Colombia: Governance Vacuums, Illegal Forestry, and Land Grabbing.

 

One of the biggest challenges for Colombia after signing the Peace Agreement is the institutional vacuum and lack of environmental governance in the territories most affected by the armed conflict. The 2016 Peace Agreement signed between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrillas provided that the guerrillas would disarm and reintegrate into society. The Peace Agreement did not provide, however, the necessary environmental governance provisions that meet the needs of remote territories after the armed groups demobilize. Although the Agreement has some general environmental provisions, mainly related to environmental protection areas, it was not specific in terms of the environmental governance of the territories and natural resources. Unfortunately, four years after the signing of the Agreement, there is a power vacuum. The FARC no longer governs the territories it had controlled, and the Colombian government has not been able to effectively re-establish governance and security. Into this governance vacuum, there has been an unprecedented escalation of illegal logging, land grabbing, and illegal gold mining, as well as continued cultivation of coca. For example, 31 of Colombia’s 39 protected areas (79%) saw increased deforestation after the peace agreement. This translated into a 177% increase in the deforestation rate between the 3-year period (2013-2015) before the peace agreement and the three-year period following the peace agreement (2016-2018). And in one year alone (from 2016 to 2017), there was a 4 percent increase in the conversion of protected area lands to growing coca crops, with additional lands grabbed for other purposes. Particularly in the regions formerly controlled by the FARC, armed groups, and people from outside the region have been systematically and illegally clearing land in national forest reserve areas and protected areas. Much of the deforestation and “colonizing” of designated forests is associated with people seeking land for cattle, oil palm, and other livelihood opportunities.

The lack of environmental governance in the most affected territories has had a significant impact on deforestation in the country. The government has not been able to control the situation for four key reasons. First, the regions are remote, so it is difficult for the state to effectively establish a presence, and there are still FARC dissidents who continue to exercise de facto control in the territory. Second, in order to strengthen rural development, the Peace Agreement included measures to formalize 7 million hectares of land, which increased expectations of land redistribution and titling, even in protected forest areas, generating incentives to grab land especially in the Amazon. Third, state actions have been aimed at fighting deforestation in a general way, and although institutional coordination between the different responsible state agencies has been strengthened, there are still no clear actions aimed specifically at addressing land grabbing as a driver of deforestation. Finally, a very important factor has to do with the “invisibility” of the actors responsible for this problem. The government has not identified who are the key actors behind these practices (such as politicians and figures in organized crime), as differentiated from the peasants who are actually carrying out deforestation actions. As such, even if peasants are occasionally arrested for deforestation and landgrabbing, the underlying drivers (such as poverty) and enablers (such as regional politicians and armed groups) go unaddressed.

In the last few years, however, the national government has begun to promote strategies seeking to control deforestation and boost the forest economy in the country. With the support of ten international cooperation organizations and in coordination with regional environmental authorities, 13 departments of the country are using a community forestry model to improve the quality of life and local economy of forest inhabitants and make sustainable use of the goods and services in these ecosystems. This model seeks to develop actions so that communities can sustainably use the forest to improve their quality of life, conserve natural resources, and secure environmental rule of law in their territories. In conclusion, the signing of the Peace Agreement did not mean the end of the conflict. On the contrary, it exposed and increased the social, economic, and environmental problems in the conflict-affected territories. Although this can be explained by multiple causes, it is clear that the concept of territorial peace that is incorporated in peace agreements must be linked to the concepts of governance, environmental rule of law, and environmental justice. In this manner, environmental issues must be conceived in terms of the interrelation between human beings and their natural surroundings in which they have constituted the territories they live--and the environmental issues must be seen as essential to the peace process. Thus, taking environmental sues into consideration in peacebuilding is necessary to address the structural causes that generate socio-environmental conflicts; doing so, though, can lay the foundation for a more stable and lasting peace.