For Colombians, protecting nature has never been more dangerous

• Colombia is deadliest country for environmentalists 
• Activists caught in ongoing conflict waged by gangs, rebels
• FARC splinter groups responsible for half of killings 

CALI, Colombia - A few hours' drive from the Colombian city of Cali where a United Nations biodiversity summit is underway, environmentalists risk being ensnared in fighting between drug traffickers and armed groups in places where the state’s authority is fragile.

"To be an activist is to have a target on your back," said 27-year-old Daniela Soto, a community leader belonging to Colombia's Nasa Indigenous people.

Soto survived a gunshot wound in her abdomen during anti-government protests that convulsed Cali in early 2021, but some members of her community have lost their lives defending nature, she said.

More than 10,000 soldiers, police and U.N. guards are mobilized to protect attendees at the COP16 summit, which continues this week, and buses ferrying delegates between the conference centre and hotels travel with police on board and motorbike escorts outside.

Colombia is the world's most dangerous place for environmentalists – with 79 people killed last year - the most ever in one country in a single year, according to nonprofit Global Witness.

The South American country has struggled to end six decades of fighting between the government, leftist guerrillas and criminal groups that descended from right-wing paramilitaries, which has left at least 450,000 dead and nearly 7 million displaced.

Community leaders who defend the environment are often targeted by armed groups, who see the activism as a threat that undermines their economic interests and influence. 

"My message isn't for those at COP16. The message is for the violent actors. Leave us alone and our land in peace," said Soto, who spoke to Context at the summit, where nearly 200 countries are debating how to stem rapid biodiversity loss.

Colombia has put security issues, human rights and dangers to environmentalists in focus at COP16 under the theme “Peace with Nature.”

New figures presented at COP16 by the think tank Pares showed that 361 environmental activists have been killed since 2018 in Colombia.

Two-thirds of the killings reported since 2018 have gone unpunished, according to the Pares report.

The high rate of impunity amid the rising numbers of murders of environmentalists is also undermining efforts to protect nature in one of the world's most biodiverse countries.

Last year a Reuters investigation found that murders of environmentalists in Colombia resulted in long-lasting negative effects on conservation and that some municipalities where activists were killed saw significant spikes in deforestation.

Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said at COP16 the high number of killings in was "very painful” and that a third of the total activists murdered in 2023 were Indigenous.

The ministry of interior runs a protection programme for at-risk activists belonging to 42 or so grassroots groups, providing them with bodyguards, bullet-proof vests and cars and mobile phones.

"The Colombian government is facing up to this, because we indeed know we have a problem. We know that defending the environment is stigmatized as opposition to development," Muhamad said.

Ongoing fighting

The government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels signed a peace deal in 2016, but the conflict continues in rural pockets, including some of the most biodiverse parts of the country, as crime gangs moved into former guerrilla strongholds alongside far-left FARC dissidents who rejected the peace accord.

The 2016 peace deal also came with environmental costs as lands previously controlled by FARC were opened to cattle ranching, illegal gold mining and drug crops like coca, the chief ingredient in cocaine, leading to significant deforestation.

In cases where the perpetrators of activists’ murders were known, more than half of the killings were attributed to FARC splinter groups, 20% to the National Liberation Army (ELN) insurgents and 16% to the powerful Gulf Clan drug cartel, according to Pares.

These groups are all active in the Pacific province of Choco, a biodiverse region with tropical forests that are plagued by illegal gold mining and logging. It is home to a majority Black population, and Afro-Colombian environmentalists face significant dangers.

The security situation in Choco has worsened in recent months after Colombia's government called off peace talks with ELN rebels in September, Choco Governor Nubia Carolina Córdoba, who has seven bodyguards, told Context/the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"It is a tricky situation," she said.

Grass-roots environmentalist Melissa Ochoa, who lives less than an hour’s drive away from Cali, said ELN rebels and FARC dissidents impose curfews and set up road blocks in the rural area.

"We are prevented from working with communities. You can't enter certain areas without their authorisation, you have to ask for prior permission," said Ochoa.

"It's limiting and makes it difficult to get in touch with youth in schools, farmers and women to organize ourselves."

In July, a dissident guerrilla group, Estado Mayor Central (EMC) announced on X it had ordered its units "not to affect the normal development of the COP16" as a "gesture of our will for peace."

Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez, who won the Goldman Environmental prize for activism in 2018, received death threats in the past for speaking out against illegal gold mining in her home province of Cauca, a hotspot of violence against activists.

At COP16, Marquez has raised the need for official recognition of Afro-descendant people in Colombia and across Latin America in conserving biodiversity, as well as the dangers environmentalists face.

“This allows us to show the faces of the women and men, who have put their lives on the line, to defend mangroves, to defend forests, to defend rivers, to defend nature," Marquez said at a COP16 news conference last week.

(Reporting by Anastasia Moloney; Editing by Jack Graham and Ayla Jean Yackley.)