How the Paris Climate Agreement Can Drive Colombia’s Fledgling Peace – and Keep Liberia’s Peace Alive

Jul 28, 2016 | Steve Zwick
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For as long as Pablo Vieira Samper can remember, his native Colombia has been in a state of civil war – sometimes raging and sometimes simmering, but never completely abating. That may have changed last month, when the guerilla leadership of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the government of President Juan Manuel Santos outlined a roadmap to peace that Samper says will extend the current cease-fire into a true, lasting peace.

Why so optimistic? Largely, he says, because the new roadmap recognizes an aspect of the terrain that many peace agreements ignore: namely, the role of land disputes in driving conflict. It’s something Samper, as the country’s Vice Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, has studied his entire adult life, and he can speak of it with both passion and academic precision.