**4.1 Protected areas: overvaluation of the páramos and disregard of the high equatorial Andean forest**

During the two decades of this century, the governments of Colombia have been implementing a public policy for the protection of the ecosystems of the high Andean mountains called "Delimitation of the páramos", generating great environmental conflicts due to the way in which it has been built from a technical and scientific perspective that has ignored the territorial realities in the regions where these ecosystems exist. The strategy of delimitation of the páramos advanced by the Alexander von Humboldt Institute, entity in charge of the protection and conservation of

biodiversity in Colombia, between 2012 and 2018 has ignored that the high Andean ecosystems, which include the páramos and the high Andean forests are complex sets of deeply dependent ecosystem mosaics, where, In addition, due to the processes of destruction of the high Andean forest in the last 80 years, a process of paramization has been propitiated, which consists of the fact that old areas of high Andean forest are now areas of páramos. In the expression of biologist Germán Márquez, what has happened is that many of the current páramos are degraded high Andean forests. A serious mistake is made, ignoring in the delimitation of high Andean ecosystems the importance of forests, which continue to be pressured by livestock processes and potato monocultures in large areas, without actions to protect these by environmental authorities. This is today the cause of one of the main socio-ecological conflicts in these regions. The equatorial high Andean forest is the main ecosystem barrier that favors water recharge zones and allows the regulation of wind currents and the regulation of water and soil resources, necessary for the existence with quality and quantity of peasant production systems, as well as the habitat of large mammal species such as the spectacled bear, deer and birds such as the eagle, Las Pavas de Monte, and Los Gavilanes.
