Water rights and the peace process in Colombia

Theatre connecting the topics of women’s rights and national sovereignty is performed in Andes, Antioquia during the protest, Un abrazo a la Montaña.

Land disputes in Colombia often revolve
around the use of one resource in particular: water. Colombia is one of the
richest countries in the world when it comes to freshwater supply, placing it
at the forefront of a global economy where water is in high demand.

Thanks to the increasing privatization of
water, both in terms of the decisions about its use as well as its
contamination and appropriation by private, national and multinational mining
and energy companies, water rights have been a major focus of Colombian social
movements over the last few years as a direct result. Whether for public or
private enterprise, the practices of mining, fracking, monoculture
agro-industry, as well as the creation of dams for hydroelectric energy all
come back to the common denominator of water.

The department of Antioquia, located in
the central northwest, brings together many of these country-wide issues in one
territory. Unlike other departments suffering the consequences of these
dynamics, Antioquia manages to remain one of the wealthiest and politically most
powerful departments in the nation. That wealth and power, however, remains in
the hands of few. The capital city, Medellín, has the greatest wealth
divide in
Colombia, which, in turn, has one of the greatest wealth divides in Latin
America.

Pastor Alape, member of the Secretariat
of the FARC-EP, is originally from Antioquia and considers the history of violence
and forced displacement in the department to be directly related to protecting
private economic interests. In an interview during the Tenth
Guerrilla Conference in September he explained: “the
government needs to guarantee the security of the projects and the security is
the displacement of farmers so that transnational capital can come in, allowing
a few large land-owners to seize the land”.

It is true that human rights violations
accompany economic investment in the department; over the last decade, the
Eastern Antioquia Human Rights Committee has reported massacres, threats, torture,
assassinations, land mines, forced displacement, and paramilitary presence in
the form of ‘protection’ to mega-projects, including paramilitary encampments
installed on the premises of the public-private entity Empresas Publicas de
Medellin.

The COA organised a ten day protest through South-western Antioquia in August called, ‘Un Abrazo a la Montaña’Between the years of 1993 and 2005 a
large portion of the region’s population was displaced to the department
capital of Medellin. This reorganisation of demographics and rural-urban
dynamics occurred at the same time that mining titles were being solicited in
the region. In 2011, the Coporacion Juridica Libertad reported that during the first decade of
the new century, 139 titles were solicited for hydro-electric projects in
Eastern Antioquia. Human rights groups in the region have named the interests
and actions of both private and public entities including: Cornare, the local,
regional and national government, Anglogold Ashanti, EPM, ISAGEN, Drummond,
Gramalote Colombia Limited, Generadora Alejandria, Argos, Ecopetrol, Nutresa,
Corona and Asocolflores, as contributors to human rights atrocities and
environmental destruction.

Like a stone in
the shoe

Following the country’s general
displacement patterns, there are many cases in Antioquia of communities
displaced by paramilitary forces that in turn lead the way for massive
development projects. One example is the hamlet of El Pescado, which is now
home to the hydro-electric station San Miguel: in the 1990s, 100% of the
population was displaced through paramilitary violence.

In 2011, the federal government responded
to high internal displacement numbers by beginning the Land Restitution
Programme. Farmer Amado Salas became a beneficiary and began to farm again.
Salas had been displaced twice by the armed conflict within Antioquia, first in
the ’70s and then again in the ’90s. He was given land by the government
through the Colombian
Institute for Rural Development and spoke about his experience last
month in the town of San Luis, during the 8th
Annual Water Festival.

“Right now we have cacao, plantain,
animals, and then right next door we have a giant multinational, ISAGEN and
ISAGEN sold to another multinational which is now causing us a lot of anxiety
due to the fact that we may have to sell the land and be displaced again, this
time not by an armed actor, but rather for mining and energy projects, with
plans to dam the river,” he says as we look out over the still free-flowing Rio
Dormilón.

