The world’s leading conservationists will flock to Cali, Colombia, this October for the U.N. biodiversity conference, COP16. Within Cali’s bustling urban environment, it’s easy to forget that the city lies at the foothills of Los Farallones de Cali, a major biodiversity hotspot and national park in the Andean mountain range. Migratory birds fly overhead and crystal-clear streams flow into the urban environment. The city is crisscrossed by several rivers and has one of the greatest bird diversity in the country.

But the beauty of the region produces a blissful ignorance.

At the conference, attendees will not be exposed to how antiquated conservation tactics have resulted in antagonisms between the state and the locals who reside in this Andean paradise right beside them. Nor will they see how these conservation methods have been unable to solve the complexities of economically insecure locals engaging in illegal gold mining.

When the national parks system (Parques) arrived to declare Los Farallones a national park in the 1960s, many locals say that the state adopted a hostile approach to conservation by imposing borders around the park zone, halting construction within, seizing farms, and removing people from their land. Their tactics reflect fortress conservation, a conservation model that assumes biodiversity is best protected by creating areas with zero human disturbance. This model views humans as separate from nature, often displacing Indigenous groups and long-term locals, even if it’s detrimental to the ecosystem.

As delegates to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity advance the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s target (Target 3) to conserve 30% of land, water and seas by 2030, it is worth considering the often-abrasive approach by which these goals and targets are implemented. Lasting damage from fortress conservation in Los Farallones illustrates the need for forward-thinking conservationists to value humans as an integral part of nature. Defending and implementing human rights is essential to the future of Target 3, climate action, and effective biodiversity protection and restoration.

Some farmers in Los Farallones are descendants of families that have been in the region for over 100 years. When Parques arrived, however, these people were called intruders. Jimmy Perez, a coffee farmer in Pueblo Nuevo, reflected on this issue:

“Parques didn’t recognize campesinos and asked them to restore their fields to how they were before, but these farms have been here a long time. They fined me and offered no economic alternative. It wasn’t until a political shift in 2018 that Parques began changing their ways.”

This shift occurred following the signing of the 2015 Agenda for Sustainable Development and 2016 Peace Accords, which softened the strict regulations imposed on communities in protected areas, recognizing their right to use the land for sustainable livelihoods.

Preserving Los Farallones by glorifying the Eurocentric concept of a “pristine wilderness” has hurt farming communities who have lived on this land for generations. Western conservation tactics such as this have long been used by governments and local authorities as an excuse to control territories. Natural parks and UNESCO classifications become tools to forcibly removing people from their homes. The idea of the “wild” becomes so powerful that conservationists are willing to displace rural communities in its name.

Who are the humans of Los Farallones?

People living in Los Farallones include a mix of farmers, conservationists, members of Indigenous groups, illegal miners, and ecotourism developers. Many residents arrived after being displaced by violence in their home departments of Tolima, Cauca, Nariño, Chocó or Antioquia. They live alongside a total of 1,310 species of flora and fauna documented by science.

Smallholder farmers in the region face incredible challenges making a living. Many have no savings and receive no pension. Given that farms are impacted by surrounding ecosystems themselves, farmers can have a vested interest in promoting the well-being of their crops, the soil, and surrounding flora and fauna. Albeiro Salar, a coffee farmer in Pueblo Nuevo, reports that on his 4.5-hectare (11-acre) farm, 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres) are reserved for conservation to protect a spring water source.

Beyond those engaged in agriculture, many other locals recognize the need to preserve the biological richness around them. For some, conservation means survival. Pance, a rural district in Los Farallones, is defined by the Pance River. Its water is threatened, however, by construction, mining, pollution and deforestation. Duanner Castaño, a conservationist and biologist from Pance, reflects:

“In Pance, we are conscious of the need to conserve. If we don’t conserve, we won’t have water.”

Illegal gold mining and complexities

While opportunities in ecotourism and sustainable agriculture in Los Farallones are growing, the financial hardship in rural Colombia has fueled a lucrative, dangerous and damaging industry in Los Farallones: illegal gold mining.

A dedicated local conservationist from the region, using the alias Javier, also once engaged in mining. He insists:

“You have to understand that I was in a moment of need, for myself and my family.”

Indeed, it’s easy to view miners as perpetrators of mass ecological destruction, but many are economically insecure individuals working to pay for basic needs.

