Regulating human interventions in Colombian coastal areas: Implications for the environmental licensing procedure in middle-income countries

Abstract

Although anthropogenic impacts could be assessed in any environment, coastal areas pose a particular challenge because of their special nature as the interface between land and sea. Therefore, this study evaluates the environmental regulatory framework for coastal interventions in Colombia, as an archetype of medium income countries (MICs), to derive implications for the environmental licensing procedure (ELP). The methods comprised two simultaneous pathways: a. An inventory of human interventions at the large scale area of the Colombian Caribbean Coast, with an estimation of the overall environmental impact; b. An analysis of the ELP in Colombia during the last 25 years. The study evidences several weaknesses, such as a consistent reduction in the number of works and activities covered in each new legislative. Moreover, the Colombian ELP currently regulates only four of the ten types of interventions with greater effect in its coastal zones. The discussions highlight some policy implications for the ELP in MICs, mainly based on how the impact of a type of intervention can be magnified in proportion to its frequency of occurrence, and the need to articulate instruments of environmental management and territorial planning. At last, the need to evolve the impact assessment of human interventions from environmental factors toward socio-natural processes is evidenced and further addressed, by the introduction of a susceptibility approach inspired on geomorphological processes. Overall, this study highlights important gaps of the Colombian ELP for coastal environments, which entails valuable lessons for MICs.

Climate change and spatial justice in coastal planning in Cuba and Brazil

“…The scientific literature records different uses of the coastal space, for example touristic, recreational, industrial, and residential usage, as well as those related to human settlements, urbanized or not, which intervene in this privileged space among others (BARRAGÁN, 2003;PEREIRA et al, 2019;BOTERO et al, 2020).…”

An Integrated Method for Landscape Assessment: Application to Santiago de Cuba Bay, Cuba

“…Landscape characterization revealed relief and vegetation as most representative of all the natural factors analyzed [14,61,71]. Birds were the most representative and important fauna, as well as the most visible animals in landscape.…”

Caracterización de las tipologías del medio físico construido en frentes de playa: Municipio Guamá (Cuba)

“…Se identificaron siete propuestas teóricas para la clasificación de playas a partir de las características del frente de playa, asumiéndose los siguientes tipos: 1) asociado a complejo turístico, 2) urbano, y 3) de asentamiento o poblado. Estas propuestas confirman lo apuntado por diferentes autores (Milanés, Pérez, Szlafsztein & da Silva, 2020;Milanes, Planas, Pelot & Núñez, 2020;Botero et al, 2020;Pereira et al, 2019;Batista, 2018a;2018b; La O, Salinas y Navarro) sobre considerar de manera diferenciada los territorios costeros atendiendo a la complejidad y tipologías de los mismos para garantizar una justicia costera dentro de su ordenamiento. conclusIones El municipio de Guamá en la provincia de Santiago de Cuba, fue el medio físico estudiado por su representatividad en los diferentes tipos de frentes de playa.…”

“…Algunos estudios se han focalizado en los procesos de conversión de pequeñas localidades y la configuración de frentes urbano-costeros (Dadon, 2020, Bruno y Sisti, 2001, las consecuencias ambientales económicas, sociales y culturales del crecimiento urbano, los sistemas de gestión, los modos de planificación de la urbanización turística (Pereira, Carvajal, Milanés & Botero, 2019;Pereira, Milanes, Sarda, Cuker & Botero, 2021;Milanés, Pérez, Cabrera & Cuker, 2021;Botero-Saltarén, Arrizabalaga Fal, Milanes-Batista y Vivas-Cortés, 2017) y los efectos de estos factores sobre la sustentabilidad a mediano y largo plazo (Botero, Pereira, Milanés & Pranzini, 2020).…”