A Bill Seeks to Give Rights to the Sumapaz River: What Does That Imply; Has It Worked in Other Cases?

Environmental attorney José Vicente Zapata was interviewed by El Tiempo about a bill that seeks to recognize Colombia's Sumapaz River as an entity with rights. The bill's objective is guarantee the river's conservation and protection by electing legal representatives from the ethnic and rural communities in its zone to guard the rights granted to it in the law. This idea intends to imitate Sentence T-622 from the country's Constitutional Court in 2016, which recognized the rights of the River Atrato. Mr. Zapata argued that this declaration has not worked to improve the river's conservation, because the ruling created rights without responsibilities or acciones to develop, and he explained the same would happen with the Sumapaz River.

"[If rights are given to the Sumapaz River] nothing will happen, because this is the romanticism in which we live. Let's give rights to the river, let's give rights to the tree, and the tree protects itself and the world changes and we are all happy. In the real world, that does not happen," he said. "What we need is to invest in these bodies of water... We can grant 100,000 rights to the Atrato River and the Atrato River is not going to be any less polluted if we do not make investments. But we can keep living as we live in Colombia, with regulations that say much and do little."

READ: A Bill Seeks to Give Rights to the Sumapaz River: What Does That Imply; Has It Worked in Other Cases? (Subscription required)