The story of Astrid Puentes is rooted in the soil of Colombia. Born in Bogotá to a family with campesino roots, her earliest memories are of clean water, mountain air, and the quiet freedom of rural landscapes.
“Being outside gave me the freedom and thus happiness that I could not have in the city,” she recalls.
Her journey—from a child inhaling the crisp air of the Llanos to a global voice for environmental justice—was shaped not just by place, but by inequity.
As a law student, Puentes began working with Fundepúblico, a Colombian NGO. She encountered case after case exposing the often-overlooked intersection of environmental harm and human rights abuse: Afro-descendant communities sickened by toxic spills; schools near hazardous waste dumps; campesino and Indigenous communities excluded from decisions about their land. Again and again, the pattern was clear: environmental damage falls hardest on those already marginalized.
She also saw flaws in conventional conservation efforts.
“Much of the environmental conservation work in Colombia was done from a very northern and western perspective,” she says. “Top-down actions that excluded many of the people who actually lived in—and helped conserve—those areas.”
This realization shaped her career. As a litigator and advocate, she worked to ensure that environmental protection upholds human dignity rather than compromising it.
One formative experience came with the U.S.-funded aerial spraying program in Colombia’s forests. Herbicides fell not just on biodiversity hotspots, but also on the communities within them.
“Several Indigenous Peoples and campesinos were being impacted,” she says. “But when spraying threatened National Parks, that’s when thousands spoke out. That moment showed me how environmental protection must go hand in hand with human rights.”
Why, she wondered, did so many care more for forests than for the children who lived there?
This question led her to international environmental law. At AIDA, a regional legal nonprofit, she worked across Latin America—defending sea turtles in Costa Rica, seeking justice for lead-poisoned children in Peru—using legal tools to hold states and corporations accountable when national systems failed.
Now, as the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment—the first woman and Global South representative to hold the mandate—Puentes brings decades of legal and lived experience to one of the world’s most urgent challenges.
Her vision centers the voices of Indigenous Peoples, rural communities, and other often-overlooked groups—not as victims, but as leaders.
“I am prioritizing an intersectional and diverse perspective,” she says. “Not just showing harm, but highlighting the solutions already emerging from these communities.”
She aims to shift global thinking: from seeing marginalized groups as passive recipients of policy to recognizing their knowledge as essential.
She also calls for clearer accountability. Conservation efforts, she warns, can replicate old power imbalances if they ignore human rights.
“Some private actors—including NGOs and funders—still don’t understand their obligation to respect human rights,” she says. The Core Human Rights Principles for Private Conservation, launched in 2024, aim to change that.
Her second report to the UN links ocean health with human rights. “The ocean is a single connected biome,” she says. “Protecting part of it while ignoring oil drilling or overfishing elsewhere misses the bigger picture.”
This interconnectedness is also generational.
“Becoming a mom exponentially increased my commitment,” she says. “I want my kids—and all children—to grow up with clean air, healthy ecosystems, and a safe climate.”
She believes this moment demands more than action—it demands rethinking our place on Earth.
“The Earth doesn’t need to be saved by us,” she says. “Our role is to learn how to live on this planet without destroying it.”
In her view, the right to a healthy environment isn’t idealistic—it’s foundational. And true protection, she reminds us, begins not with fences, but with fairness.
