Project
Photo: Alejandro Balaguer / Fundación Albatros MediaVictory: Panama Bay is Legally Protected
Panama Bay, one of the world’s most important nesting and roosting sites for migratory birds, is now permanently protected, thanks in part to AIDA’s expertise in international law.
The bay supports endangered species, including jaguars and loggerhead turtles, as well as the vast majority of the country’s fishing industry. Its coastal mangroves capture 50 times more carbon pollution than a tropical forest of similar size. Mangroves also protect coastal communities from storm surges that grow in severity as the climate warms. Panama has already lost 75 percent of its mangroves.
In 2012 tourism developers had secured a Supreme Court decision overturning the National Environmental Authority’s decision to protect the bay as a wildlife refuge.
AIDA worked with the Environmental Advocacy Center (CIAM), a Panamanian environmental law organization, to defend Panama Bay’s protected status. We submitted a brief containing arguments based on international law. We made analogies between Panama Bay and Las Baulas National Marine Park in Costa Rica. In a legal case about Las Baulas, a balancing test found that the public right to a healthy environment outweighed the interests of tourism developers.
Then, on February 2, 2015—World Wetlands Day—Panama passed a law creating Panama Bay Wetland Wildlife Refuge. The law emphasizes the importance of an ecosystem approach to management and the rational use of wetlands, as described in the Ramsar Convention.
AIDA and CIAM will continue working to see that the law is implemented properly and to ensure the protection of Panama Bay wetlands.
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The board of directors and team of AIDA, the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, are announcing a transition in its leadership. After 18 years of dedicated service, Astrid Puentes Riaño has decided to step down from her role as co-executive director, effective August 31, 2021. Today, AIDA is a solid organization with regional presence, a committed board of directors and strong internal leadership. As such, the time is right for a transition and to further strengthen the organization for the benefit of Latin America’s people, communities, and environment. Anna Cederstav, current co-executive director, will continue in a leadership role, and in the coming weeks we will begin the process of recruiting new executive leadership. At this time of transition, we would like to express our deep appreciation and gratitude to Astrid. For nearly two decades, she and Anna have led AIDA and its team of legal and scientific professionals in working with hundreds of partner organizations in more than ten countries of Latin America. As a result, AIDA is today one of the most effective environmental law organizations in the region. Astrid’s vision, strategic leadership and powerful command of various issues, jurisdictions, and national and regional laws, have strengthened AIDA and increased its impact. At the same time, Astrid has become one of the savviest and most dedicated environmental rights litigators in Latin America. She has helped establish the link between human rights and the environment and spearheaded efforts on climate change and climate justice in the region. Astrid has been, and continues to be, a mentor to her colleagues, and we are all better because of her leadership, which we will miss. We are confident that she will continue to bring her passion, dedication and expertise to the defense of the environment and human rights in Latin America and around the world. The AIDA board and team congratulate Astrid on all she has accomplished with AIDA and look forward to continuing our collaboration with her. We thank her for all she has contributed and wish her the best in her future endeavors. We are grateful for the support of each of our allies and reiterate our commitment to working to achieve environmental justice, climate justice and strong environmental governance in our beloved region.
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If you’re seeking to improve air quality in your city or working to halt a project that poses risks to the people and environment in your community, you are an environmental defender, although you probably haven't thought of it that way. Defenders are on the front lines of the battle to protect the environment and human rights, challenging public and private interests. Many of them face great difficulties in doing so, suffering from serious rights violations like persecution, threats, the use of public force, legal sanctions and even assassination. According to Global Witness’ most recent report, 212 murders of environmental and territorial defenders were recorded in 2019. Latin America was the most affected region, with Colombia leading the list with 64 murders. Despite the fact that States have the obligation to protect, respect and guarantee the rights of those who defend the environment, violence against them is worsening. On April 22, Earth Day, the Escazú Agreement came into force. It is the first environmental treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean that values the work of environmental defenders and obliges States to protect them and punish actions that violate their rights. Marcella Ribeiro, a Brazilian attorney with AIDA's Human Rights and Environment Program discusses the reality of those who defend the environment in Latin America, and the leading role that governments should play in protecting them. What is the current situation of environmental defenders worldwide and particularly in Latin America? We are going through a moment of extreme vulnerability. At the beginning of the pandemic, and particularly in the countries that are home to the Amazon, media covered shifted to focus only on news related to COVID-19. In this context, defenders were increasingly threatened and some were even killed without any public repercussions. In what way did the pandemic exacerbate their vulnerability? I am going to speak from the perspective of Brazil, where I am located. Environmental human rights defenders have had to defend themselves against both the state and companies that seek to enter their territories and implement a vision of development that is not in line with the vision of the communities themselves. Why is it important to protect the people who defend the environment? Because they are the first force there is for the defense of territory, nature and human rights, not from an individual perspective, but from a collective one. What they do is protect all of us, our rights, our air and our water, even our food security. Defenders prevent our planet from entering into a situation of no return: once the forest is cut down or the river is polluted, there will be no way to recover those ecosystems. With the entry into force of the Escazú Agreement, how does the situation of these people change