The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, now under the administration of Abelardo De La Espriella, directly revoked this Wednesday Resolution 0994 of August 6, 2026, through which the government of Gustavo Petro had delimited and declared as a definitive Renewable Natural Resources Reserve a sector of 1,499.28 hectares of the micro-watershed of the La Baja stream, in the Santurbán Massif, within the jurisdiction of the municipality of California, Santander.
The revocation was formalized in Resolution 1037 of August 13, 2026, signed by the new Minister of Environment, Fabio Alberto Arjona Hincapié, just one week after the outgoing government issued the act that is now nullified.
Two legal reasons behind the revocation
The text of Resolution 1037 explains that the decision to revoke the La Baja reserve is not due to a simple change of government, but to two specific legal circumstances that, according to the Ministry, compromised the validity of the original administrative act.
The first concerns a challenge that had been filed against the then acting Minister of Environment, Irene Vélez Torres, on August 4, 2026, that is, two days before she signed Resolution 0994. That challenge questioned the impartiality of the official to continue leading the process related, among other matters, to the declaration of the La Baja reserve.
Colombian law (Article 12 of Law 1437 of 2011, known as CPACA) establishes a clear rule: when someone files a challenge against a public official, the administrative action that the official is processing is automatically suspended until it is decided whether the challenge is valid or not.
According to the new resolution, that legal suspension was never respected, as the Ministry neither processed nor resolved the challenge before the then acting minister signed the resolution that created the reserve.
For the Ministry, this means that Resolution 0994 was signed at a time when, by law, no definitive decision could be made on that file, which constitutes a “manifest opposition to the law” and enables the entity itself to revoke the act directly, without the consent of the interested party, since it is a decision of a general nature and not a consolidated particular right.
The second reason is related to a tutela ruling issued on August 10, 2026, by the Eighth Administrative Court of the Judicial Circuit of Bucaramanga, which resolved an action filed by a leader of the Organization of Women Miners and Environmentalists of Soto Norte.
The judge found that, during the public consultation process of the draft resolution, the Ministry of Environment violated the fundamental rights of access to information, participation, and due administrative process.
Among the irregularities proven in the judicial process, it was established that when the public consultation began on July 14, 2026, the cartographic annex containing the official delimitation of the reserve had not been published and was only incorporated eight days later, on July 22. It was also demonstrated that the Technical Support Document of the project was modified on July 15 without explaining to the public what those changes consisted of.
The judge concluded that extending the participation period, as the Ministry did until August 2, was not enough to remedy those faults, because the community of California, mostly rural inhabitants with limited access to technological tools, never had a real opportunity to study the complete technical and cartographic information nor to participate in in-person socialization spaces. Therefore, the ruling ordered the public consultation stage to be completely restarted and expressly stipulated that if the resolution had already been issued at the time of notification of the ruling, it would automatically be nullified.
Since Resolution 0994 had already been signed on August 6 — that is, four days before the ruling — the court order was directly activated on that act. In this sense, the new Ministry of Environment then decided to formally revoke it to comply with the ruling and, at the same time, correct the irregularity related to the unprocessed challenge.
What Minister Arjona said
On his X social media account, Minister Fabio Arjona explained the reasons for the revocation in simple terms. He pointed out that, one day before handing over power, the previous government made an “express delimitation” in an improvised manner, without resolving the challenges filed against former Minister Irene Vélez, and despite the existence of an admitted tutela pending resolution for alleged violation of the right to participation. He recalled that a judge ordered the procedure to be restarted due to these possible violations.
The official clarified that the revocation does not mean abandoning the need to protect the La Baja micro-watershed, but that the process is rolled back to the point where effective participation of all actors ceased to be guaranteed, as ordered by the judge.
For those wondering what happened with Santurbán and for those who tell half-truths: one day before handing over the mandate, the previous government decided to make an ‘express’ delimitation so improvised that it omitted resolving the challenges that had been… https://t.co/jp9QMsBKQ7
— Fabio Arjona (@fabio_arjona) August 19, 2026
According to Arjona, the Ministry must now carry out a new comprehensive technical and legal evaluation on the protection of the area, involving all actors and not just a few, so that any future decision has scientific support, legal certainty, transparency, and real community participation. The minister insisted that water and biodiversity are protected with science and participation from everyone, not with last-minute decisions that, in his view, favored particular political interests over the impartiality required by environmental decisions.
Communities and small miners celebrate the decision
The Ministry’s decision was welcomed by the communities of Soto Norte, especially in the municipality of California, who were concerned about the effects of the revoked resolution.
Rosa Amira Mendoza Jaimes, director of the Organization of Women Miners and Environmentalists of Soto Norte, assured that the community received the decision of the judge of the Eighth Court with joy and hope, and that the revocation of the La Baja resolution was based both on the tutela and on findings about the legal flaws of the previous process.
According to her, in Soto Norte they are not against protecting water or the environment, but seek that such protection be done with science, complete information, and listening to the communities living in the territory.
For his part, Fabio Maldonado, director of the Council for Territorial Development of Soto Norte, supported the revocation, considering that the previous resolution left the entire territory of California in a situation of illegality, without the possibility of developing economic activities in the municipality.
The communities clarified that the area subject to the revoked resolution, of 1,499 hectares, is located outside the limits of the Santurbán Páramo, and that the Ministry’s decision should not be interpreted as a renunciation to protect the páramo, but as an opportunity for the process of defining protection measures for La Baja to proceed with a new technical, legal, and participatory procedure.
EDWIN CAICEDO
Environment and Health Journalist
@CaicedoUcros