Mining Popular Consultation and competences of the municipalities

Abstract

The Colombian legal system establishes in its political letter mechanisms for citizen participation, as a legal tool that the State has established so that citizens can actively participate in decisions that affect them. That said, in Colombia, a legal debate arose from the implementation of the Popular Consultation as a mechanism to prohibit mining activity in municipalities, thus generating a tension between the central sector and territorially decentralized entities regarding the distribution of administrative powers; as well as the legal effects of the judicial decisions desired by the Constitutional Court and the Council of State, through which jurisprudential parameters have been established regarding the regulation of soil and subsoil in Colombia. Through this article, the objective is to establish the competence that municipalities have to decide popular consultation on mining and energy matters, observing the recent jurisprudential pronouncements adopted on the matter in particular. For the development of the main research, legal hermeneutics was used, applying the exegetical and systematic method for the analysis of the different components of the research. Through analysis of jurisprudential decisions, the results that define the thesis are evidenced through which it is stated that municipalities do have the power to prohibit mining activities in their territories; but this is not absolute and is exercised in harmony with the Nation