Why we are demanding the Colombian government halt deforestation

Throughout my undergraduate years, I dedicated most of my time to climate change issues. Having been born in Colombia, I was particularly worried about climate-related impacts in Global South countries and the actions or lack thereof that governments were implementing to tackle this phenomena.

I was also puzzled by Colombia’s ambitious positions at the UN climate negotiations given a questionable environmental record at home. I was convinced of the importance of studying Colombia’s foreign climate change policy.

So, as as part of my thesis research, I attended the Paris climate talks in 2015. It was then when I heard President Juan Manuel Santos reaffirm the government’s commitment to reach zero-net deforestation in the Colombian Amazon by 2020. At the time, the government also announced its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2030, priding itself on supporting strong climate action.

By then, I had been an activist for coal divestment, researched fossil fuel extraction, pushed for local climate change legislation, and attended enough UN climate talks to know one thing: climate change was threatening the fulfillment of human rights around the world and we were not doing nearly enough to stop it.

That was also when I learned that despite the slow progress at the climate negotiations and the failure of governments to advance their plans to tackle emissions and adapt to a warming world, climate advocates were turning to a new strategy: climate litigation.

According to a UN Environment Programme report, as of March 2017, there were 654 climate lawsuits filed in the United States and 230 other in the rest of the world. While most of these cases are largely concentrated in the Global North, countries such as India, South Africa, the Philippines and Pakistan have also seen their fair share of climate lawsuits.

Source: Columbia’s University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Climate litigation has become a global trend and a tool to push for climate action through the courts. In most cases, plaintiffs are suing governments for failing to comply with their climate-related goals, not adopting ambitious emissions mitigation policies, or approving particular projects that contribute to climate change.

According to Australian lawyer Sophie Marjanac, the prospect of this kind of lawsuits is improving because of two factors. First, there is an increasing number of governments with specific commitments on climate action. Second, climate science is improving, which allows for attribution science to bolster climate liability arguments.

Inspired by this wave of recent lawsuits, Dejusticia decided to support a legal action to try to tackle climate change and its devastating impacts on Colombia. As an NGO, we have traditionally used strategic litigation as a way to highlight key national issues and have a broader social impact.

This type of legal action has the potential of reaching the Constitutional Court, which in turn can shake the other branches of government for failing to guarantee Constitutional principles and fundamental rights. Litigation can also stir public debate and its effects can go beyond those of the case themselves.

This is why I decided to join other 24 young Colombians in suing the national government for failing to curb deforestation in the Amazon region.

The plaintiffs and our lawyer, Cesar Rodríguez Garavito (Dejusticia’s director).