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With the participation of representatives of the mining-energy and construction sectors, the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Presidency of the Republic and civil society organizations, the launching event of the Observatories of Territorial Transformations (OTT) took place in Medellín, Colombia, led by Guillén Calvo, General Director of Insuco for Latin America and the Caribbean and Ana Carolina González, Program Officer for the Andean region of Ford Foundation, an allied institution of this regional initiative.

The Observatories are knowledge management centers that allow identifying the transformations that take place in territories with the presence of high-impact projects, and generate processes of appropriation of information, with local actors, to favor the construction of a shared vision on the territory and decision making.

Ana Carolina González emphasized that one of the main objectives of this project consists of leveling the court, which means, to open spaces for dialogue between all the actors that will have a special role in the territory, which really have an impact on public policies and their transformation. She also referred to the issue of generating transparency processes in the construction of the indicators and the information that is generated, and that allows understanding the impacts and the set of transformations in the territories.

On the other hand, Guillén Calvo said that the territories where high-impact projects are developed are transformed faster than others, positively or negatively, and these transformations in the initial exploration, construction and operation phases are very radical. “In this context, we have three key challenges with the Observatories that include: ensuring that all information is valid and comparable, accessing secondary sources for data collection, and making the actors in the territory empower themselves with the information and see that it is useful for decision making”.

The event was attended by representatives of the Presidential Ministry for Management and Compliance of the Presidency of the Republic, Ministry of Mines and Energy, executives of the mining multinational Continental Gold, the Government of Antioquia, Social Group Foundation, Camacol, Colombia Transforma (USAID), Public Companies of Medellín, among others.