Thousands of miners and small-scale farmers protested Tuesday in Colombia against plans by the government, currently hosting a UN biodiversity summit, to declare protected zones in areas where they make their livelihoods.
Demonstrators used tree branches and held up long lines of trucks to block roads in the northwestern department of Antioquia, Santander (in the northeast) and central Boyaca.
The government of leftist President Gustavo Petro, who has made environmental protection a priority, in January decreed several new nature reserves that will be off limits to mining and agriculture.
“Do not fool the people, do not deceive us by saying this is for the environment… that this is ‘peace with nature’,” Santander mining association president Ivonne Gonzalez said on Blu Radio, referring to the slogan of the COP16 summit taking place in Cali until November 1.
At the previous biodiversity summit in Montreal in 2022, 196 countries pledged to place 30 percent of all land and sea areas under protection by 2030.
Progress is being measured at COP16, with measures under discussion to speed up delivery.
“We have to reach an agreement, a consensus (on) how to eradicate mining from certain territories that have strategic ecosystems,” Mines and Energy Minister Andres Camacho told W Radio.
Several armed groups at war with each other and the Colombian state engage in illegal gold mining and cultivation of coca — the main ingredient in cocaine — to fund their efforts.
Legal mining made up about 28 percent of Colombian exports in 2023.
Petro has launched a plan to reduce Colombia’s dependence on petroleum and coal, but critics are calling for a gradual phasing out that won’t hurt subsistence incomes or the state coffers.
Host Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world.
But the country has struggled to extricate itself from six decades of armed conflict involving leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug gangs, and state forces.
The summit is being guarded by about 11,000 police and soldiers after threats from a guerrilla group.
Hours after the summit kicked off Monday in Cali, soldiers some 150 kilometers (93 miles) away were targeted with a bomb, but no injuries were reported, the army said.
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