Environmental criminal law to tackle deforestation and land grabbing in Colombia

Organized by UNODC Country Office Colombia in cooperation with National Land Agency, and Registry and Notary Superintendence of Colombia.

Colombia has a great biodiversity that is threatened by deforestation that destroys the natural forests of its territory and affects the most important environmental areas that are within the Amazon, putting its ecological future at serious risk.
The latest report presented by the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies -IDEAM indicates that in 2020, 171,685 hectares of forest were lost. The Amazon suffers the highest affectation in San Vicente del Caguan, La Macarena, and San José del Guaviare, about 39,000 hectares were deforested, which represents more than 22% of the total figure of the seed forest cover for the country.
Faced with this situation, it has been detected that land grabbing is one of the main drivers of deforestation, therefore, in line with the objectives of preventing, controlling and reducing these figures, the UNODC Prevention and Environmental Justice Program (PROJUST), together with the authorities for the control, inventory and monitoring of transactions of supposed property located in environmental areas address environmental crime with:

1. Detection of the typologies of land grabbing, usurpation or illegal appropriation of land.

2. The identification of the modus operandi of criminals, in addition to the agents and the different actors.

3. Use of property in violation of environmental regulations.

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