Protecting the environment has become a central focus of Government’s agenda. Colombia is no exception to these concerns, which is the reason why in the last few years the country has had important advances toward environmental sustainability. One of the most relevant measures taken by the government has been protecting hydric resources and the places they come from. This is how in 2004 the Santurban paramo territory was demarcated, and economic activities were prohibited in order to guarantee its conservation. Nevertheless, this decision caused a series of conflicts with the communities that were affected by the measures, making visible a debate between the protection of the environmen and the individual interests of the peasants. Through fieldwork and revision of documents this investigation studies the causes and consequences of the above mentioned conflict, and the development of guidelines to deal with it. The aim of this work is to make the case of Santurban paramo serve as a reference for future demarcation of the country’s paramos, while proposing to use the mechanisms of citizen participation as a fundamental tool to get these processes to work.