and how can they be guaranteed access to justice? The Escazú Agreement is the first international legal framework focused entirely on defenders that seeks to ensure that justice and guarantee their rights. Not all Latin American countries have ratified it. This agreement complements and supports efforts to protect them, but for it to be effective we need countries to truly integrate these responsibilities into their national systems so that defenders can use it to their advantage. Political will is vital to protect those who defend the environment, how do you assess progress in this regard? It is evident that environmental defenders in Latin America are being increasingly threatened, even murdered. As this issue gains visibility, I believe that we are seeing a change and an increase in concern from States, even if it is not entirely genuine. While it is difficult to believe in the political, autonomous and altruistic will of Latin American governments, I do believe that the visibility achieved by the Inter-American Human Rights System, the United Nations and NGOs working to document and link the motivations behind these murders gives us a collective strength. Megaprojects should be implemented with a human rights-based development, but what happens when a State opposes the will of people or communities to reject them? Often in Latin America, States decide that a project is going to be implemented regardless of community resistance, or environmental risks related to the project. That is not connected to development, but to corruption. Promoting projects that we know are going negatively impact thousands of people is directly connection to corruption. We need stronger links between those of us working on human rights and environmental issues and those investigating corruption, in order to try to break those links before they are implemented. Given their work for the common good of all humanity and the increasing violence defenders face, AIDA has developed a guide that explains the obligations States have regarding the protection of environmental defenders. Read more here!
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This increase has been associated with the leakage and flaring of methane from fracking operations. Although methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, it has a relatively short life cycle in the atmosphere, meaning that reducing its emissions could help the world meet our climate goals more quickly. Colombia is an example of how the push for fracking contradicts the urgent need to combat the climate crisis and its damages. Although it is not legal to carry out fracking operations in the country because its regulation is temporarily suspended, the government has not stopped the development of pilot projects of this technique and continues to anchor its energy policy on hydrocarbons. At the same time, there is a national and international push to stop the advance of fracking in Colombia. While the Council of State makes a final decision on the regulation, two legislative initiatives are underway: one that seeks to prohibit the implementation of fracking nationwide, and another that would prohibit the exploration and/or exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbons by any technique. In the framework of the parliamentary treatment of both bills, which are expected to be unified, authorities from the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) participated in public hearings, in which they called on Congress to approve the legislation that would allow Colombia to move toward a fair and low-emission energy transition. The case for protecting people and the climate In his intervention, David Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, referred to the climate crisis as "serious and unprecedented", highlighting that its impacts on human rights "disproportionately affect poor, vulnerable and marginalized people." 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In general, the extractive industry "increases the risk for environmental defenders, territorial occupation and the impact on the rights of the communities surrounding the projects," added Soledad García Muñoz, the IACHR’s Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights. In sum, the representatives of the international organizations reported on the unfeasibility of fracking in climatic, social and even economic terms: "When the real costs of fracking are taken into account, it becomes evident that these far exceed the alleged economic gains," emphasized Orellana. They referred to the international obligations of the Colombian State in terms of human rights and climate change, contained in various instruments. Among those, they cited Advisory Opinion 23/17 on human rights and environment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; General Comment 36 on the right to life, contemplated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; as well as the Joint Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change that five human rights bodies issued in 2019. The statement expresses that "failure to take measures to prevent foreseeable harm to human rights caused by climate change, or to regulate activities that contribute to such harm, could constitute a violation of States' human rights obligations." The common recommendation: ban fracking At the conclusion of their interventions, the international authorities expressed their support for a law banning fracking throughout the Colombian national territory: David Boyd argued,"to address the climate crisis, Colombia must urgently pursue a low-carbon, climate-resilient future, replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy in light of its obligations under constitutional law, international human rights law and the right to a healthy environment." He concluded, "the government of Colombia must pass a law to ban fracking." Marcos Orellana pointed out that "the Congress of the Republic of Colombia has the opportunity to raise its gaze towards the future and preserve the legacy of its megabiodiversity." In that sense, he pointed out, "the protection of the right to live in a toxic-free environment inspires my respectful call for Congress to adopt a law banning fracking." Soledad Muñoz said that "the approval of a bill whose purpose would be to put an end to the exploration and exploitation of unconventional oilfields, prohibiting practices such as fracking, would represent a valuable measure of environmental protection, the reduction of socio-environmental conflicts and compliance with the commitments emanating from the Paris Agreement and the Inter-American (Human Rights) System itself." Continuing to base local economies on the extractive industry and promoting fracking only increases the dependence of our societies on fossil fuels, deepening the causes of the climate crisis and the damage it does to the most vulnerable among us.
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