We congratulate Greengrants grantee Libia Grueso, co-founder of Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) in Colombia, for winning a 2004 Goldman Environmental Prize. She was recognized for her work leading rural Afro-Colombian communities toward greater territorial autonomy and for helping to protect Colombia’s Pacific rain forest. Grueso is credited with leading a campaign that gained territorial rights on 5.9 million acres for Afro-Colombians, the descendants of slaves emancipated in the 1850s and still a persecuted minority.
Grueso’s ongoing campaign to protect Colombia’s Pacific rain forest is based on a belief that by preserving cultural traditions of black communities and helping to unite them in common cause, they will be able to resist the powerful forces now arrayed against them – and against the rain forest. These forces include mining companies, oil and gas interests, loggers, palm plantations, coca growers, paramilitaries and the Colombian government, which continues to undercut protections for parks in the Pacific region.
With an estimated 200,000 acres of Pacific rain forest lost each year to gold mining alone, the region has become a fierce battleground. Mass killings have taken the lives of hundreds of Afro-Colombians, and more than a million have been displaced. Systematic assassinations have silenced more than 70 Afro-Colombian leaders, and Grueso lives with the understanding that her work puts her at considerable risk.
Few legal protections are available in this remote region, but PCN and its allies have used Colombia’s Law 70 (passed in 1993, thanks to Grueso) to begin enforcing the territorial and cultural rights of Afro-Colombians. Law 70 has been an indispensable tool for bringing legal challenge against destructive development projects in the Pacific rain forest and coastal areas.
In communities throughout the region, Grueso and the 120 groups that make up PCN are organizing workshops and other programs to help communities restore traditional farming techniques and improve self-sufficiency. They are helping river communities along the Yurumanguí improve rice and sugar cane production on their rich alluvial soils. At the same time, they are working at the highest levels to pressure the Colombian government to enforce protected area regulations and laws against destructive development. Grueso’s recent recognition puts her in an increasingly good position to bring international attention and support to the forests and the people of Colombia’s Pacific coast.
For a great article about Grueso, see her Goldman Environmental Prize profile.
For more on PCN, click here.