More than four decades ago, a movement arose to make the environment a principal state concern. That movement has been described and analyzed by North American and European authors as an attempt to “green the state.” But it conflicted from the start with the fact that governments have traditionally been significant perpetrators of environmental deterioration (Eckersley 2004). Moreover, the movement’s goal came into friction, and, frequently, conflict with the state’s traditional roles in maintaining order, promoting economic growth and offering social services. That situation, far from being resolved, has resulted in the environment being a lesser priority and or even a non-priority in the public agenda (Meadowcroft 2007; Janicke y Weidner 1997). Colombia has carried out two large public policy reforms related to what we today call the environment. The first reform, implemented at the beginning of the seventies, was carried out through the Code of Renewable Natural Resources and the Environment (1974) and the reorientation of states agencies in charge of those resources: the National Institute for the Development of Renewable Natural Resources (Inderena) and the autonomous regional corporations (CAR). The second reform came at the beginning of the 1990s. It involved, above all, the incorporation of more than 50 articles on the environment and sustainable development into the new 1991 Constitution and the passing of Law 99 of 1993, which established the Ministry of the Environment and the National Environmental System.