Environment in Colombia Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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With the highest number of living species per area in the world, Colombia is arguably the most biodiverse country on the planet. Yet, Colombia suffers the world’s longest-running civil conflict. Fueled by illicit drug production, guerilla groups, paramilitary militias and the army battle each other for control of territory. More than 100,000 civilians have been killed since 1980, and, in 2005, at least three million people were internally displaced. No part of the country is untouched by the war.

Colombia is geographically unique in the Latin America and the world. It is the only South American country with a Caribbean and Pacific coastline. The Choc6 region of the Pacific northwest is the rainiest place on earth and has one of the highest rates of endemism and biodiversity on the planet. The Sierra Nevada range in the northeast is the highest coastal mountain range in the world, and the Guajira Peninsula is a unique coastal desert in the Caribbean. Three large Andean ranges traverse the Pacific side of the country and contain several exceptional tropical highland ecosystems known as pdramo. Colombia’s eastern expanse is lowland rainforest and tropical savanna, and covers 50 percent of the national territory.

Following a constitutional reform in 1991, a Ministry of the Environment was created. The Ministry oversees 46 protected areas and 33 National Parks containing one tenth of the country’s total area. Meanwhile, 24 percent of Colombia’s land is held as indigenous reserves, and another 5 percent is held by black communities on the Pacific slope. Concentrating in the southern Andes, the Pacific, the Amazon and the coastal deserts of the northeast, the number and size of these collective properties are unique in Latin America and hold out some promise for environmental conservation, sustainable land use, and social justice in the future.

Wartime conditions sap energy and resources, and augment environmental problems. Water pollution is particularly pronounced. The massive Magdalena River drains 18 of Colombia’s 32 departments but receives 200 tons of domestic waste each day, and this does not even include chemical seepage from agricultural industries like African Palm, bananas, coffee, sugar, beef, and cut flowers. It is estimated that 50 percent of mangrove forests along the Caribbean coast and on the islands of Providencia and San Andres have been cleared since the early 20th century. Aquaculture along the southern Pacific coast makes Colombia the 12th largest shrimp producer in the world, but threatens the very mangroves upon which the industry depends. An aggressive agricultural and cattle frontier is expanding eastward from the Andean piedmont. These environmental problems are well known to an educated and conscientious population, who find the war diverts limited resources.

Colombia is now the world’s leading coca bush grower (producing 430 metric tons of cocaine in 2004), and is an important global producer of opium poppies. Drug traffickers control up to 10 percent of all agricultural lands in Colombia, a number that does not bode well for long-term sustainable land use and soil conservation. Indeed, armed conflict and areal spraying have pushed small growers up steep hillsides and into ever more remote areas, including national parks. Millions of gallons of chemicals used in eradication, coca growing, and in cocaine processing are dumped into the ecosystem each year. Drug profits also fuel money laundering schemes that expand cattle ranches and monocropping on the frontiers. Ten years ago, the Pacific slope was virtually untouched by the civil war and drug production, but now it has both problems.

Bibliography:

Frank Safford, and Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (Oxford University Press, 2001);
Instituto Geografico de Colombia (IGAC), Atlas de Colombia (IGAC, 2003);
Astrid Ulloa, The Ecological Native: Indigenous Peoples’ Movements and Eco-Governmentality in Colombia (Routledge, 2005).