate for interviewing experts. As a result of this research, it was found that, of the twelve useful public policies for their establishment identified in the theoretical framework, seven comply with the guidelines for assessing environmental policy instruments proposed by Labandeira et al. (2007) and therefore are considered necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to explore in the literature, the definitions, descriptions and associations, related to the constructs: non-ecological behavior and non-sustainable consumption, in the last 20 years. Based on a narrative review, studies published between the years 2002-2022, in Spanish and English, were identified. 60 research studies were selected and examined through the creation of emerging categories that allow understanding and conceptualizing each construct. It is identified that they are multicausal and interdisciplinary constructs, which have been acquiring greater interest in scientific research due to their essential role and direct impact on the current ecological crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the transformation of administration unilateral decisions, based on the incidence of participation principle in the formation process of administrative decisions, in order to contribute to the understanding of an adaptable administrative act theory in the colombian legal system. Methodological recourse, is based on the dogmatic revision of Administrative Law, and the contributions of the special part of Administrative Law as a way for the reconstruction to general theory. thus, the study of the special administrative procedure for the granting of environmental licenses in Colombia is proposed as a 'reference sector', that allows according to the findings, the analysis of the administrative act elements and the dogmatic consequences regarding its validity, beyond the vice for irregular issuance due to affectation of its formal element. It generates the possibility of proposing the configuration of other vices related to the competency, objective or finalistic elements, when the administrative acts are issued without the standards of participation from environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This article explains how the Sierra de La Macarena Biological Reserve, which marked the beginning of the new state responsibility of caring for nature in Colombia, was conceived and then created by law in 1948. Additionally, this paper reconstructs the first decade of its existence. Methodology: This research is based on archival documents, historic publications and secondary sources, which allow us to understand the ideas about nature that guided such history and the concrete processes that characterized it. Originality: This article studies the process of State formation from a territorial and environmental perspective, bringing together political and environmental history, and pointing at new avenues of inquiry in both fields. Conclusions: The beginnings of a new state responsibility of caring for nature depended on previous developments of the state itself, particularly on the efforts to deal with tropical diseases. Therefore, an area of state activity devoted to insure the well-being of the population served as the basis for the inceptive development of another. This issue was, however, not entirely national. Global scientific networks, including medical doctors, entomologists and geologists, together with an innovative technology, aviation, also played a crucial role. The research station that was conceived along with the reserve to support long-term research was partly impaired by La Violencia of the 1950s. Instead, scientists carried out several expeditions that contributed to turn La Macarena into national patrimony, at least in the minds of some Colombians. Given that aspirations well exceeded the achievements, the definitive emergence of this area of state performance had to wait a few years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se presentan reseñas de varios artículos acerca del tema del cambio climático, incluyendo “Interfaz ciencia-políticas públicas en Chile: Una mirada a la investigación en cambio climático” de G.R. Borquéz en la “Revista Colombiana de Sociología”; “Colombia y la transición energética” de G. Corredor en “Ciencia Política”; y “Relación entre Democracia, Desarrollo Sustentable y Cambio Climático” de A.J. Gabaldon en “Tekhné.”

This article discusses the government policies related to waterways and water use in Colombia. The author comments on the role of the government in developing environmental protection policy and examines the environmental responsibility of institutions. The impact of everyday water usage on resource management is also explored.

