URGENT CALL FOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND LIFE

Lobbying and corruption involved during the environmental licensing proceedings of Maurel & Prom petroleum multinational in COR-15 project (Boyacá, Colombia)

October 12, 2021

The aim of this text is to provide a timeline outlining the facts that resulted in Resolution 1795 of October 11, 2021, in which the National Environmental Licensing Authority (ANLA) decided to grant an Environmental License to MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. in the hydrocarbon project "Exploratory Drilling Area COR-15", located in the municipalities of Betéitiva, Busbanzá, Corrales and Tasco in Boyacá department (Colombia).

We undertake this effort with our hearts, our water and our territories' future in our hands. Our hope is to find solidary, empathetic, and committed national and international minds and hearts that may help us defending a decent future for current and coming generations.

November 16, 2016: The governor of Boyacá Carlos Andrés Amaya Rodríguez of the Partido Alianza Verde (hereinafter Green Alliance political party) invites mayors and legal experts to "review the rules in favor of our territory" during the Environmental Public Hearing of the MNorte project held in the municipality of Pesca (Boyacá). He also points out: "I am not going to risk so much, for so little. Especially when we have a serious experience with Corrales. Once again in Boyacá, we are not exchanging water for oil" (see minute 13:21 to 13:50 of the video https://youtu.be/PWFR80YHInU?t=801).

October 2018 to September 2019: The Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia (UPTC) conducts the Environmental Impact Studies of COR-15 project, hired by MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V.

Carlos Andrés Amaya Rodríguez, Governor of Boyacá of the Green Alliance political party at the time, requests the local communities to allow UPTC carry out the studies.

The local communities of Betéitiva, Busbanzá, Corrales and Tasco block UPTC's studies given their rejection towards the project and its impacts over water and territory.

October 7, 2019: MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. submits the Environmental License request for COR-15 project.

October 18, 2019: ANLA begins its administrative formalities regarding the Environmental License request of COR-15 project through Auto 8926.

November 27, 2019: ANLA requests additional information from MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. to evaluate the environmental feasibility of COR-15 project through Act 96.

January 27, 2020: MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. submits to ANLA the additional information requested through Act 96 of 2019.

April 30, 2020: ANLA orders closing the administrative formalities of COR-15 Environmental Licensing request through Auto 3629, based on Section 2.2.2.2.3.3.6.3 of Decree 1076 of 2015. In other words, this means that the additional information differed from that required by ANLA, or that it was INSUFFICIENT to evaluate the environmental feasibility of COR-15 project. Technical Concept No. 2338 of April 20, 2020 provided the support for Auto 3629, which stated:

(...) "that based on the information gaps in the Environmental Impact Study and the additional information submitted by the company MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V for the project "Exploratory Drilling Area COR-15", the Environmental Assessment Team, conceptualizes to give applicability to numeral 3 of Section 2. 2.2.2.3.8.1 of Decree 1076 of 2015, in the sense of ordering the closure of the Environmental License request and returning all the documentation provided [on] October 7, 2019 and [on] January 27, 2020" (...). (ANLA Technical Concept No. 2338 of 2020, Page 53 of 55).

The Environmental Assessment Team was staffed by contractors Diego Armando Ruiz Rojas, Concepción García Correa, Eliana Paola Reina Duran, Gino Moreno Herrera, Gladys Puerto Castro, Lina Fernanda Pérez Orjuela, Meylin Tatiana López Guerra and Sindy Tatiana Rojas Diaz, and officials Alba Ruth Olmos Clavijo (ANLA Economic Assessment Reviewer) and Ana Katherine Arteta Barragán (ANLA Hydrocarbons Group Coordinator).

May 18, 2020: The Legal Representative of MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. Patrice Tauzia, appeal against Auto 3629, which ordered to close the environmental license request formalities.

