Ícono Calendario 8/27/2024 Agricultural Frontier and Environmental Management Plan Formulation Processes in Strategic Páramo Ecosystems Presented at UPRA

It is worth noting that UPRA has rece​​ntly updated the national agricultural frontier, now totaling 42,944,940 hectares. These lands provide rural farmers with the opportunity to decide where and what to cultivate, enabling access to government incentives, projects, and programs. 

During the meeting, Corpochivor presented advancements in the environmental zoning of the Rabanal páramo, an essential input for strengthening the update of the national agricultural frontier. 

Hugo Díaz, coordinator of the Regional System of Protected Areas of Strategic Ecosystems for Corpoboyacá, emphasized: “UPRA has provided us with this platform to understand national perspectives on issues such as agricultural reconversion and the agricultural frontier, allowing us to generate guidelines with communities. These guidelines aim to continue agricultural activities with a sustainability focus, ensuring the minimum livelihood for communities while incorporating conservation goals for managing and protecting the páramo ecosystems delimited in the country.” 

Meanwhile, Álvaro Arias, from Environmental Management at CAR Cundinamarca, highlighted the significance of the event: “For us, this is crucial because in CAR's jurisdiction, there are six páramo complexes. Of those six, one is fully managed by CAR, while the remaining five are shared with other corporations. To formulate and adopt the Management Plans for those five páramo complexes, it is necessary to work within joint commissions. Here, we are gaining tools to help us in that process.” 

 

Finally, Adriana Pérez, UPRA's technical advisor, noted: “We had the opportunity to present to the environmental authorities the update of the agricultural frontier, focusing particularly on the 241,000 hectares that are conditionally included in páramo ecosystems. We also identified the need to design a collaborative roadmap with each environmental authority to analyze the environmental determinants that will allow us to incorporate them into the conditional agricultural frontier.” 

These discussions aim to create a collaborative and inter-institutional agenda that will reach more environmental authorities, enabling progress in addressing the needs of communities living in the páramos. This initiative also seeks to further update and strengthen the national agricultural frontier within páramo areas, particularly in the jurisdictions of Corpochivor, Corpoboyacá, and CAR Cundinamarca.