By AFP | 2024-12-17

CHOCÓ, Colombia -- In 2016, a Colombian court made a landmark ruling, granting legal rights to a vital river in the northwestern Chocó jungle, which was being ravaged by illegal mining.

This ruling sent a strong message on environmental protection.

The landmark decision, which came the same year the government inked an historic peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas who controlled much of Chocó, compelled the state to protect the Atrato river, the lifeblood of the region.

A new dawn seemed possible in Colombia's poorest, conflict-scarred department, where dozens of children had died from mercury poisoning due to illegal gold mining in the river.

But eight years later, the Atrato is still dotted with illegal dredging barges that churn up the riverbed in search of gold. New armed groups have filled the void left by FARC fighters. Locals still fear health risks from the river's turbid waters.

The plight of the Atrato underscores the challenges facing conservationists in conflict-ridden areas.

The Atrato snakes 750km across Chocó, from the Andes and through thick jungle to the Caribbean Sea.

In the near-absence of paved roads in the region, the river and its tributaries are the main conduits for passenger and cargo transport, as well as being a vital source of food.

"It is like an arterial vein... without it, we would not exist," Claudia Rondan, a 41-year-old environmental activist from the Embera Indigenous community, told AFP.

River is 'sick'

Rondan is one of 14 leaders from riverside communities who act as "guardians" of the Atrato, helping to ensure compliance with the 2016 court ruling.

But she feels powerless to revive a waterway she describes as "sick."

Ramon Cartagena, a 59-year-old environmentalist and guardian near the river's source in El Carmen de Atrato, is equally despairing.

"There is no life at all in the river," he said.

"Our parents left us ... a translucent, clear river, and today we have an obligation to do the same, and I think we are failing."

The Atrato starts at 3,900 meters above sea level in the Western Cordillera, the lowest branch of the Colombian Andes.

At the source, the water is crystal clear and fit for drinking.

But by the time it widens out near Chocó's main city of Quibdó, its fast-flowing, murky waters are laced with mercury, a key ingredient in gold mining that has been blamed for the deaths of dozens of children in the past decade.

Colombia is the country worst affected by mercury pollution, a United Nations report found in 2018.

In Quibdó, fishmongers complain they can't find buyers for their catch, because residents fear being poisoned.

The river's mercury levels are safe, Arnold Rincon, director of the local environmental authority, said.

But some villagers show signs of "chronic poisoning," Jose Marrugo, a scholar of mercury pollution at the University of Cordoba, in northern Colombia, said.

Look the other way

As of mid-September, the military had destroyed 334 illegal mining machines in the Atrato river.

But the dredging continues regardless.

On a visit to the region earlier this year, AFP saw several ramshackle mining rafts on the river.

"People are afraid to report it; everyone remains silent," Bernardino Mosquera, another of the Atrato's guardians, told AFP.

That includes the river's custodians. They say they have received death threats for combating illegal mining.

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists, with 361 killed since 2018, the Colombian peace foundation Pares said in a report in October.

The judge who endowed the Atrato with basic rights, Jorge Ivan Palacio, has blamed "a lack of political will" and corruption for the state's failure to properly implement the ruling.

In a damning indictment, Colombia's Ombudsman's Office, which oversees the protection of civil and human rights, said there was "no evidence of any kind of progress towards effective conservation" in the region since 2016.