In 2016, the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the FARC that ended decades of armed conflict in rural areas. One of the main problems that fueled the conflict was the unequal distribution of land, insecurity of tenure, and lack of legal titles. As part of the agreement, the government committed to carrying out agrarian reform aimed at a structural transformation of the agricultural and rural sector, focusing on the formalization of land tenure and the return of land to victims. In addition, a multipurpose national cadastre was needed to provide an updated and transparent land registry, help prevent future land-related conflicts, and facilitate rural communities’ access to credit and resources.
Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and peasant communities are among the most vulnerable groups in Colombia due to insecure land tenure, which affects their ability to improve their livelihoods and manage natural resources sustainably. The issue of land tenure is complex, as government institutions responsible for cadastral work have been unable to map many rural areas due to, among other things, inefficient and bureaucratic procedures, and vested interests. In addition, the increase in investments by large companies in natural resources has increased the pressure on these territories.

It is against this background that the LAND-at-scale project was initiated, exploring innovative ways to accelerate land formalization processes, through the Fit for Purpose Land Management approach, in an inclusive and sustainable manner. The three areas selected for this project are characterized by very low government involvement in recent years, creating an unstable situation in these rural areas; one of the three communities is that of the Arhuaco Indigenous People of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Where, at the invitation of the Indigenous Governor, the project is supporting the expansion of lands of the indigenous reservation.

At the invitation of the Arhuaco community governorate of this territory, the LAND-at-scale Colombia project supports the processes of expansion and conservation of the Indigenous territory. Within the LAND-at-scale project, Kadaster, ICCO, Tropenbos work hand in hand with the Arhuaco community in Gunmaku, the Cabildo organization in Santa Marta and the Magdalena Governorate to promote better land governance with a focus on participatory, rapid and efficient methodologies for land administration achieved by the development of local capacities. The project aims to guarantee land tenure, create economic opportunities and promote sustainable management of the local environment in an integrated manner.

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The landscape of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is unique. The Sierra, geographically formed as an isolated formation of another mountain range, is the highest snow-capped formation near the sea, reaching up to 5,775 meters above sea level. The Sierra supplies water to three departments. It is the ancestral territory of five indigenous communities; they call it the Heart of the World, the origin of the world and the place where the sacred energy of nature that inhabits everyone and everything emanates.

This magical place is covered by a diversity of natural ecosystems with many endemic species, which vary according to altitude and geographical location, from the Caribbean Sea, through dry forests, Andean forests, the moor (mountain ecosystem), to its snowy peaks. Here you can find emblematic species such as the jaguar (Panthera onca), the otter (Lontra longicaudis) and birds of great cultural importance such as the squirrel cuckoo (Piaya cayana), which transmit important messages to the elders of the community.

In the Sierra there are two natural national parks and an archaeological park: Tayrona, Sierra Nevada and Teyuna. UNESCO declared the area a Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site in 1979. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is recognized as a unique ecosystem in the world by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (UNESCO, 2012; UNESCO, 2024), and the ancestral knowledge system of the Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogui and Wiwa Indigenous peoples who inhabit this area was recognized in 2022 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO, 2022). A fifth indigenous people, the Ette Ennaka, are less recognized because they have only a thousand people in their community, several of whom have a high degree of mestizaje (people of mixed cultural and ethnic heritage) (ONIC, 2024). For indigenous communities, the Sierra is a sacred territory that requires respect and communion with everything found there, maintaining harmony between them and within each of us: between thought, word and action based on the values ​​of each of the peoples and communities.

Specifically, the Arhuaco indigenous community is made up of 22,134 people, who inhabit an area of ​​195,900 hectares in regions of the municipalities of Santa Marta (Magdalena Department), Valledupar (Cesar) and Soledad (Atlántico) (UNHCR, Colombia). The Arhuaco people, under the guidance of their spiritual leaders, called mamos, seek to maintain a harmonious relationship with the territory and try to use only 30% of their territories for production, leaving the rest for nature.

The Arhuacos who do not live in these reserves settle on farms and ranches in the Caribbean region, in search of better land for agriculture and livestock. These processes have had specific impacts on the community, such as the mestizaje they have experienced. In addition, the community has undertaken processes of organizational and cultural strengthening, which has guaranteed them a certain level of security and autonomy (UNHCR, Colombia). Most of the Arhuacos’ monetary resources, which come from work or donations, are used to buy ancestral lands and facilitate their return to them. However, the community has been the victim of scams and errors have occurred during these processes, because people are not fully informed about the exact processes or are not fully able to identify whether the paperwork is legal.

In addition to the above, the presence of various actors, such as evangelical churches, illegal armed groups, among others, has fractured the unity of the Arhuaco people and destabilized their institutional and organizational structures. Therefore, strengthening leaders and associations is crucial to preserve the most sacred aspects of their culture, whether material, physical or spiritual (UNHCR, Colombia).