The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley

"The green monster". This is what they call the monoculture of sugar cane in the Cauca River Valley. This was also the title of the first policy document of this collection published in 2021. Three years later, as Cali prepares to host COP 16 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Palenke Alto Cauca of the Black Communities Process, Enramada: spaces for action and the Forest Peoples Programme publish new research findings on the impacts of sugarcane monoculture on biodiversity and the livelihoods of the black people in the Cauca River Valley.

In this second installment, we denounce the dispossession of water and amphibious spaces, including the wetlands and protective zones of the Palo, Paila, Desbaratado, Güengüé and Zajón Taula rivers, all tributaries of the Cauca River.

Research and a social mapping exercise carried out with a group of older adults and young people from the municipalities of Puerto Tejada, Villa Rica, Caloto, Guachené, Padilla and Miranda, in the north of the department of Cauca, made it possible to draw maps of the waste produced by the sugar cane industry in the north of Cauca.

Through the maps, these locals recalled traditional practices of the black people that were dying out as the cane plantations spread. One of the biggest impacts was the loss of the ‘Finca Ancestral’ (Ancestral Farm), an agroforestry system based on the knowledge of the black people that contributes to the conservation of biodiversity, fundamental to their way of life.

The social cartographies identified key spaces from satellite images and aerial photographs, to document some of the dispossession practices used by the sugar industry to take water sources.

Finally, we present the barriers to accessing the information required for the accountability of two sugar mills that have an important influence in the north of the department of Cauca: Incauca S.A.S. and La Cabaña S.A. We denounce the lack of transparency of these companies and the opacity of their value chain.

 

“Look, now that they have finished the farm, the people are poorer, more humiliated, the farm is a resistance to live. The farm is one's resistance to live. It is freedom! And this was done by our ancestors who were slaves. They always went to the bush, and from what they had, they sowed for themselves. Because they had the hope of being free... And we realized that, when the sugar mills were established, people began to lose that freedom." - Testimony in Video Mi Fink

This publication is currently available in Spanish and will soon be available in English.

Read a visual summary of the publication in English and Spanish.