A win-win opportunity
In 2022, Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office issued three early warnings about imminent risks to the population of Chocó due to clashes between armed groups and drug traffickers increasing in the area.
The latest alert related to an armed strike in the lower Chocó last December, announced by the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest remaining guerrilla group in the country. In Colombia, armed strikes refer to actions by illegal armed groups in which they attack civilian life and official armed forces, by blocking roads and restricting mobility. The ELN claimed this was to control the military actions of The Gulf Clan (Clan del Golfo), another paramilitary group that profits from drug trafficking and has challenged the ELN’s territorial control in the Chocó jungles.
Carlos Devia, an expert in sustainable business and a professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Rural Studies at Javeriana University, believes there is a relationship between the conflict and the lack of opportunities in territories such as Chocó.
Sustainable business is a win-win opportunity for the country. If the communities benefit, so do the rest of us.
“Sustainable business is a win-win opportunity for the country,” he tells Diálogo Chino. “If the communities benefit, so do the rest of us. That’s what we have to aim for.”
He also points to the need to provide a market to attract more entrepreneurs. “The coca leaf grower is in this business because he has an effective buyer,” says Devia. “He has a market where he is guaranteed a sale and a profit. The same needs to happen for green businesses and other crops, to make them sustainable.”
The total absence of state services, such as electricity, drinking water and access roads, is a major obstacle in remote areas of the country like Chocó, Devia adds. “Even access to a telephone is very hard to come by in many communities,” he says.
Nevertheless, he believes there is a huge potential to create alternative and sustainable livelihoods. This is a necessity in a country like Colombia, where half the territory – 50 million hectares – is forest.
The green business plan should be adopted as a long-term plan for Colombia, one which transcends different political administrations, Devia believes: this would help to “keep violence and law-breaking at bay throughout the country.”
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