Environment Victim Of The Conflict In Colombia

Environment victim of the conflict in Colombia

 It is necessary to initiate this article, based on the analysis of the regulations in force in Colombian legislation, where the care that should be given to the environment must be recognized, in order to preserve and guarantee many other rights of those who are part of the Colombian legal system. In the same way, it is precious to emphasize that in Colombia jurisprudentially there have already been advances where recognition is given as a subject of rights to the environment and that therefore becomes subject to special protection by the State and society, that is,that his care should no longer be for the fulfillment of the rights of the human being, but now he becomes creditor of his own rights. For the above, the article of the 1991 Political Constitution will be taken into account, which is the norm of norms and some international treaties and agreed, which are based on the care of the environment to guarantee individual and collective rights of the human being.

The environment is a conglomerate of factors and elements, visible and invisible, is all that surrounds the human species and that is of vital importance for its subsistence. Worldwide and at the local level, in recent years, projects have been promoted for environmental protection, aimed at the prevention of damage that can cause human being and mitigate those that have already been perpetuated.

How is the environment treated by the Political Constitution of 1991 and international treaties?

Colombia is a country rich in biodiversity, this thanks to its different thermal floors, which allow a climatic variety, which lends itself to different species of flora and fauna.

Given this according to the 2018 – 2020 National Development Plan, Colombia, worldwide is positioned as number one in biodiversity per unit area, where it is recorded according to the Biodiversity Information System 62.829 species, with 52% of the territory covered by forests, where the Amazon and the Colombian Pacific house the largest amount of forest in the country with 76%, in the same way it has about 3 million hectares of moors, 22 millionwetlands, 229 thousand mangroves, and a large extension of coastline, in short it is a rich and biodiverse country. But just as it is a megadiverse country, it is a country that has been the victim of deforestation and degradation of the ecosystem and few measures have been taken so that this is effectively prevented.

It is important to note that in Colombian legislation there is regulations that seek general environmental protection. In the Political Constitution of 1991, considered as an ecological constitution, three ways of treating the environment can be evidenceCitizens and the third as a duty of them.This previous considering that the Political Charter does not seek the protection of the environment itself, since even, by itself, it is not recognized as a subject of rights, but that this interest of protecting from the environment, was born from the pointof the relationship between preserving the environment to put the achievement of other rights of the human person such as a good quality of life, that is, the guardianship that the National Constitution provides, is aimed at protectionof man and his subsistence in the best possible conditions.

Regardless of the last purpose that the Political Charter seeks to protect, it is said that in it the environment is seen as a right and a duty of all and this is reflected in article 79 where the healthy environment is establishedas a collective and fundamental right:

All people have the right to enjoy a healthy environment. The law will guarantee community participation in decisions that may affect it. It is the duty of the State to protect the diversity and integrity of the environment, conserve the areas of special ecological importance and promote education for the achievement of these purposes. (Political Constitution of Colombia, 1991)

In the same way, in the Political Charter, more articles can be found such as the previous one where the State’s protection of the environment is conferred to the State and society as it can be evidenced in article 95, where the duties of the Colombian citizen are highlighted and it is in the paragraphnumber 8 where the duty to protect the country’s natural resources and ensure a healthy environment is granted.

Another of the ways such as the Colombian Political Constitution is responsible for the protection of the environment is through the adoption of sustainable development models that causes the State and individuals to be obliged in the protection of natural resources, limiting rights with theIn order to meet the aforementioned purpose. Additionally, it adopts protection policies for the environment in citizen participation and seeks the autonomy of environmental authorities in order to achieve adequate environmental protection.

In Colombia, the environment has not been listed as a subject of rights, it is mentioned as previously in regulations, as rights of each Colombian national and also announce a series of duties that each person and the State mustcomply with the purpose of preserving the environment and thus achieving compliance with these rights. It is important to keep in mind that this is not classified in its integrality, several of the elements that comprise it have been selected by the jurisprudence with this distinction, this will be said later.

Additionally, in the international level, numerous regulations have emerged that has served to guide the criteria of national legislation. The legal instruments that can be indicated have been the most prominent are, on the one hand in international humanitarian law, the use of environmental modification techniques for military purposes or other hostile purposes have been prohibited, in the protocol and additional protocol and addition to the Geneva agreementsIn its articulate, any unjustified types of attack on nature are prohibited, treated that is important to take into account since Colombia is one of the member states of this agreement. In the framework convention on the Climate Change of Paris of 2015, the assistant countries agreed to binding measures in order to mitigate climate change, demanding from each commitments to reduce damage to the environment such as contamination and global temperatures.

Colombia is currently signed to a series of international treaties and agreements, which specifically deal with environmental protection, including the Amazon Cooperation Treaty, which is signed by those Amazonian countries for conservationEcological of the Amazon. Likewise, you can find the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, a statement that can be said was the beginning of the public and political awareness of environmental problems worldwide.

Just as these there are many other international treaties and pacts whose purpose is the protection of the environment, in order to protect the fundamental and collective rights of each human being.

Environment classified as a subject of law by Colombian jurisprudence

Returning to the Colombian scope, it is important. As the first jurisprudential reference, the sentence T 622/2016 can be mentioned that gives the Atrato River rights treating it as an autonomous subject, based on the understanding that when protecting the rights of the river, the rights of the community will be protectedChocoana. In the same way, the Constitutional Court concludes that the river is a living entity that houses other forms of life and cultures by so many is recognized as a subject of special protection by the State and society, additionally enjoys rightsand care for conservation, restoration and maintenance. The previous sentence is of vital importance, since the care and conservation of this important element for the environment is reached, an element that has suffered through serious mistreatments, these caused by illegal mining reflected in extractionMinera, forest exploitation, things that have put the life of the river itself at risk and threatening the natural balance of all those who inhabit and surround it.

The second example that will be brought is Judgment C 4360 of 20016 in which the Amazon is recognized as a subject of rights, the problem arises as a search for the protection of a group of children and young people in the face of the risks they may suffer from the changeclimate. The end of the demand was to stop the environmental dregation caused by the deforestation of the Amazon jungle, taking them to make one of their rights such as it is the healthy environment such as it is the healthy environment. The Court when issuing its ruling is based on principles with that of solidarity, intergenerational equity and caution, claiming that each ecosystem is exposed to situations that prevent it from subsisting properly, making survival difficult. Given the lack of care there is a great growth of pollution and mutation of the environment, so the affectation of the collective law of enjoying a healthy environment is given. This implies the violation of fundamental rights to health, healthy environment and life.

To make the decision, the Court evaluates whether causal link between the climate change generated by the reduction of forest coverage caused by crops of illicit use, mining and illegal logging among others, with the negative effects on the health of people. In doing so, it establishes that due to the degradation of forests, the aforementioned rights were directly undermined.

The previous two sentences have in common that the high courts have been based on an ecocentric approach to declare these two elements of nature as an autonomous subject of rights. This approach shows that it is not the human being owned by the earth and everything that inhabits it, but on the contrary is the earth, it is the human being who belongs to it, because it has been seen as the earth from the beginningof the weather has subsist.