The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia

The “green monster” of sugarcane plantations carpeting Colombia’s Cauca valley conceals a multitude of human rights violations, finds a new report out today. They include violence, killings, land loss, displacement, denial of free, prior and informed consent, denial of rights to livelihood resources and the right to a healthy environment, among others. The sector in Colombia is also tainted by evidence of corporate abuse linked to ties with illegal armed groups and repression of social leaders. 

Undertaken as a joint collaboration between the Palenke Alto Cauca, the Black Communities Process (PCN) and the Forest Peoples Programme, “The Green Monster” investigation and report examine the nature of the sugarcane and derivatives business in Colombia and its impacts on the lives and territories of affected black communities. 

Read Report here  

The intent is to make visible the most significant human rights, environmental and territorial impacts of the sugarcane industry and supply chain, with a view to providing recommendations to improve corporate accountability and business conduct cutting across the sugar supply chain. The study also reiterates long-standing pleas for a total rethink of rural and agrarian development models and public policy. 

“This sugarcane cultivation has changed land use in a brutal way,” explained an Afro-descendant woman leader in 2020. “Before, agriculture was related to other activities in the territory, and people were self-sustaining.  

“Because these were cocoa lands, what can our elders say now when they see sugarcane where cocoa was once commercialised, and in some cases coffee, banana, yucca, and traditional corn were planted? And now with the sugar cane plantations, traditional food crops have been disappearing. They have been damaged because these sugarcane industries use chemicals that end up damaging the fruit of food crops that one has nearby”.