2023-07-13 23:17:24
As the small plane sways, jolts and occasionally falls into the void in low-altitude turbulence, Rodrigo Botero shows the scars of Colombia’s failed efforts to halt the rise of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in the last six years. The ecologist raises his voice into his radio receiver and points out the window at the uniform, well-defined pastures that have been cleared for cattle.
Peace for the people and war for the jungle: deforestation in Colombia increases after the end of the guerrilla
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Gray smoke billows into the sky from plots where land grabs are burning brush, a common sight after the 2016 peace deal sparked a pitched battle in Colombia’s forests.
“A year ago, the smoke columns were so big that we couldn’t even breathe in the cabin,” recalls Botero, who leads an aerial survey of the Colombian Amazon rainforest and directs the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS).
However, the truth is that for Botero it is more difficult to show examples of recent deforestation. The veteran conservationist has good news for a delegation of members of the Norwegian government during his visit to the area: Colombia could finally be changing the course of deforestation in the Amazon.
“It’s really spectacular,” he enthuses. “It is the largest decrease in deforestation and forest fires in two decades.”
Government figures show that deforestation is slowing, with a 26% drop in the Colombian Amazon last year and 29% across the country. The authorities affirm that the 50,000 hectares of forest saved in 2022 are a first result of what is probably the first peace process in history that puts the environment at the center.
The consequences of the peace agreement
“This has only just begun,” he tells The Guardian Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad, during a visit to the southern state of Guaviare. I think Colombia can [superar] deforestation in the Amazon and reverse the situation”.
When the Colombian government signed the peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, it formally ended six decades of internal conflict in which 450,000 people died.
However, when 7,000 FARC guerrillas laid down their arms, a new and unexpected victim was also created: the country’s forests. Other armed groups – including dissident rebel factions that rejected the deal – took advantage of the FARC’s absence to bulldoze hundreds of hectares at a time in vast land grabs.
Successive governments have struggled to reduce deforestation, especially in the Amazon, despite extensive military operations and international pressure.
“The consequence of the peace process has been a huge environmental disaster,” says Muhamad, who was a former environmental activist.
The mistake, say negotiators involved in the 2016 peace deal, was perceiving the environment as a potential beneficiary of the peace deal, rather than a key element of the deal itself.
“In retrospect, we probably should have placed more emphasis on this aspect in the first negotiations,” he tells The Guardian Espen Barth Eide, Norwegian Minister of the Environment, during a trip to the jungle border of Colombia.
Petro’s “total peace”
Led by the first left-wing president in its history, Gustavo Petro, the Colombian government is trying a new approach.
Petro has pledged to bring “total peace” to the country through dialogue with the numerous armed groups that have emerged or regrouped since the FARC’s dissolution.
As part of those talks, he also wants to protect the environment. “Unlike the previous peace process, the environment will be at the center of these peace agreements,” says Muhamad.
Guaviare state is the center of one of the government’s main peace negotiations and a key battleground in efforts to save the Amazon. The region marks the end of Colombia’s arid plains – almost entirely colonized by vast cattle ranches – and the beginning of the largely virgin Amazon rainforest, home to thousands of animal species and several uncontacted tribes.
Their dense jungle made headlines around the world recently, when four children survived 40 days alone after their plane crashed in the jungle.
Environmental experts say that deforestation has been drastically halted on the orders of a dissident rebel faction – and de facto authority in the region – known as the Estado Mayor Central, or Central Command (EMC). The group, made up of ex-FARC combatants, has ordered local farmers to stop cutting down trees as a “gesture of peace”, hoping to reach a peace agreement with the Petro government.
There is still a long way to go, but the moratorium on logging has filled environmental defenders like Botero with enthusiasm. “It’s unprecedented,” he says. “We have never experienced a situation like this as a first step in negotiations.”
On July 8, Colombia’s high commissioner for peace announced that informal talks were advancing and that the government would soon begin formal peace negotiations with the rebels.
Reaching an agreement with the EMC could rapidly reduce deforestation in the Amazon, since it has power over vast tracts of jungle in the states of Guaviare, Caquetá and Putumayo, and even across the border in Venezuela.
Government authorities are already studying more ambitious plans for the recovery of the forest, which include monthly payments to farmers who do not cut down trees and training in the collection of Amazonian fruits.
To try to bolster environmental gains, Muhamad is visiting remote regions like Guaviare, largely ignored by previous governments.
“Excuse us for our enthusiasm and talking so much, but we have never had an opportunity like this,” says a community leader three hours after a public meeting attended by Muhamad and the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda. “Usually they come, take a few photos and leave.”
Participants in the negotiations claim that among the peasants sitting on plastic chairs in the sticky heat are EMC informants.
Barth says it is cause for optimism that the ban on deforestation has not been imposed on armed groups by the government. Rather, the idea came from them, a sign that the warring factions, as well as local communities, increasingly understand the need to protect local biodiversity.
“What I am hearing, seeing and feeling in these meetings is that there is a greater awareness that a new Colombia cannot be built on the basis of a greater deterioration of nature, so an economic, social, political and inclusive that is more respectful of nature than before,” says Barth.
But the EMC is not the only actor fighting for the Colombian countryside. Among them are five armed groups and 20 gangs that have some 15,000 combatants, according to the government.
a difficult plan
Analysts are skeptical that all groups are genuinely interested in abandoning their criminal activities in favor of peace.
“It’s like a game of chess that is played on several boards at the same time, each one with its own complexity,” says Diego Alejandro Restrepo, from think tank for the construction of peace Pares, based in Bogotá.
In May, the government suspended the ceasefire with the Clan del Golfo because, according to Petro, the largest Colombian drug cartel continued to “sow anxiety and terror.”
As the plane heads deeper into the Amazon, the difficulty of Colombia’s “total peace” plan becomes apparent.
About 10 kilometers from the border of the Chiribiquete National Park, an immaculate mountainous landscape resembling the imaginary worlds of Avatarclearings of hundreds of hectares suddenly appear.
Although the EMC has publicly ordered farmers to stop cutting down trees, it appears that it has continued to quietly receive money from mafia groups to grab land and raise cattle.
“We have to watch this closely,” says Botero. “It cannot be that the peasants do not burn, or clear brush, or anything at all, while these large estates continue to grow.”
Translation by Emma Reverser.
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