Publicación:

Las consultas populares mineras como mecanismos jurídicamente idóneos para prohibir la minería en las entidades territoriales

Resumen

For decades, the Colombian economic model has been extractive: extracting minerals to sell them as raw material. The value added by the Colombian State leaves it aside for the developed States to benefit from this practice. Mineral extraction generates impact (sometimes excessively harmful) not only in the subsoil, but in the soil. Over time, communities have been empowered and through certain legal mechanisms they have tried to ensure that mineral extraction is not carried out in their regions; The reasons used by mining opponents are generally ecological. One of these legal mechanisms is the popular consultations, which, when used regularly by local leaders, have caused the central government, urged by the mining multinationals, to be alarmed greatly and interpose all kinds of resources to prohibit such practice. The Constitutional Court has ruled in this regard. At first, he argued that territorial entities could, via popular consultation, prohibit mining in their territories if they considered extraction to be inconvenient; then, in response to a guardianship action filed by a foreign mining multinational, the Court argued that territorial entities could not prohibit mining in their territories via popular consultation. This setback originated the thesis of this academic work, since the authors consider that under the protection of the principle of progressivity the Court should not have made such a decision.