Analysis of the writer Héctor Abad Faciolince on the environment in Colombia – Environment – Life

There is a curious and tormented duty of fiction writers, which involves the imagination of the worlds. These worlds arise by changing certain circumstances of what we call, not without many doubts, the reality. What changes in these circumstances is usually not arbitrary: he imagines the possible. But sometimes we postulate even what seems impossible or what we would prefer never to happen: dreams of utopias or nightmares about dystopias. Utopias offer the psychological benefit of encouraging people to undertake change; Dystopias favor caution because they highlight the risks inherent in progress.

To imagine these possible worlds, the writer does not just think and let the fantasy roam, he observes, reads and also remembers. Perhaps other past worlds, real or imagined, offer clues as to what is sought or feared. After observing, reading, thinking and remembering what happened here or elsewhere, I have the impression that the best (or worst) future that I've applied for this territory that we call Colombia exposes primarily to the cataclysms that experts predicted by the effects of climate change on the planet

It is known that one of the few good things that left us the long conflict in Colombia is that our "corner house" in South America is one of the greenest and least environmentally damaged territories in the region. Despite deforestation caused by illegal crops, wild mining (legal and illegal), cutting forests in places unsuitable for agriculture, if we compare Colombia with the neighborhood (Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia or Ecuador), we will see that the least invaded Amazon, the least exploited tropical rainforests, the rivers and the páramos even richer in water and diversity are those of our country. The reason is very simple: the exploiters of these resources could not loot them freely through fear. It's a sad but real paradox. Fear of guerrilla warfare, narco-traffickers or paramilitaries, the almost total absence of the state and the lack of national or international investments have made that a big part of the campaign Colombia has been abandoned (…). It was enough for the news to come that Colombia was no longer a country so dangerous and so violent that the greedy eyes of the whole world and the Colombians themselves saw in this new unexplored border a thousand opportunities for their greed, for 39, exploitation of resources. , for investments.

As always in human history, the first thing that happens is the sawyers. On the shores of the Pacific, in front of the jungles of Chocó, approach more Chinese fishermen, but the Canadian dealers of precious woods. And along the rivers, century-old trunks, big as whales, go down to the sea, filling the pallets that will take them to the first-world cabinetmakers. Hard wood, black, red, white, purple, will delight collectors of rare objects and furniture (…).

While this is happening in silence and smuggling, lawyers' offices begin to work. Álvaro Uribe's government, by driving the guerrillas into the most remote areas of the jungle, said that the country was already a territory without violence and that the time had come to exploit the incalculable wealth of the country. El Dorado. The sale of express mining rights has been opened and voracious South African, Chinese, Canadian, North American and European companies have purchased exploration licenses for thousands and thousands of square kilometers of basement. Some bought almost at random, putting their index on the map, eyes closed, millions of hectares (…). The nation owns the basement and can sell these permits. And these permits are like bearer paper, they can be resold to the highest bidder on the market (…).

And the best came, which is always the worst: in some areas where homeowners and peasants could come back displaced by decades of violence, and when they thought they could devote themselves again to contemplating the landscape and small farms or livestock, the big news spread in some cities: AngloGold Ashanti (or any other transnational company) had found gold, gold, gold or silver, silver, silver or nickel , nickel, nickel or copper, copper, copper, on the territory. Or something like that. They would be rich, rich at last. The end of the conflict has therefore led to an immediate deterioration of environmental conditions in the most remote areas of the country. The river cbads that no one has dared to exploit for fear of violence are being invaded by artisbad miners. Forests and forests that no one has dared to go are devastated by sawyers looking for precious woods. The peasants and peasants who had abandoned the land for their fate have reconstructed them with extensive breeding or monocultures of very dubious effects on the environment. And this local degradation coincides with the global ecological disaster, to which our large, highly polluted cities also contribute, our local consumption of non-renewable energies and their mbadive export (coal and oil).

What will happen to climate change? in the high mountain ranges that characterize our most populated part of geography? What will be the effect on the coasts of sea level rise? What will happen to the fragile ecosystem of the jungle with the exacerbation of what has always existed, ie with even more torrential rains and droughts? much more rigorous and sustainable? We do not know it well, nothing can be said for sure, but the clouds that appear on the horizon do not announce anything easy, nothing good. I do not believe that catastrophes or the wonders of the future will have their origin in politics. But politics will have to deal with crises that have their origin in the environment. That is why it is necessary and urgent to devote the greatest efforts of the country (private and public) to mitigate the effects of the deterioration of the global environment and prevent tragedies.

