Throughout the world, many efforts to contain the climate crisis have had a boomerang effect on peasant communities; however, with the recognition of the environmental dimension of the peasantry, Colombian constitutionalism offers the world a formula for integrating peasant rights into conservation policies.

Agrarian injustice and climate injustice: from the Amazon to the world

Colombia has experience in making bad climate policies, an example being some of the measures against Amazon deforestation that in reality ended up reinforcing inequalities and violence against traditionally marginalized peasant communities. Despite these bad experiences, the scientific community agrees that in Colombia the conservation of the Amazon biome depends on the solution of the agrarian problem.

At the global level, a close relationship between agrarian justice and climate justice has also been documented. It seems that if the international community wants to solve the climate problem, it must also solve the agrarian problem. However, recent studies suggest that globally less than 3% of the resources allocated to climate change mitigation are directed to the agricultural sector. This budgetary imbalance occurs despite the fact that with greater resources this sector could prevent emissions or, failing that, could capture 30% of the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target.

In the specific case of the Amazon, it seems that overcoming extractivism, the deconcentration of land ownership and the solution to the problem of illicit drugs is an indispensable requirement for environmental conservation. The demands of the Amazonian peasant movements are not only a matter of social justice, they are also a fundamental requirement for maintaining the hydro-climatological function of the Amazon rainforest. However, peasants have been absent so far from some of the most important international Amazon conservation initiatives. 

Such exclusion not only affects the peasantry but also calls into question the effectiveness of these measures. For the sake of humanity as a whole, Amazonian conservation policies cannot continue to exclude such a valuable ally as the peasantry. The Amazon region is at a point of no return. Official projections estimate that by 2050 it will have lost its capacity for self-regeneration and will undergo ecosystemic transformation due to severe water stress. This will have multiple effects for both the region and the planet. The atmospheric rivers that supply water to the tropical glaciers, “paramos” [high altitude wetlands], crops and cities of South America depend on the conservation of the Amazon rainforest. 

A constitutional problem and a victory for the peasant movement.

The lack of integration between the legal regime of uses, occupation and tenure of areas of special environmental protection in Colombia creates a constitutional tension between the state’s duty to care for the environment, enshrined in the Ecological Constitution, and the set of norms that provide for the special protection of the peasantry, which Dejusticia has called the Constitution of the Peasantry. This tension made it seem as though the conservation of ecosystems was incompatible with respect for the territorial rights of the peasantry. 

Within the Colombian Amazon deforestation arc, the presence of peasant communities was harshly stigmatized with labels of illegality and criminality, ignoring the social and environmental reality that has forced them to move deep into the jungle and survive amidst crossfire. It seemed that the only way to comply with the constitutional mandates of conservation was to circumvent the rights of the most marginalized peasant communities.

This can be explained by the fact that, although the national constitution and international instruments have recently recognized peasants as subjects of special protection, until a few years ago their protection was not universal and was based solely on their economic inequality and structural vulnerability. For this reason, the global peasant movement sought legal recognition of their status as subjects of rights.

In Colombia, this peasant struggle led to the reform of Article 64 of the Constitution. With this amendment to the original text of the constitution, the Colombian peasantry was able to position itself as a subject of special protection in accordance with subjective conditions associated with the territorial, cultural, productive, organizational and environmental dimensions.

The territorial dimension implies that the territory transcends physical space to become a socially constructed space where political, economic and social activities and interactions with nature take place. The cultural dimension includes practices rooted in memories, traditions and knowledge linked to agriculture, oral history and artistic expressions. The organizational dimension recognizes that peasants are organized in family, community and social networks, promoting territorial management models and fighting for greater autonomy over their lands.  

Finally, the environmental dimension of the peasantry implies the integration of their ways of life into environmental conservation strategies, recognizing their right to live in harmony with nature. Therefore, environmental protection must respect cultural identity, food sovereignty and the participation of all rural communities, including peasant communities.

This constitutional category enables hermeneutic innovations to resolve the tension between the Ecological Constitution and the Constitution of the Peasantry. In other words, Colombian constitutional dogmatics propose to the world a theoretical tool to integrate climate policies with the well-being of peasant communities. 

Constitutionalism in the Global South and climate justice

Those who contribute most to the worsening of the climate crisis—countries and citizens of the global north with the highest emissions—will not see their water or food security affected as much as the rural communities of the Global South that have a smaller carbon footprint. This, which is already unfair, is aggravated because marginalized communities are also the most affected by “maladaptation” to climate change. The environmental dimension of peasantry is a notion that enables constitutionalism in the Global South to address this reality.

The challenge for Colombia now lies in the agile and participatory implementation of the sustainable development measures that peasant communities demand within their territories. To this end, it is imperative to develop jurisprudence on this and adjust the legal and regulatory standards. This is the only way to overcome the anti-peasant biases of bad climate policies.

The international community, especially that of the Global South, can promote south-south doctrinal dialogues on alternatives and experiences of integrating peasant rights as a framework for climate action in tropical forests. For example, just as Inter-American System’s jurisprudence has served as a reference for the consolidation of ethnic rights, the Inter-American human rights system could develop a post-extractivist dogmatic that recognizes, in concrete cases and with fundable measures, the environmental dimension of peasants in the region.

For its part, the international community of the Global North has a crucial role to play in reallocating cooperation efforts dedicated to climate change mitigation, by directing more resources towards initiatives that promote agro-climatic justice in the Amazon. The resolution of agrarian conflicts is indispensable for countries like Colombia to be able to contribute in a fair and sustainable way to global climate change mitigation.