The announcement in Colombia comes as Amazonian countries debate how to tackle the climate crisis, sparking an international frenzy and prompting immediate legal debate. It declared the Colombian Amazon a large-scale protected area, free of mines and hydrocarbons. The news was heralded as a historic step, but it ended up being accompanied by a warning from the Home Office about the legal restrictions on its implementation.
The announcement was made during the Amazon Treaty on Cooperation (ATOCA) Environment Ministers’ Meeting in conjunction with COP30. Irene Vélez Torres, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development (e), said: “Colombia has decided to take the first step. We have become the first country in the Amazon Basin to declare the entire Colombian portion of the Amazon biome as a reserve for renewable natural resources.” The message demonstrated environmental leadership in the region and called for the formation of the Amazon Alliance for Life.
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The proposal, explained from an ethical rather than an economic perspective, also included an invitation to other countries in the basin. Vélez argued that “caring for the Amazon is not an economic sacrifice, but an ethical investment in the future of the region and humanity. The jungle is one, rivers know no borders, and life knows no borders.” The declaration called for protecting more than 483,000 square kilometers of tropical forest, representing 42% of Colombia’s continental territory, and halting ongoing mining projects, including 43 hydrocarbon concessions and 286 mining applications.
The aforementioned region includes six departments: Amazonas, Caqueta, Guaviare, Guainia, Putumayo, and Vaupes, and is home to nearly 1.2 million people, most of whom are indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant communities. As much as 10% of the planet’s recorded plant species are concentrated there, and the debate reinforced the narrative of environmental urgency.
But the organizational reaction to the announcement was immediate. The Department of National Advance Consultations of the Ministry of the Interior recalled that decisions to this extent must follow a mandatory process with ethnic communities. RAD office has a formal concept. By Law No. 2025-2-002410-044834 of 2025, the organization concluded that “the draft administrative law is an administrative measure subject to the development of prior consultations (…) and cannot be issued until such procedures have been properly initiated and completed.”
The judgment was binding in nature and revealed a gap with what was originally announced. As communicated, this measure cannot be adopted without completing a preliminary consultation process in accordance with the constitutionality bloc and ILO Convention No. 169.
An analysis by the Home Office detailed the potential impact on communities settled in the area. According to the document, the Ministry of Environment’s resolution “directly affects the 566 ethnic communities present in the areas covered by the declaration, creating new restrictions and burdens on their way of life, means of subsistence and traditional customs.” Similarly, it demarcates territories, regulates activities essential to the cultural identity of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and farmers, and transforms economic, social, and spiritual power relations. This means a direct impact based on the constitutionality block. ”
This evaluation yielded clear conclusions. This means that any decision to regulate economic, territorial or environmental activities in these sectors requires a prior, coordinated and completed consultation process. Only in this way can measures have legal validity and compliance become mandatory.
Meanwhile, the government submitted the declaration as part of a larger effort to unite the Special Committee on Environment and Climate (Cemac), a regional coordination platform for a just energy transition that includes proposals for a multilateral agreement to combat environmental crime, strengthen biodiversity management and phase out fossil fuels.
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