Project that seeks to protect caves in Colombia to the point of becoming law, despite opposition from the Ministry of Mines

Bill 218 of 2020 seeks to adopt measures aimed at the effective conservation, scientific study, identification, restoration and sustainable use of speleological heritage within the national territory. This one, which obtained unanimous approval in the sixth committee and then in the plenary of the Senate, will now pass through the House, if approved, it would go to presidential sanction.

Faced with this project, the Ministry of Mines and Energy issued a concept at the end of February, in which it requests the Sixth Commission to close it. He argued that “the measures suggested by the legislative initiative for the environmental protection of places that constitute speleological heritage ignore that such places already have a normative basis for their identification and protection.”

They also emphasize that “this bill may generate conflicts over previously acquired mining rights, especially those developed in limestone rock and marble.”

For his part, Senator Iván Darío Agudelo, who is promoting the initiative, told El Tiempo that together with the Geological Survey, the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences and several universities began the task of processing the bill.

“At present, there is not even an inventory of the existing speleological heritage, nor are there clear measures for its protection and conservation, which has led to uses that end the existing biodiversity and even the possibility, as proposed by the ministry itself, that mining permits are being issued in these territories, putting at risk the large water reserves that are there,” Agudelo explained to the media.

It is noteworthy that the exploration of these underground cavities is still little known at the national level, so the initiative aims to achieve an organization in this field to promote scientific research and education of the general population.

Agudelo has repeatedly stressed that caves are important repositories of ancient remains of ancestral cultures and that these places are key to the sustenance of other lives and numerous populations. He has also emphasized that from several points of view: geological, biological, environmental, paleontological and anthropological.

For his part, Juan Carlos Higuera, director of the Colombian Society of Speleology, said that caves, caverns and everything competent to speleology are still unknown in Colombia. Under this concept, other scientists have insisted on the importance of protecting caves and point to the lack of laws to protect these sites in the country.

Bill 218 of 2020 wants the Ministry of Environment to create a whole legal framework to protect these spaces so that they are part of the Single National Register of Protected Areas (RUNAP) and the National System of Protected Areas (SINAP), as is currently the case with other types of protected ecosystems.

It should be noted that, in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Russia and the member countries of the European Union, there are similar laws protecting these sites that are of great environmental and cultural importance, in order to preserve underground habitats and their historical and archaeological value.

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