Miners in the region create informal tent villages with human trafficking, drug smuggling, and power struggles between armed groups. Military interventions include mass arrests, pressured whistle-blowing among neighbors, and helicopter bombing of mining camps. The gold mining process uses mercury, lead and cyanide, which flow downstream and contaminate essential water sources. Locals test their taps monthly for these toxins.

Conservationist Duanner projects that “Cali is reaching a point where mercury [in the river’s sediment] is breaking down and reaching the water supply. Right now, there’s three times the normal amount of mercury.”

Illegal gold mining presents complex challenges for conservationists and officials; even some of the most essential stakeholders in preserving the local environment of Los Farallones have been involved in its destruction due to financial need.

Effective biodiversity protection must not view humans as adversaries or exclude them from conservation efforts. It must guarantee sustainable economic alternatives and actively engage those who rely on their local ecosystem for survival.

Effective conservation, according to the locals

Besides water contamination from mining, locals suffer from bribery-fueled construction projects, gentrification from ecotourism, inadequate medical services, insufficient drinking water aqueducts, and extreme weather caused by climate change.

Some of these challenges could be addressed by the plethora of environmental authorities in the region, including Parques, DAGMA (the mayor’s environmental policy group), the CVC (a regional environmental resource corporation), and Guardabosques (a governmental reforestation program) — if they were more efficient. Farmers are frustrated, saying that DAGMA and Parques say “no, no, no” to locals’ community development initiatives, while only contributing to conservation work when it serves them to do so. They feel as if Parques never appears and Guardabosques mostly stay in their offices in Cali, filling out forms.

The presence of so many institutions complicates community projects. Agroecological coffee farmer Don Fernando explains:

“We don’t have an aqueduct with potable water, and have spent three years trying to build one. If [water infrastructure] is for the benefit of the community, why doesn’t the government facilitate it? You have to go through Parques, DAGMA, CVC and the mayor’s office — and these entities are very disconnected.”

In another town in Los Farallones national park, Quebrada Honda, Don Manuel Masso confirmed the same: locals hosted fundraisers to buy pipes to transport potable water between homes, but bureaucracy within Parques prevented their installment. As a result, the pipes are waiting in a shed while locals remain without clean drinking water.

At the core of these tensions with state institutions, locals say, is a lack of respect for locals’ contributions to conservation in Los Farallones.

They feel as if the CVC and Parques restrict their access to ancestral territory, despite locals’ successes spearheading conservation projects, such as native tree planting and trash cleaning. As an ecological educator, Duanner also tried to mount camera traps in the forest to document local biodiversity. “Parques told me to remove the cameras,” he said. “They said we would need to receive permission as researchers, and for that you need to be [formally educated] biologists.”

Locals suggest the key to conserving the biodiversity of Los Farallones will be more collaborations between government, scientists and community members. In order for positive relationships to be established, they hope authorities will promote locals’ processes. It’s the people living outside of cities who use their ancestral wisdom to save biodiversity — and these people are not highly valued. Outside institutions accuse community members of felling trees, of contaminating, of mining, but community members have also launched many impactful conservation projects that have not been supported.

The fortress conservation mentality lingers, permeating conservation discourse where governmental control is prioritized over community-driven efforts. In Los Farallones, this has led to the devaluation of biodiversity stewardship by local people, who are seen as lacking legitimacy because they don’t have advanced degrees and use the land instead of fencing it off. The implementation of Target 3, to protect 30% of land, sea and water by 2030, must include those who live and work closest to the land.

As the world’s largest biodiversity conference comes this year to Cali, it’s worth considering who is truly living alongside the flora and fauna that characterize the region. The rights of those living outside the urban core, who have long      cared for the land — both feeding its people and maintaining vital habitats for other life-forms — must be safeguarded.

Alex Reep is a 2023-2024 U.S. Fulbright scholar in Colombia, researching reciprocity for the use of genetic resources from Indigenous, Afro-descendent and farming territories.

Charlotte Sangouard is an agrosocial facilitator and landscape architect with expertise in agroecological transition projects with campesinos in Colombia.

Banner image: Canopy coverage over a coffee farm in Los Farallones de Cali, Colombia. Image by Alex Reep for Mongabay.

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