The rivers that are dammed for
hydro-electric energy projects often become private property in Colombia,
cutting off local access to water. Salas explains the position locals are put
in within the frame of the national economic model: “We are like a stone in the
shoe of the government right now, because both nationally and internationally
(through international humanitarian law) we have legal status not to be
displaced again after being moved here with the Restitution Law,” he says. 

Farmers in rural areas, historically
under-served by the state, are often wooed into selling their land to private
investors who pitch rural development as a key piece in their natural resource
acquisition. According to Salas, this is precisely what is is currently
happening to him and his neighbours: “they (the company) said they would help
us with health clinics, with a sports field, with roads, especially the
highway, and I had to tell them, ‘look guys, what you are offering are already
rights guaranteed to me by the state, the state has to provide health care and
recreation spaces, it also has to respect the environment’ so of course, I was
not happy with their offer (…) I am protecting the forests here, and I should
be the one to say what water is necessary for my use.’”

The five hydroelectric plants in the
water-rich region of Eastern Antioquia produce 29% of the national energy, and
73% of the energy in their home department. Freddy Diaz of The Corporation for
Popular Education and Investigation (CED-INS) considers the government’s
program unsustainable: “The government agenda
prioritizes the over-exploitation of water to produce wealth, while putting the
water security of the country at risk, through contamination and destruction of
ecosystems.”

According to Andrea Echeverri of the
Social Movement for Life and Defense of Territory (MOVETE), Colombia produces more
energy than it consumes and her organisation questions why there are mass media
reports on national water shortages and why the government rations water for
civilian use in various national territories: “45.5% of the hydroelectric
energy produced nationally is used by industry, 21% of it by mines and quarries
and less than 5% on gas, energy and electricity for the population,” she says. 

In addition to the issue of water access
and usage, hydro-electric dams on rivers also have many devastating affects on
the environment including flooding of fertile lands, displacement of farming
and fishing communities, erosion, loss of flora, fauna and water species, which
result in food insecurity, for the region and as Diaz points out, “some studies
have shown that dams can produce earthquakes,” particularly dangerous for a
country sat on active fault lines. 

“Jihadist
environmentalism”?

Mining operations require the use of an
immense amount of water, from the process of extraction through to
transportation of raw materials, while simultaneously polluting natural water
sources near extraction sites. Nationally the department of Antioquia is a
mega-mining region that produces 75.7% of the gold, 68.8% of the silver, and is
the fastest growing region in coal, clay, limestone, copper, plaster, and
manganese. Gold mining jumped from 5,000 tons in 1995 to 25,000 in 2010 – a
500% increase.

It’s not only the government and private
enterprise that are causing waves regarding the way they promote and sell
mining projects; recently environmental activists have highlighted the
“shameful” alliance between the public National
University of Colombia and the gold mining company AngloGold Ashanti. According
to the Environmental Committee of Jericó the National University has, “put
itself at the service of the mining multinational” in order to, “trick
Colombians, especially the inhabitants of South-western Antioquia… to justify
mining practices in peaceful agricultural and touristic regions, zones of great
importance for the conservation of natural heritage and regional water, which
would be left in social, economic and environmental devastation… to obtain
copper, gold and silver, metals that in their entirety would be exported to the
benefit of great international capital gain”.

The environmentalists protest the use of
the public university in propaganda campaigns for the multi-national company
and called specific attention to geologist Oswaldo Ordoñez, who has dubbed the
opposition to multinational mining as “jihadist environmentalism”. Daniel Urrea
and CENSAT have analysed some of the suggestions that
the United Nations has given to Colombia as the country transitions into its
post-accords phase and mining is of particular concern: “There is no way to
consider mining a sustainable activity. Sustainable mining is a contradiction
of terms, this extractive activity is unforeseeable in its consequences and
irreparable in its impact (3).”

