As the Amazon countries debate how to confront the climate crisis, an announcement was made in Colombia that sparked international enthusiasm and also opened an immediate legal debate: declaring the Colombian Amazon a large protected area free of mining and hydrocarbons. The news, which was presented as a historic move, ended up being accompanied by a reminder from the Home Office of the legal limits to its implementation.
The announcement was made during the meeting of Environment Ministers of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ATOCA), in the context of the COP 30. There, the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development (H), Irene Velez Torres, stated: “Colombia has decided to take the first step. We were the first country in the Amazon Basin to declare the entire portion of the Amazon biome that corresponds to Colombia as a protected area for renewable natural resources.” The letter sought to highlight environmental leadership in the region, accompanied by a call for the formation of the Amazon Alliance for Life.
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The proposal, which is explained in ethical rather than economic terms, includes an invitation to other countries in the basin. “Caring for the Amazon is not an economic sacrifice,” Velez insisted, “but rather a moral investment in the future of the region and humanity. The forest is one, rivers have no borders, and neither does life.” The declaration sought to protect more than 483,000 square kilometers of tropical forest, or 42% of Colombia’s continental territory, and halt extractive projects that were still underway, including 43 hydrocarbon blocks and 286 mining applications.
The aforementioned area includes six provinces: Amazonas, Caqueta, Guaviare, Goiña, Putumayo and Vaubés, territories in which approximately 1.2 million people live, most of them indigenous, peasant and Afro-descendant communities. 10% of the planet’s recorded plant species are also concentrated there, an argument that has reinforced the narrative of environmental urgency.
However, the announcement met with a quick institutional response. The Directorate of the National Authority for Advance Consultation of the Ministry of the Interior indicated that any decision of this scope must follow a mandatory process with ethnic communities. In the formal concept RAD office. The Authority, No. 2025-2-002410-044834 of 2025, concluded that “the draft administrative law is an administrative procedure subject to the development of prior consultation (…) and it cannot be issued except after the aforementioned procedure is initiated and completed in due form.”
This declaration, which is binding in nature, revealed a loophole in the initial presentation of the declaration: the measure could not be adopted, as stated, without completing the prior consultation process in accordance with the Constitutional Bloc and ILO Convention No. 169.
The analysis conducted by the Ministry of Interior addressed the potential impacts on settled communities in the region. According to the document, the Ministry of Environment’s decision “directly affects 566 ethnic communities present in the territories subject to the declaration, generating new restrictions and burdens on traditional ways of life, means of subsistence and practices.” Likewise, it demarcates territories, regulates activities essential to the cultural identity of indigenous peoples, peoples of African descent and peasants, and changes economic, social and spiritual dynamics; Which means a direct impact according to the constitutional bloc.”
This assessment led to a clear conclusion: any decision regulating economic, territorial or environmental activities in these departments must have a prior, coordinated and sealed consultation process. Only in this way can this measure have legal validity and mandatory compliance.
Meanwhile, the government presented the declaration as part of a larger effort to strengthen the Special Committee on Environment and Climate (Cemac), a regional coordination platform to combat environmental crimes, promote biodiversity management and move towards a just energy transition, including proposing a multilateral agreement to phase out fossil fuels.
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