Attorney General's Office requested strengthening urban environmental authorities

 Request was sent to mayors of Barranquilla, Cali, Cartagena and Santa Marta

Adopt measures and policies needed to strengthen the environmental unit of his city, was the request of the Attorney General's Office to the Mayors of Barranquilla, Cali, Cartagena and Santa Marta, given the fragility of the administrative departments of the environment environment have been exposed in these local authorities in recent years.

The head of the Public Ministry, Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado, through the Executive Environmental and Agricultural Affairs, reminded local leaders that the National Environmental System recognizes that environmental supply management should be decentralized, democratic, participatory, and that this respect are of utmost importance functions and powers exercised by regional and local environmental authorities, namely the regional autonomous corporations and urban environmental authorities.

The Attorney noted that the local environmental authorities, although they are called autonomous corporations, serve as one of them almost in their city limits, for among other duties and powers, exercised by: 1) environmental licensing, 2) establish plans environmental management, 3) to permit use and exploitation of renewable natural resources, 4) initiate punitive processes, 5) take preventive measures, and 6) apply the precautionary principle.

The mayors of those cities should be directed to the Special Prosecutor for Environmental and Agricultural Affairs, within 30 days, an updated report on the operation of the district administrative department of the environment in their jurisdiction as well as the strategies that have provided their administrations to strengthen them.