Podcasts · The Land & Climate Podcast

How is Colombia’s sugar cane industry harming Black communities?

· 22 min

Episode How is Colombia’s sugar cane industry harming Black communities?

0:00 21:45

As the UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to María Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest People’s Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia.

A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the region’s wetlands have been drained in order to plant sugar cane, resulting in Afro-descendant peoples being displaced from their ancestral lands and stripped of vital resources.

Bertie and María discuss the report’s findings and how international summits such as COP16 present key opportunities to protect the rights of Indigenous people that live in biodiversity hotspots. Further reading:

• Read the full report: The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley, October 2024 • The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia, June 2021 • 'Colombia’s cane industry efficient but potentially damaging', Mongabay, March 2017

Send us Fan Mail

Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

The episode on the publisher’s site (opens in a new tab)

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.