Taking into account that Colombia has prioritized the sustainable development related to extractive processes that are being carried out, and highlighting the importance to develop technical documents associated to the impacts generated by these activities in the territory, the IPBES national thematic assessment raises the review of the mining activity and the implications of illegal mineral extraction in biodiversity and ecosystem services.
This project is part of the Sentence T 445 of 2016, which orders to build a scientific and sociological research to identify the impacts of the mining activity on the ecosystems of the Colombian territory, throughout a rigorous study that allows to have information for decision makers.
In this regard, different institutions of the national government, including the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Minning and Energy, the National Mining Agency, the National Natural Parks Unit, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute and the Office of the Controller General of the Republic, make up an Inter-institutional Bureau, and work closely together since 2016, to carry out the assessment of the mining activity, through the IPBES operational and conceptual framework.
Currently 45 national and international experts selected through a public call, are conducting the comprehensive review of information within the framework of 5 major priority areas, such as:
- Biodiversity and ecosystem services
- Physical transformation of the territory
- Social relations, governance and territorial rights
- Determinants in health
- Public policies, democracy and citizen participation.
Inside the experts structure of the assessment, each chapter has Lead Authors and Group Thematic Leaders, whose are interacting in order to define approaches to allow an interdisciplinary and constructive analysis to preliminarily generates a consolidated diagnosis to be subsequently feedback and assertive through a public consultation in 2018.