Guest Post: In Conflict and Peace, What Drives Deforestation in Colombia?

Mar 9, 2022 | Augusto Castro-Nunez, Janelle M. Sylvester, and Raphael Ganzenmüller
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Today, deforestation continues to beset Colombia’s conflict-affected areas, despite attempts to incorporate environmental conservation into peacebuilding activities. This suggests that our understanding of the complexities linking deforestation with conflict is inadequate for informing policy. In turn, this points to a need to look deeper – and at a more localised level – into why trees are cleared during periods of conflict as well as during times of peace. 

When it comes to the importance of different factors for forest cover loss across the national, regional and municipality category levels, there are several similarities. Across all three scales, the number of conflict events was the least significant factor. Coca cultivation, number of cattle and municipality area were the most prominent factors for forest cover loss at every level we studied. However, when we delve deeper, we find more nuanced differences between clustered municipalities, departments and regions, especially regarding the degree of importance of the different factors. 

Doing a context-specific analysis of conflict-forest loss dynamics would be critical to developing interventions that will enable Colombian authorities to both build and sustain peace and halt tropical deforestation in its territory. Given the findings of our study, it makes sense to design interventions that bring together approaches aimed at both goals. These approaches include those promoting reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), and fostering conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks, as well as those supporting the greening of agricultural supply chains.