July 15, 2020: Through Auto 6655 ANLA reverts the First Article of Auto 3629 of April 30, 2020, deciding to continue the administrative formalities of the environmental license request of COR-15 project. Technical Concept No. 3800 of June 25, 2020 provided the support for Auto 3629, considering that there was the minimum required information for taking environmental decisions.

The Environmental Assessment Team issuing the new Technical Concept was staffed by contractors Alba Lucia Fonseca Camelo, Andrea Suárez Barrera, Cesar Leonardo Bayona Molano, Gladys Puerto Castro, professionals Karen Yiset Sánchez Piñeros, Néstor Fabio García Merlano, and José Freddy Duarte Barbosa (ANLA Technical Leader), Marcela García López (ANLA Technical Reviewer) and Ana Katherine Arteta Barragán (ANLA Hydrocarbons Group Coordinator).

As can be seen, two ANLA employees reviewed twice the same information, and endorsed with their signatures two completely opposite Technical Concepts. Why ANLA did not assign the same Environmental Technical Team for both Technical Concepts?

July 21, 2020: 1320 citizens from the local communities of Betéitiva, Busbanzá, Corrales and Tasco, the legal representatives of the Tasco Community Aqueduct Association (ASOACTASCO), the Latin American Institute for an Alternative Society and Law (ILSA), the Greenpeace Colombia Corporation, the Development Projects Service Corporation (PODION) and the Guamán Poma Corporation, and the Tasco Municipal Ombudsman request ANLA to conduct the Environmental Public Hearing of COR-15 project, a mechanism of citizen participation where people are heard within the environmental licensing process, providing opinions and arguments against or supporting the project.

November 13, 2020: ANLA announces that the Environmental Public Hearing for COR-15 Project will be held on December 18, 2020.

November 25, 2020: 883 citizens, ASOACTASCO and the Collective for the Protection of the Province of Sugamuxi (CPPS) demand to the Governor of Boyacá Ramiro Barragán Adame of the Green Alliance political party to respect the full refusal of the affected local communities against COR-15 project, to be coherent with his political party's principles and to cease encouraging the petroleum project through the Governor's Office of Boyacá. They also request the Governor of Boyacá to publicly state his position regarding COR-15 project, and to request ANLA to postpone the Environmental Public Hearing given COVID-19's sanitary circumstances and the lack of guarantees for citizen participation.

December 21, 2020: Boyacá Governor Ramiro Barragán Adame of the Green Alliance political party ignores the demands submitted on November 25, and delegates his Secretary of Mines and Energy, Mrs. María Elena Ortiz Nova, to answer the requests. The answer provided do not address fully and in detail the issues stated in the petition, thus violating the Fundamental Right to Respectful Petition enshrined in Article 23 of the Political Constitution of Colombia and developed by the Statutory Law 1755 of 2015. In addition, they declare themselves incompetent before any Hearing that may be requested.

March 25, 2021: ANLA imposes itself, and attempts to conduct the Environmental Public Hearing, despite the arguments provided through court actions submitted under Article 86 of the Political Constitution of Colombia.

ANLA suspends the Hearing, after verifying a lack of guaranteed conditions for exercising citizens' constitutional right to participate.

August 19-20, 2021: ANLA reopens the Environmental Public Hearing, in which 88 people participate with arguments against the environmental licensing project based on the additional information of COR15's Environmental Impact Study.

Twenty-two people presented pro-project arguments, most of them hired by MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. through the UPTC, who, ignoring the rules of this type of Hearings, exposed details of the Environmental Impact Study that were already known by ANLA's Environmental Assessment Team. For others, ANLA allowed them much more time, distorting the essence of the hearing and violating citizen participation by giving more opportunities to MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. to exhibit its project.

Additionally, ANLA allows the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) to intervene during the resumption of the Environmental Public Hearing, despite them not being legally registered and authorized to participate.

Ramiro Barragán Adame, Governor of Boyacá from the Green Alliance political party and his delegates did not participate in this event of public participation in environmental affairs, even though he was authorized by law to intervene in the Hearing.