Within the agenda of some national governments, emphasis has been placed on the importance of combating climate change and protecting natural resources, which is why they have developed state policies that allow greater control over these resources and ensure their preservation and watch out. These policies have considered it viable that such protection can be encouraged through the economic investment of private actors (banks, NGO, environmental entities, among others). However, by inserting the conservation of natural resources in cost-benefit logic, it generates that dynamics of hoarding are developed where the people with greater purchasing power decide how and in what form these resources are used. By thinking of the local population as a predator that only draws resources from its surroundings, the historical relationship of this with nature, where sensory and material ele-ments have been created and strengthened, is unknown. The municipality of Guasca is not alien to these policies of environmental conservation and although they may be designed to protect nature, tend to ignore the people who for many years have lived with this (peasants and local people). It is also contradictory that those who develop these policies often pretend to give simultaneous uses to nature so they are opposed. In this way we can observe places in Guasca that are projected (by territorial entities, environmental corporations and private entities) for the conservation of water sources, fauna and flora simultaneously with mining- energy extractive projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia has increasingly been specializing in the extraction of mineral and energy resources such as gold, coal, oil and ferronickel. These activities, in the context of state weakness, have engendered conflžicts of different dimensions. This paper proposes an indicator of conflžict related to mineral exploitation that classifies five dimensions of conžflict: social, economic, cultural, political and environmental. The aggregate indicator shows that murders, displacement of Afrodescendent populations, žflooding, pollution, fires, infant mortality, coca crops and sexual offenses are highly and positively correlated with the number of conflžicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an empirical study that systematized environmental judicial opinions handed down by Colombia's highest administrative Court --Consejo de Estado-- over a 17-year period (1998-2015). Thanks to a research grant, the authors and a team of coders systematized, using state-of-the art content analysis methodologies, more than 250 opinions handed down by Colombia's highest administrative Court. The results presented in this paper show the most important trends of collective environmental litigation in Colombia: types of plaintiffs and defendants; type of environmental resources involved in the case; plaintiffs' success rates; most litigious regions and cities; overall effects of economic incentives on the type of litigation, among several other subjects. This paper concludes that collective environmental litigation has been instrumental to protect environmental resources in Colombia, one the most biodiverse countries in the world. Finally, the paper concludes that the elimination in 2011 of the economic incentive in favor of litigants did not favor public interest litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From critical and postcolonial theories, and under the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (ACD), this research presents a representation regime analysis (RR) of the environmental discourse in Colombia. The central argument of this article advocates the idea that the RR associated with the figure of protected areas and natural parks are strongly rooted in a colonizing conservationist logic of the wild nature, typical of the United States, which has its origin in eurocentric and anthropocentric structures, in relation with nature; and that evolves over time towards a discourse of the sustainable development, by which the use and control of nature is legitimized by means of transnational or empire capitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the recurring environmental conflict associated with the products derived from logging. It takes as reference the confrontations for the monopoly of the cinchonas in western Santander and southern Bolivar, specifically from the perspective of the struggle between the federal and state political elites that took sides in the conflict for extraction starred by foreign executives allied to each of these sides during a time of transition between political regimes. This irregular war from 1878-1882 prevented each opponent to have full control of empty lands and the compliance of their contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern society has been saturated by countless environmental conflicts that cause a flagrant violation of human rights. This article focuses on Interinstitutional Environmental Agendas as an appropriate instrument for the resolution of such conflicts through the construction of agreements between the stakeholders involved. Based on theoretical considerations and analysis of the implementation of an interinstitutional environmental agenda in an area of paramo located in the township of Soacha (Cundinamarca), the purpose is to provide methodological and conceptual elements and propose steps that should be considered for the implementation and execution of this instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflective article considers the design of environmental policies in Colombia, which has focused on the use of natural resources as pool of materials and energy to generate economic growth. In this sense, it becomes clear that collective concern for environmental supply management as cornerstone for sustainable development established in the political constitution, has failed mainly by the reagent and coercive approach to policies and regulations coupled with little promotion for the transformation of national consumer life style, this has generated a rebound effect increasing use and consumption of natural resources (especially non-renewable) limiting energy efficiency; for example, this can be seen in the national mining and energy sector. Whereas there is a global concern for sustainability, it is necessary that the design of national environmental policies away from the economic and technological optimism of the current economic model and certainly incorporate in their political the strategies that balance the relationships between supply and demand of environmental services that support national development, while encouraging the responsible consumption in the Colombian population, in addition to include the community initiatives on regulation and social inclusion in the management of environmental goods and services to generate strong sustainability processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2002, the Colombian Ministry of the Environment elaborated the National Strategic Plan for Green Markets to consolidate the production of environmental goods and services and take advantage of what the country's biodiversity has to offer. The PENMV was not implemented accurately in the province of Amazonas, due to the inexistence of a model to define how the province, the institutions involved in the topic and the citizen participation should be articulated. When a review of the governmental plans implemented at different points in time in the Amazon province is undertaken, no informationation can be found; thus evidencing the inexistence of that articulation. What it is presented are the main initiatives in the sustainable management of biodiversity developed by some local actors under actions implemented by national institutions such as the SINCHI Institute and Corpoamazonia that are supported in the framework of the plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Colombian normative framework is analyzed in an integral way in relation to the exposition of the public to electromagnetic radiation issued by base stations of mobile telephones. Consequently, current legal framework was divided in seven main topics: telecommunications, the use of electromagnetic spectrum, exposition boundaries to electromagnetic fields, urban licenses, public health, environmental aspect, and the risk management. Likewise, nature and scope of precaution principles were assessed before the same. Finally, it was determined that Colombia