Choco

Ninety-eight percent of Chocó's territory belongs to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities through collective land titles—the highest such ownership rate in the Americas. This Pacific rainforest department ranks among the world's top ten biodiversity hotspots, with more endemic species per hectare than almost anywhere on Earth. Isolation created this biological treasury: the Andes block eastern winds while the Pacific delivers up to 13,000mm of annual rainfall, making Chocó one of the wettest places on the planet.

That isolation also made Chocó Colombia's poorest department and its most lawless. With virtually no state presence, armed groups control artisanal gold mining that has made Colombia the world's leading mercury polluter per capita. The Atrato River, granted legal rights in 2017 as a living entity, remains contaminated across 44% of sampling sites. Yet 2024 brought breakthroughs: Las Tangaras Regional Natural Park (5,722 acres) became Chocó's first protected area in 40 years, and COP16 in nearby Cali spotlighted Afro-Colombian biodiversity projects fighting back against extraction.

By 2026, Chocó will test whether rights-of-nature jurisprudence and community conservation can outpace armed gold mining. The Atrato's legal personhood has produced court orders but not enforcement; mercury still poisons the water. If community-led restoration projects scale successfully, Chocó could model how the world's most biodiverse regions protect themselves. If not, legal innovation will have failed where it was needed most.