Optimist Daily: Colombia’s outgoing president protected 42% of the country’s Amazon from mining

On August 4, three days before he left office, Colombian President Gustavo Petro signed a resolution placing 186,500 square miles of the Amazon off-limits to any new extraction. That means no new mining concessions, no new oil or gas contracts, and no environmental permits that would make either possible. The deadline was not incidental. Petro’s successor had campaigned on reviving oil exploration and legalizing fracking. What made this move unusual was the legal mechanism. The government reached back more than 50 years to invoke Article 47 of the Natural Resources Code, a statute that allows the Colombian state to exclude an entire region from private exploitation rights. It had been used before, in smaller pieces, but never applied to the whole Colombian Amazon at once. This is not a national park. What it does, specifically, is prohibit three things: issuing new mining concessions, signing new oil or gas contracts, and granting the environmental permits that accompany either. Read ON.