Civil society
participation

Alape described how the FARC-EP and the
government faced differences of opinion around territorial development during
their negotiations, including in regards to Antioquia: “The government
considers Eastern Antioquia a post-conflict zone… they already have demining
(land-mines) programs as well as various social assistance programs… but there
continues to be marginalization of communities and there are large land-owners
who pressure famers into selling their land. Currently there are many issues
that are sprouting up around land use.”

Alape believes the signed peace accords
open up space for new kinds of civil society participation in governmental
projects,  “First,” he says, “to avoid
community displacement and second to maintain protection of the natural
environment… the territorial focus would mean that local production would be
profitable and sustainable.” This kind of participation will be crucial if
existing policies around water usage and access continue to be problematic,
particularly during efforts to revise them for success at the local level.

Organisations from Eastern Antioquia report injustices at the 8th annual Water Festival in San Luis, Antioquia.Communities in Colombia are speaking up
about the issues surrounding development projects and water rights in relation
to the peace process. In the Urabá region of Antioquia, the Peace Community of
San José de Apartadó continues to report paramilitary and military
violence in their territory and question the viability of development projects
planned in their local mountain range, the Serrania de Abibe, after the peace
accords are implemented. In Eastern Antioquia
the community Tulpa Juvenil stated that, “Peace without social and
environmental justice is not possible” and that, “both Uribe and Santos are imposing
the extractive industry on our territory, it’s easy to see – all of their
theatrics aside – that they will always align themselves at the last minute to
defend privatisation and allow harm to communities and the environment.”
South-western Antioquia coalition, Cinturon Occidental Ambiental (COA) produced a manifesto about territorial peace in
their region.

COA considers environmental conflict a
constant threat to peace, proclaims the environment a victim of both the armed
conflict and the economic development model and brings attention to
environmental and social damages caused by hydro-electric projects currently
promoted in their territory. The vision of a future national territory
completely full of mining, monoculture, and hydroelectric dams is a real one,
and one that the current laws are on their way to realising.

MOVETE understands the current
environmental crisis to be caused by the very economic model and political
decisions of the the national government over the last few decades, with grave
consequences both in terms of human and environmental rights. They view the
legal mechanisms for coal and water industries, such as emissions reduction
(REDD) and clean development (MDL)  as
problematic because they, “promise to alleviate the crisis by putting a price
on contamination…with disregard for the political origins of the problem.” On
the national level there is a growing movement against these and other green
economy laws, directly related to the movement against rural reform laws like
ZIDRES and PYMES, which will later be discussed in this series.

Great National
Dialogue

In an open letter to President Santos,
the Cumbre
Agraria Campesino y Popular, a massive movement for the defence of
the Colombian territory responsible for the national strikes beginning in 2013,
suspended their negotiations with the
government, which may well result in a return to strikes. The People’s Congress
(Congreso
de los Pueblos) is calling for a Great National Dialogue (Gran
Dialogo Nacional), declaring that “participation is peace” and encouraging
society to have a more active role in the peace process. This resonates with
Andres Duque Franco, a resident of Eastern Antoquia, who asks rhetorically
about pending governmental projects to dam his local river, “Does it make sense
that other people get rich off of what has always made us happy?”

The impending return to national strikes
and the dialogues between the government and the ELN have the potential to open
up the national debate about territorial peace to the constituents, something
urgently needed in Colombia’s peace process. In the current political crisis,
uncertainty and government dealings behind closed doors, it is important to
highlight the continued efforts of social movements to shift the conversation
toward the economic model and the use of natural resources.

The effects that regional populations are
suffering due to land sales in water-rich areas are now acute enough to make
water itself a central topic for arguments against the current economic model.
In the coming months, Colombian organizations will most probably continue to
report human rights and environmental abuses around water privitization as well
as actively proposing alternative models for territorial peace in regards to
land and water rights.

Rio Dormilón, San Luis, Antioquia.

All photographs belong to the author.