All the other political parties present in Boyacá were also noticeable absent, and those who participated in the Hearing restricted their speeches to summarize the technical arguments prepared by other people, or just to position themselves politically with a protagonist's eagerness. To endorse their campaign promises to defend the territories from extractive activities, they must have analyzed the Environmental Impact Study on their own.

October 11, 2021: Regardless of the arguments against the project and the serious deficiencies of the Environmental Impact Study exposed during the Environmental Public Hearing, ANLA issues Resolution 1795 granting, in 511 pages, the Environmental License of COR-15 project to MAUREL & PROM COLOMBIA B.V. Against this Resolution, the only legal recourse is an appeal for reconsideration:

(...) "which may be filed before this Authority in writing at the personal notification, or within ten (10) days following the personal notification, or the notification by notice, or the expiration of the term of publication, as the case may be, in accordance with the terms of Article 76 of the Code of Administrative Procedure and Administrative Disputes" (...). (Article Seventy-first of Resolution 1795 of 2021).

Concluding remarks

The events described in this timeline show a drastic change in the technical position that the National Environmental Licensing Authority (ANLA) had until April 30, 2020 regarding the COR-15 Exploratory Drilling Area project. This 180° shift can only be explained thanks to the corruption that swarms and corrodes the guts of the Republic of Colombia. The national and departmental governments pulled the "strings" and lobbied as necessary to look good with the financiers of their electoral campaigns, and to redeem the good name of the public institution of higher education that they put at the service of multinational interests, thus betraying the spirit that founded it and its duty to be in favor of the rural populations historically attacked and beaten by repeated forms of violence.

Resolution 1795 of 2021 granting the Environmental License has set a very dangerous precedent in the environmental licensing of petroleum projects in Colombia. This Resolution has opened new frontiers for extractivism at the top of the Andes Mountains, and has challenged the democratic participatory process established in Colombia's Political Constitution (Articles 1, 2, 3, 40 and 103).

The Environmental Public Hearing, assumed with all seriousness and commitment by the local communities of Betéitiva, Busbanzá, Corrales and Tasco, seemed to be a theatrical play where ANLA posed as a guarantor of Social State of Rights and participatory democracy, just to finally decide based on politico-electoral interests, and not on the provided technical, scientific, social, cultural, economic, and archaeological documentation and evidence exposed during the Environmental Public Hearing.

Now we can understand why the Colombian Congress has been unwilling to endorse the Escazú Agreement, and why the Green Alliance political party has done so little about it. Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country for environmental defenders, as well as for the very existence of a healthy environment.

URGENT CALL!

Therefore, we make an URGENT CALL for national and international solidarity towards defending our territories, either by widely disseminating this document, or by providing us with the necessary support so that we can contest ANLA Resolution 1795 of 2021 and make it legally void. This resolution has been made publicly available in the following link to Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yR3tC695XieTEFsdvAPfprQ-9MpV9VY0/view?usp=sharing

The time remaining in the days ahead will be water and territory for us (and not gold, as it is popularly misused to say). We URGE the support of the people of France and all citizens of the world who feel the responsibility to make profound changes in the ways we relate to each other and to our territories. The global environmental crisis is not going to solve itself, and even less so if the leaders of the world's governments continue to bet on the economic model responsible for the environmental debacle.

Sincerely yours

Collective for the Protection of the Province of Sugamuxi

Collective United for the Territory of Tundama and Valderrama

Corrales in Context

Committee for the Defense of Betoyan Territory

Committee United for Tasco

Issued in Boyacá on October 12, 2021, 529 years after the beginning of the Sweeping Economic Development. How many more centuries of continued colonization?

Digital version of this document available at: https://sites.google.com/site/colectivosugamuxi/petr%C3%B3leo-provincias-de-tundama-y-valderrama/statement-7-cor15