Protests in Santander: the electricity project was stopped due to complaints from beekeepers and farmers

Faced with the rejection of farmers and beekeepers in Santander, the installation of new 500 thousand volt power grids arrested in five communes in the rural area of ​​the department. The news was celebrated by hundreds of residents of the municipalities of Albania, Jesús María, Vélez, Bolívar and Sucre, who had been protesting for days.

Spokespersons for the movement fear that the electromagnetic field generated after installation affects the bee farms in the region, whose bees help pollinate the coffee plantations. Both are excellent sources of income for the majority of families settled in the region.

Edwin Peña, a resident of Jesús María explained this phenomenon in an interview for blue“Bees are being lost, the beekeeping tradition of the sidewalks is being lost, but we are also coffee growers and the main pollinator of coffee is the bee. So, it is a damage which, in the long term, will affect the pockets and the economy of these regions”.

It is not just the demands of those who oppose the company that pass high voltage cables by forest reserves and water sources. There are also complaints from local residents who claim the company hasn’t been entirely clear with the project:

A part of his actions aroused suspicion“like arriving at night, giving incomplete information to the peasants and paying extremely low sums in some places,” said Edwin Peña.

Faced with a long list of complaints and concerns, the attorneythe National Agency for Environmental Permits (To understand), spokespersons for the energy company, local authorities and representatives of the five municipalities met to analyze the risks of continuing the work.

At the end of the meeting, they agreed to establish look-up tables to determine the route that the new electrical networks must take, in order to avoid the effects on the environment and the economy of the south of the department. The first meeting, they say, could take place within a month:

“We would start with a series of working groups to seek rapprochement and above all to listen to the victims, because it is very moving to listen to the peasants, the women who came to cry when they told us that they had the half a hectare and that the project goes through there. , because then they have nowhere to go. They feel practically displaced by the project,” lamented Edwin Peña.

Human activity endangers the pollinators that contribute to the reproduction of 90% of flowering plants, including one 75% of crops.

However, recent studies record a spectacular decrease, close to the 90% bee populations, due to the use of pesticides, based on products derived from nicotine; deforestation and the indiscriminate felling of trees and flowers, as well as the consumption and sale of products such as honey, pollen and jelly.

This has led to bees entering the long list of endangered species. However, their disappearance has another price: food security. It was no joke when Belgian beekeepers wrote on banners and told the news that if the bees disappeared, humanity would have four years left.

Following the mass disappearance of this species, in 2019, the Earthwatch Institute declared the bee as the most important living thing. And Colombia is no stranger to this conversation. As in Santander, beekeepers and farmers have been denouncing the decline of bee populations for years; However, their efforts seem to have paid off, after, in January 2023, the The Minister of Agriculture have announced a ban on the use of pesticides containing fipronil as an active ingredient, and therefore seek to protect them from foreseeable risks such as electromagnetic fields.