does not have a legal precept, which assures the population's security before possible dangerous effects due to exposition to non ionizing radiations; the precaution principle, has not been employed to establish measures which assure citizens' safety in relation to radioprotection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents the design of a system for air quality managing: case Cali - Colombia. This structure facilitates to the interested parts to establish policies of emission and unmission of atmospheric pollutants of mobile and stationary sources, to define the environmental and sanitary priorities and to adopt the strategies to reduce his spoilage. It was used concepts of environmental management were in use as the evaluation of the environmental risk for identifying the emission sources, for evaluating the level of emission and concentration of atmospheric pollutants, for estimating his effect in the air and population and for valuing the actions adapted to reduce the atmospheric emission. Equally, there it was use concepts of management of the quality. The structure allows in a simplified way to articulate the control measures to obtain information of the effects in the quality of the air and of the exposed population considering the technological, juridical and organizational conditions of the zone of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reflection is made around the landscape as a concept of the Colombian legal system through a dogmatic analysis of international, national, and local rules. The objective is to determine the existence of landscape as a legal category prone to be protected as a subjective right of the Colombian legal system and planning and management rules in relation to land in Medellin City. A plurivocal (if not equivocal) treatment of landscape is clearly deduced from the analysis. This results in different treatments given to landscape in urban land planning and management regulations in Medellin City. The need for a deeper reflection about the relationship between landscape and city planning and land management, as well as the need for a more active participation of judges for protecting landscape as a subjective right, are highlighted in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows the main historical, social, and juridical history of urban planning in Colombia, as well as references of public policy on wastes and relevant standards; the article also displays a brief analysis of the relationship between implementation of urban planning and environmental public policy in Medellin City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows a brief study on the acceptance of the Governance concept in Colombia, as well as its use in the existing environmental policies and internal research. This article is specifically focused on the need for studying the influence of the term on the environmental administrative law from the importance other legal systems have given to it. In Europe, governance is understood as the ideal governing model for managing environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the problems of environmental degradation through the phenomenon of globalization, establishing that the allocation of global environmental goods such as water systems, which are wetland ecosystems, are directly related to local environmental problems. First, it addresses all the theoretical debate on globalization from the three major schools: hyperglobalistic, skeptical and transformationalist. The latter considers the structures of global governance and the strengthening of international regimes as an alternative to solve global problems. In this sense, the wetland protection established in the Ramsar Convention allows evaluating the functionality of environmental governance, at global, national and local levels, especially in relation to the application of the rules issued in accordance with the international regime for protection of these ecosystems. In this context, it is evident that in Valle del Cauca a range of difficulties for the effective preservation of wetlands exist, leading to a systematic failure of the international regime in Colombia and, consequently, the vulnerability of these ecosystems, threatening with its disappearance, the extinction of biodiversity and increased global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three moments of the Bogota's air quality policies (1974-2007) are examined, from the constructivist perspective and of the critical analysis of the discourse, with the purpose of reveal the paradigms that sustain these decisions as well as the influence of the social actors, in the context of an globalized and neoliberal world. The precarious comprehension of the problems prints on the policies ones a stamp of ineffectiveness that overcomes widely the expectations that suggest his texts but it allows that the tecno-bureaucracy should justify the fulfillment of his obligations without one manages to transform, or reverse, the undesirable situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental management in cities, especially related with air, water and soil poses important challenges to a society; Colombia's current economic development model, following unsustainable production and consumption patterns, causes pollution with very high costs for societies, related to health problems and deterioration of natural renewable resources. Public policies related to environmental management must focus on prevention and must follow principles like the producer's extended responsibility, in the frame of the life cycle of the product. This represents a co-responsibility of institutional stakeholders as well as that of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the result of a study carried out by the Environmental law Research Area of Universidad del Rosario, within the project of environmental conflicts applied to international decisions. One of the topics discussed in this research is the analysis of relationships between Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and the Free Trade Agreement, or Trade Promotion Agreement, which was entered into by Colombia and the United States of America (Col-USA FTA) with the purpose of determining the applicable norms and the possible conflicts that may arise between these treaties. The work will analyze the legal framework of international and environmental commercial law, environmental norms applicable to the FTA and the construction of the various agreements, so as to identify the main issues and the possible mechanisms to solve conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, there have been two important reformist periods with regard to environmental public policies (1973-1976 and 1990-1993). In each case, after a certain degree of consolidation, they both entered into decline. This article describes and attempts to explain these processes. Ultimately, the Colombian case demonstrates the enormous difficulties of greening the State, a finding common in developing countries. Additionally, the article shows how each reform was accompanied by a new vision of the relationship between society and the environment. This vision, along with its corresponding policies, however, frequently entered into conflict with processes of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental policies in Colombia's national parks tend to generate local conflicts and contradictory outcomes. This article describes the history and development of these policies, and criticizes their effects, in the case of the Islas del Rosario, a group of islands off of Colombia's Caribbean coast whose surrounding marine area was declared a national park in 1977. The article focuses on the main efforts to generate environmental governance over the marine, coastal, and terrestrial ecosystems and the effects of this management model on the Afro-Colombian community that inhabits Orika. It also analyses the political and environmental empowerment of this community, following its organization as part of participatory processes, and how it ended up becoming a political and ethnic actor that proposed a different model of governance in the protected area. Finally, the article discusses the difficulties that environmental policy faces when scientific knowledge is privileged over reality, local culture, and traditional knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various articles within the issue such as environmental policies in Colombia, ecology and urban sprawl.

