lit a candle 5h agoRead parts of Colombia compleja for a grad class back in 2015, professor had it photocopied since there was no English version yet. Changed how I thought about systems, not just nature. 91 years is a full run. Rest well.
Their story
Julio Carrizosa Umaña (30 May 1935 to 5 November 2026) was a Colombian civil engineer, economist, writer, professor and public servant who is widely remembered as one of the fathers of environmentalism in Colombia. Over a career of more than seven decades he moved from mapping the country at the…
Julio Carrizosa Umaña (30 May 1935 to 5 November 2026) was a Colombian civil engineer, economist, writer, professor and public servant who is widely remembered as one of the fathers of environmentalism in Colombia. Over a career of more than seven decades he moved from mapping the country at the Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi (IGAC) to building the institutions that protect it, and finally to teaching a whole generation how to think about it. He died on 5 November 2026, aged 91, after being admitted to a clinic the previous weekend following a heart attack.
He was born in Bogotá to Julio Carrizosa Valenzuela, an engineer who later served as rector of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and María Umaña Bernal. He studied at the Gimnasio Moderno, graduating in 1952. The school's gardens, its botanical garden and its classes in observation sent him on excursions to the eastern hills of Bogotá from childhood. He later said the school "cultivated in us a discipline of trust" and taught the importance of human freedom, "but also that of trees and gardens."
At the Universidad Nacional he enrolled in civil engineering. In 1954, when 13 students died after the student march of 9 June, his father, then rector, faced accusations over the events. The young Carrizosa struggled academically that year and turned for a time to the Department of Philosophy and Letters, where expressionist and phenomenological ideas shaped his view of human experience of nature. He graduated as a civil engineer in 1959.
His professional life began at IGAC, where from 1957 he calculated geodetic structures, joined the photogrammetry division and, in 1961, became director of the Carta General, the section responsible for the country's general maps. He specialised in cartography and photogrammetry at Ohio State University, earned a Master in Public Administration at Harvard University in 1967 and a master's degree in economics at the Universidad de los Andes. As national director of cadastre from 1967 to 1969 he oversaw the survey of more than two million properties.
From 1969 to 1973 he was director general of IGAC. Under his leadership the institute produced the first maps of the Chocó and the Colombian Amazon using side looking airborne radar, founded the journal Colombia Geográfica and began bringing ecologists, architects, biologists and engineers together. His friendship with the botanist Enrique Pérez Arbeláez, founder of the Bogotá Botanical Garden, led to a campaign to replace pines, eucalyptus and acacias in Bogotá with native species such as cedars, walnuts and the caucho sabanero.
In 1973 President Misael Pastrana named him general manager of INDERENA, the national institute for renewable natural resources, a post he held until 1978. There he organised Colombia's first meeting on ecology and urbanism and was part of the group that conceived and drove the Código Nacional de Recursos Naturales Renovables y de Protección al Medio Ambiente, issued in 1974 as Decree Law 2811 and often described as the first code of its kind in the world. His time at INDERENA saw the creation of 17 national natural parks and six flora and fauna sanctuaries, and Parques Nacionales Naturales credits him with the 1977 expansion of the park system.
He was also dean of economics at the Universidad de América (1969 to 1971) and dean of engineering at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (1971 to 1978). For roughly fifteen years after INDERENA he advised national and international bodies including Colciencias, CEPAL, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Organization of American States.
In 1993 he became director of the Instituto de Estudios Ambientales (IDEA) at the Universidad Nacional, serving until 1998 and helping to found its master's programme in environment and development. He continued as a professor at the institute until his retirement; the campus, where he spent more than half of his life, became a second home.
His intellectual legacy is the idea of "complex environmentalism": environmental problems are multi causal, historical and interconnected, and cannot be solved with simple explanations or ideologies of left or right that reduce reality to power or money. He set this out in books including ¿Qué es ambientalismo? (2001), Colombia compleja (2014), Cómo vivir bien en un mundo complejo (2022) and Afrontar la totalidad. Fundamentos para un ambientalismo complejo (2023). He was also a longtime columnist for El Espectador.
His honours included the Premio Nacional al Mérito Científico for life and work (2010), officer of the Orden Nacional al Mérito (2004), an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional (2012), honorary membership of the Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales (2014) and, in March 2024, the Orden de la Democracia Simón Bolívar from the Chamber of Representatives. An orchid from the Farallones de Cali, Lepanthes carrizosana, and a university chair, the Cátedra Pinsus Julio Carrizosa Umaña, bear his name, and IGAC named an auditorium after him.
He married María Cristina Posada in 1959 and they had two sons. His second wife, Aida, was his companion for 27 years until her death from cancer in 2009. Tributes after his death came from Parques Nacionales Naturales, IGAC, ANLA, the Foro Nacional Ambiental, the Universidad Nacional and former environment ministers, who described him as a pioneer who turned knowledge of Colombia's complexity into institutions, laws and public policy. His funeral was held at the Gimnasio Moderno, the school where his environmental awakening began.
Biography adapted from es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Carrizosa_Umaña; El Espectador (5 Nov 2026); El Tiempo (5 Nov 2026); Caracol Radio (5 Nov 2026); IGAC (5 Nov 2026); Canal 1 (5 Nov 2026); Isa López Giraldo, Memorias conver. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“I don't think we will ever be a rich country, but we can be a good country to live well in.”
Interview with El Tiempo during an IGAC homage; translated from Spanish ("No creo que nunca vayamos a ser un país rico, pero sí un buen país para vivir bien").
“I think that unfortunately it is worse than it was when I began to get to know the country in the 1950s. But at the same time, I think the environmental movement is much bigger and much stronger than it was when we started in the 1960s.”
On the state of Colombia's environment, El Tiempo interview; translated from Spanish.
“The dominant ideologies, on the left and on the right, are ideologies that simplify reality, that manage reality from power or from money, that suppress other variables.”
El Tiempo interview; translated from Spanish.
“In this latest edition of Colombia compleja I insist on the need to move away from these simplifying ideologies in order to understand what is happening to us, to free our minds.”
Speech at the IGAC presentation of the new edition of Colombia compleja; translated from Spanish.
“It cultivated in us a discipline of trust, it always rescued the importance of human freedom, but also that of trees and gardens.”
On the Gimnasio Moderno, in his Memorias conversadas with Isa López Giraldo (2022); translated from Spanish.
Photos
1Julio Carrizosa Umaña at the 10th anniversary homage to the founders of the master's in environment and development, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2008
Aug 2008 · by People Forever
From social media
7Posts by Julio, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.