What are the advantages we have as a starting point? Our immense wealth of freshwater and biodiversity. It is this great diversity that can be combated by adaptive successes to the sudden changes that will occur in climatic conditions: plants more resistant to moisture or drought, large water reserves that can to be filled in times of abundance and used in

There are blessed countries for their poverty (Greece, Italy) and countries cursed for their wealth. Our richest neighbor, Venezuela, is the typical case of the latter: the mining country par excellence was devoted in the last century to live from the oil rent (…). The model of production of oil without producing food has reached its right result: in the neighboring country, there is not much to eat because the oil money is no longer sufficient for import what is eaten, because in a fertile country like Venezuela almost everything that is eaten is imported. And then comes the humanitarian crisis that exists there and crosses the borders here (…).

That Colombia is a country of many cities and not one huge capital helps to absorb better humanitarian crises like this. But humanitarian crises (internal or external) could be much more sudden and violent in the face of a natural cataclysm.

We must prepare for migratory crises that rhetoric calls unimaginable, but we have a duty to imagine. If our greatest wealth is natural, our greatest threat also concerns the natural world, the environment. If there is resistance needed today in the well-informed and thoughtful population, it must be an ecological resistance.

What is ecological resistance? By producing food and producing energy with renewable resources. Colombia has exported to Venezuela, until recently, eggs, milk, coffee, chicken, meat, potatoes, rice and oil. This export ended when Venezuelans stopped having enough money to pay. But this is not the serious thing. What is serious, is that where eggs, milk, coffee, meat, potatoes, corn and rice are produced, the new mining companies have just announced that 39, there is gold, as I said above. And here they will have to forgive me, let me ask a candid and naive question: what is the point of gold? I think that with gold one of the most amazing chapters in the endless story of human stupidity could be written. Basically, gold is a useless metal. Resistant, shiny, no doubt, but with the exception of a crown on the molars, a few minimal amounts in microcircuits and jewelry that actually have only function to enrich it. , gold has no other purpose than to be cherished in the giant bank vaults of the world's central banks (…).

I come back to Colombia, I say, the greenest and richest freshwater country in Latin America, and I ask naively, candidly: is it worth it to destroying our mountains, cutting our forests the waters, ruining the landscape, destroying the "poor" links and traditions of peasant culture, provided that banks around the world can continue to accumulate in their cellars bright light ingots. a completely useless metal? We must resist this crazy logic that has led us to destroy the earth by two harmful addictions that we have: gold and the essence. Attention, I'm not against all mines and I do not believe that nature is untouchable. I am not a mystical ecologist (…).

I write these letters in front of a window in Aquitaine and I see in front of me a crystalline river, the Dordogne, green hills with forests and meadows, and a landscape that moves for its beauty (…) . My eyes dream and rest in this protected land that is not mine. And then I think about my land, La Oculta, the mountains of Jericó, Antioquia, the land of my grandparents, our Aquitania (because Antioquia is also a land of water, many waters) and I say to myself: yes to these peasants The Perigordians told them that there are tons of gold under their hills and behind their prehistoric caves, but to get them out, we have to dry the springs or contaminate the waters, break up the hills, blast the stone, cut down the forest and destroy the meadows, they get up, resist and say no, that the gold nuggets are not eaten and the nuts do, that the bees do not get honey from the mud, that miners do not live better than geese pastors and that it is better to have little gold, but live healthier and more years.

And if you can say it here, how can we not say it and also do it? (…).

As I like it a lot in the Dordogne, I know that a Frenchman would also very much like in the mountains of Antioquia. We must therefore resist the madness of mining in places that, for culture and centuries-old tradition, are a plant of water, beauty, food, birds and d & # 39; 39; air.

I read in the New York Times Trump reduced by 40% the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) budget, which fired scientists and academics who were part of its board of directors. And who plans to replace them with people belonging to the world of companies and companies that "produce wealth" (…). Research on the effects of pollution or human activities on the climate is no longer a priority. For Trump, environmental regulations do not allow the chemical industry, the coal industry, the extractive industry, the oil industry to work at home and abroad. country loses billions of dollars. That is why he also waived the Paris Agreement, which tied his hands to the madness of indiscriminate extraction and extraction.

I therefore conclude that environmental and public health problems have never been so political. If we believe that resistance is only in the rights of homobaduals or minorities, in the problems of immigration and not in the protection of the land as habitat, I think we are committing a serious error of distraction (… ). Populist politicians want to make headline news about the "terrible terrorist threat … Or, forgive me, the scope of the special jurisdiction for peace. It's good to argue about it, as long as it does not become a mere distraction maneuver. The most important struggle is, as always, in the basics: in the territory, in the land, in those who decide what can be done, in certain territories, with water, air and water. Earth. That's, at least, what the imagination tells me. My imagination as a novelist is more afraid of the collapse of the environment than any other threat in the world today.