Photos that plaintiffs’ attorneys took on Awá lands in 2023 to document lingering pollution from oil-pipeline spills showed evidence of ongoing contamination. (Photo courtesy of José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, CAJAR)
Colombia’s Indigenous Awá people are preparing an ambitious plan to address the impacts of years of oil spills on their rainforest territory in southwestern Colombia. The plan will be designed in collaboration with EcoPetrol, the country’s state-controlled energy giant, and Cenit, an EcoPetrol subsidiary that operates the crude pipeline that runs through Awá reservations. In October 2025, Colombia’s Constitutional Court ordered EcoPetrol to remediate lands polluted by oil spills when armed guerrilla groups ruptured the pipelines in Awá territory, typically by using explosives. The court ruled in favor of the Indigenous Union of the Awá People (Unipa), a nonprofit association representing 20 Awá communities that argued in a lawsuit that EcoPetrol had failed to effectively restore areas damaged by oil spills caused by third parties. From 2014 to Sept. 2023, more than 440 spills occurred along the TransAndino Oil Pipeline, a 305-kilometer (190-mile) conduit that crosses southern... [Log in to read more]
