Colombia has become the 14th country to ratify the Escazú Agreement, the first region-wide environmental treaty targeting Latin America and the Caribbean. The lower house of the Colombian Congress on Oct. 10 voted 119-1 to ratify the treaty, which promotes public access to information, deliberations and court proceedings regarding environmental matters in order to ensure broader social consensus on development decisions. But 68 members of the chamber did not participate in the vote, many of them followers of Álvaro Uribe, a former right-wing president of Colombia and a prominent critic of the treaty. Uribe said the accord would force Colombia to “cede sovereignty” because environmentally consequential development decisions taken by national authorities would be open to challenge on treaty-compliance grounds. This, he argued, would create “legal insecurity” on the part of investors who might otherwise be willing to undertake large projects in Colombia. Supporters of the legislation...
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After languishing for 11 years, legislation that would create a national agency to oversee biodiversity and protected lands is expected to win approval in the Chilean Congress by the end of this year. The bill, which would establish the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service (SBAP), cleared the Chilean Senate three years ago. It was approved on Aug. 31 by the Agriculture Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, and is expected in the coming weeks to be put to a vote of the full chamber. If, as expected, the legislation wins approval in the Chamber of Deputies, it will return to the Senate, where legislators will attempt to resolve differences between the lower- and upper-house versions. Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas said the SBAP will provide government officials with important new authority to safeguard biodiversity. “This agency will allow us to have all the necessary...
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Over two years since being removed as executive director of Peru’s National Forest and Wildlife Service (Serfor), a move green groups called “arbitrary,” Luis Alberto Gonzáles-Zúñiga returned to that post Oct. 10, after suing to get his job back. In announcing Gonzáles-Zúñiga’s dismissal on June 5, 2020, the Agriculture Ministry, of which Serfor is a part, said he no longer had the confidence of top ministry officials. But the Serfor chief argued that because he had won the job in the agency’s first-ever competitive hiring process, rather than being appointed, he is not subject to dismissal without cause. (See "In Peru, firing of forest official called “arbitrary"" —EcoAméricas, June 2020.) He was reinstated after a lower court ruling in his favor in August 2021 was upheld on Sept. 27, 2022, by a constitutional chamber of Lima...
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