Using protected areas to conserve nature has, in recent decades, acquired significant importance in the international policymaking arena. Despite a solid legal base, protected areas in Colombia face various obstacles. The divergent narratives between the natural and social sciences underline these challenges: i) defining the object of conservation in terms of exclusion through positive scientific analysis; ii) the concept of the natural in opposition to the cultural; iii) an emphasis on the object of conservation that can sometimes cause the stakeholders involved to become invisible; iv) that the conservation of nature has limited legitimacy since it is perceived to be the historical product of conquest and frontier expansion; v) the emergence of conflicts between human rights and collective environmental rights, vi) the socio-environmental perspective of conservation in which the devolution of land rights to local communities and the conservation of nature are sometimes confused as a decision that benefits the larger society. Nature conservation could be pursued through the integration, at a national scale, of a protected nature which arises as a legitimate social decision, and in a multi-cultural perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how different groups valued the natural resources in the region of the San Jorge River over the course of the twentieth century. Some people saw them as pantry of natural resources for the taking while other warned of their over-exploitation. In the case of fishing, resource conflicts date back to at least the eighteenth century. The role of the state in this work is seen as a historic, characterized by its desire to foment economic development without taking the past into account and, even less, without trying to establish what might happen in the future. This has led to the current crisis of alarming proportions in the region's fisheries as well as a decline in the living conditions of local residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been different instruments proposed by the environmental authorities to diminish the environmental negative impact generated by the lack of a solid waste management plan. The Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley (AMVA) produced, together with the Metropolitan Resolution 10202-000526, a guide in order to gather and unify the criteria about the formulation and implementation of the solid waste integral management plan (PMIRS, in Spanish) in the companies, institutions, and neighborhoods. Nevertheless, in the process of formulation and implementation of the PMIRS in neighborhoods there are difficulties that in many cases diminish the efficiency of this process. In this work we will expose some of these difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 70's different entities of the public administration have outlined interventions on the natural space compound Reserva Forestal Protectora Bosque Oriental de Bogotá, with the intention of preserving it from the alterations that leave being historically object. However all these interventions were fruitless because they never integrate the urban vision of this environmental problem. The new policies proposals reproduce this tendency, taking uncontrollably to the failure of the policy and to perpetuate the tendencies of the real estate market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se discuten la evaluación y el análisis de las políticas y programas de desarrollo rural y ambiental. En particular, se enfoca en el impacto que generan en la calidad de vida y en el manejo de servicios ambientales. Se presentan seis artículos sobre las experiencias de productores y productoras en Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia, México y Argentina.

Se discute la regulación colombiana respecto a la protección del medio ambiente marítimo. La explotación de los recursos naturales a través de los años ha presentado daños irreversibles en el ecosistema. Países como Colombia han empezado a iniciar programas de regulación, vigilancia y prevención de desastres, particularmente en relación con el ambiente marítimo. Se discute las sanciones en contra de violadores que contaminan el mar y, también, se analiza las consecuencias de los daños causados. El objetivo del trabajo es estudiar los fuentes doctrinales acerca de este tema y, también, intentar a entender el impacto de la contaminación ambiental.

This article presents an ex-ante evaluation of a set of public policies in the areas of conservation and security in the Chingaza National Park of Colombia. To evaluate those policies, which could be implemented jointly or individually, a Contjoint Analysis was used. The gains in welfare that would result from the individual or form the joint implementation of different combinations of policies were measured. It was found that the benefits of the joint implementation of conservation and sequirity policies were larger than the sum of the benefits that would be obtained if they were implemented separatedly. In addition, it was found that while conservation policies alone would not be cost-efective, security policies would be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]