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This week, Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, will host the Conference of the Parties to the Escazú Agreement (COP4 of Escazú), the first environmental treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean and the only one in the world designed to protect environmental defenders. However, the balance remains that of a region that needs to move from paper to action.
At COP4, the 19 States Parties will follow up on the objectives set at COP3 in 2024 and report on how they have implemented the treaty in their countries. Key topics include the assessment of the regional action plan on environmental defenders; the register of emissions and pollutant transfers; public participation in decision-making processes related to projects and activities that may have a significant environmental impact; access to justice in environmental matters; and the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the agreement.
But beyond the formal agenda, the question hovering over Nassau is: how much of what has been agreed upon has become concrete reality in the territories?
Argentina: marked by setbacks
Although Argentina has a National Plan for the Implementation of the Escazú Agreement, approved at the end of 2023, in practice, progress is nil. Since COP3, changes have gone against the commitments made. Through Decree 780/2024 —published in September 2024—, access to public information was restricted, expanding the discretionary powers of officials to decide what information to provide and establishing sanctions for those who repeatedly request it.
Public participation has also been affected. A recent example is the process of public hearings called for the modification of the Glacier Law, characterized by restrictions on social participation, where more than 100,000 people registered to participate, but fewer than 200 were able to speak.
In turn, the picture of setbacks is broad: disappearance of structures within the Ministry of Environment, repeal of tools for renewable energies, legal modifications that allow replacing public hearings with alternative mechanisms, elimination of the Native Forests Fund, and the transfer of the fire management system to the Ministry of Security.
In regional comparison, Argentina has the formal instruments, but regulatory setbacks and lack of progress place it in a worrying scenario regarding compliance with assumed commitments.
Colombia: uncertain implementation
Colombia is the most recent case of incorporation into the agreement. After years of delays and a disinformation campaign during the debate phase in the Congress of the Republic, its ratification was achieved based on the recognition of its constitutionality to integrate this instrument into the national regulatory framework. It is a significant political advance, but the path ahead is long.
Colombia’s track record in protecting environmental defenders is not encouraging: violence against socio-environmental leaders persists; the current government of Gustavo Petro, despite being progressive and prioritizing the protection of defenders, has not managed to generate fundamental changes such as the necessary restructuring of the National Protection Unit, the entity responsible for defining prevention and protection routes for these leaders. To date, it is an entity that lacks a differential approach in its policy and is disconnected from other national entities, such as the Ombudsman’s Office or the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
In the regulatory sphere, the Ministry of Environment advanced at the beginning of 2026 with a roadmap of 23 priority actions to implement the Escazú Agreement, focused on strengthening access to information, participation, and environmental justice. It has also established the treaty’s governance system, which will be led by the Intersectoral Commission of the Escazú Agreement. While it is noteworthy that the consolidation of the roadmap and the Commission was carried out in articulation with civil society organizations, it is still in a very initial phase of execution.
Chile: real deficit
Despite leading the agreement’s negotiations, Chile did not sign it when it opened for signature in 2018 and only joined in September 2022. In 2024, it became the first State Party to have a formal roadmap, committing 271 measures distributed across five strategic lines. That same year, in November, it received the first visit from the Committee to Support Implementation and Compliance, demonstrating the country’s efforts to regain the leadership it had lost by delaying its ratification.
Formally, several elements place Chile above the regional average in terms of environmental institutional framework: it is one of the few countries in the region that has specialized environmental courts; it has an operational Pollutant Release and Transfer Register; it has a Public Information Access Law and a Framework Law on Climate Change, among other instruments. However, the gap between this formal framework and its effective implementation is worrying.
Among the main challenges identified are: the difficulty for information to be accessible and understandable; citizen participation that fails to influence decision-making processes from early stages; costly environmental justice with courts operating with unfilled vacancies among their members; and growing socio-environmental conflict that coexists with a tendency towards criminalization and harassment of environmental defenders.
Nassau: a new opportunity
This regional panorama arrives at COP4 at a time when the global context is also unhelpful: we are facing a weakening of multilateral institutions, leaders who openly question climate change and environmental commitments, and a regional trend towards the centralization of power that reduces spaces for participation.
But not everything is a winding road; in July 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights published Advisory Opinion 32 on climate emergency and human rights, requested by Chile and Colombia, establishing concrete obligations for States, such as refraining from backtracking on climate and human rights protection, as set out in the Escazú Agreement.
COP4 therefore has a concrete opportunity: to convert what was established by the Court into more robust enforceability mechanisms, strengthen the Committee to Support Implementation and Compliance, and generate real political pressure on countries that lack progress. The Escazú Agreement is not just a treaty: it is our region’s commitment to strengthening environmental democracy and human rights.
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