On February 27, Transparencia por Colombia, in its capacity as Technical Secretariat of the Civil Society Roundtable for Transparency in the Extractive Industries, presented the preliminary results on “Identification of good practices in the dissemination of public environmental information in the extractive sector.“, with the support of the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives of the Canadian Embassy.
Andrés Hernández, Director of the Citizenship Area of Transparency for Colombia presented the findings and recommendations regarding access to and dissemination of environmental information. According to the director of the citizenship area, three tools were taken into account to identify good practices: information available on company websites; citizen perception of environmental information of interest in areas of extractive activity; and public environmental information available in public entities”.
In general, useful environmental information was found on the websites in the management reports; however, it is necessary to develop a better system of dissemination and pedagogy for the use of data.
During the event, the Ocasa Corporation, the Alliance for Responsible Mining Foundation and Cordupaz presented the main results related to the citizen consultation carried out in the territory and the main challenges both in terms of the information that is necessary for citizens and the challenges to promote better citizen participation.
The citizen consultation with social leaders in Córdoba, Meta and Antioquia revealed that there is little knowledge of mandatory environmental measures, voluntary investments, mitigation measures and environmental impact prevention. However, the study identified that citizens have a greater interest in learning about environmental information from companies. .
Finally, the information from public entities is currently scattered and not very comparable, which implies that work must be done to build channels for disseminating the results of monitoring and control by the environmental authorities to the public and to the private sector. environmental licenses, environmental management plans and environmental compliance reports.
