Armed Force Isn’t Saving Colombia’s Forests, but a New Effort Might

Apr 20, 2023 | Jeremy Moore and Jordon Mpingo
View Original

As Colombia struggles to establish effective governance, the state is trying to shift away from previous reliance on military force to curb deforestation, a strategy that bred mistrust and violent conflict with local communities. Colombia’s rate of deforestation surged by 15 percent in the first half of 2022 over the same period the prior year. The U.S. and Colombian governments last month emphasized the urgency of the deeply interwoven tasks of countering environmental degradation and ending Colombia’s continued armed conflicts. A vital region for both tasks is the country’s southern third, a California-sized region that is part of the Amazon River basin.

Now a Colombian university is developing more effective forest-protection techniques to build sustainable solutions with those communities — an approach that can be shared globally. 

With the Itarka Foundation, an environmental education organization based in southern Colombia, the team is preparing a program to develop trainers who can guide communities in using its method to address deforestation conflicts. In February 2023, the Selva y Conflicto team gathered anthropologists, political scientists, economists and ecologists at Universidad del Rosario to discuss the social, ecological and conflict implications of deforestation and the state’s response to it.