Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450

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Forest Policy and Economics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol

Post-conflict transition and REDD+ in Colombia: Challenges to reducing

deforestation in the Amazon
Jean Carlo Rodríguez-de-Francisco a, *, Carlos del Cairo b, Daniel Ortiz-Gallego b, e,
Juan Sebastian Velez-Triana c, e, Tomás Vergara-Gutiérrez b, Jonas Hein a, d
a
German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn, Germany
b
Department of Anthropology, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia
c
Institute of Development Policy, Antwerp University, Antwerp, Belgium
d
CAU Kiel, Department of Geography, Kiel, Germany
e
Center for Alternatives to Development – Cealdes, Bogotá, Colombia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: REDD+ is a mechanism to address climate change by reducing deforestation and forest degradation. In this
Colombia article, the implementation of the REDD Early Movers- REM/Visión Amazonia program in Guaviare, Colombia, is
Amazon analyzed, focusing on the implementation challenges and scope of the program when addressing deforestation
Post-conflict
drivers in a post-conflict context. By taking a historical perspective on regional deforestation challenges in
REDD+
Deforestation
Guaviare, we link these challenges to the recent deforestation trends in the region. This article demonstrates the
Power particular challenges to implementing REDD+ in the Colombian post-conflict context related to the power
vacuum left by the FARC retreat, land grabbing for speculation and cattle ranching, power asymmetries and
corrupted regional elites. The article concludes that the current scope of REM does not sufficiently address the
main drivers of deforestation, and that REM’s focus on campesinos and indigenous communities will not
significantly reduce the substantial deforestation rates in the present post-conflict context.

1. Introduction
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
(REDD+) is a climate mitigation mechanism based on providing eco­
nomic incentives to tropical, forested countries to conserve and sus­
tainably manage forest resources. The REDD Early Movers Program
(REM) provides performance-based payments for verified emission re­
ductions from deforestation prevention, thereby managing REDD+ in
line with the decisions agreed in the context of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). REM works as a
funding incentive for countries in the Global South that already have
shown reductions in deforestation. In the case of Colombia, REM is
financed jointly by Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom. It fo­
cuses on creating conditions for implementing and operating Colombia’s
zero-deforestation strategy on two fronts: first, by improving forest
governance, institutions and land use planning; and second, by sup­
porting “sustainable productive activities” and other low-carbon
development alternatives and safeguarding the livelihoods, territories
and rights of indigenous peoples. The involved governments have
agreed that the payments will reward the reduction of emissions caused
by deforestation in the Amazon biome and that 60% of funds will benefit
local actors (KfW and GIZ, 2015).
REM is implemented by the Colombian government through the
Visión Amazonia program, the Colombian National REDD+ Strategy to
control deforestation in the Amazon (Minambiente, 2016). REM started
implementation in the midst of the peace negotiations in Colombia in
2016, aiming to stop deforestation by 2020. FARC guerrillas once
occupied large strips of Colombia’s vast forests, including the Colombian
Amazon. The presence of the guerrillas, who used the region’s thick
forests as shelter, kept deforestation actors away from the far-flung re­
gions under their control (Castro-Nunez et al., 2017; Paz-Cardona, 2017;
Steffens, 2018). After the signing of the peace agreement, the rate of
deforestation in Colombia rose by 44%. This dramatic increase is
attributed to the action of powerful actors who quickly moved in to fill
the power vacuum left after the retreat of the FARC from these frontier
areas of the country which, even today, have yet to be consolidated by
the Colombian state.
There is significant evidence that deforestation rates tend to increase

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jean.rodriguez@die-gdi.de (J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2021.102450
Received 2 August 2019; Received in revised form 24 February 2021; Accepted 25 February 2021
Available online 23 March 2021
1389-9341/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
in the aftermath of conflict-peace transitions due to the creation of
windows of opportunity for resource appropriation (e.g. Álvarez, 2001;
Clerici et al., 2020; Grima and Singh, 2019; Van Dexter and Visseren-
Hamakers, 2019). Focusing on the actors embodying deforestation,
there is an important environmental narrative portraying local actors –
communities and subsistence farmers in general – as the primary agents
responsible for clearing forest, largely because of their practices of “slash
and burn”, extensive farming or because of their lack of options due to
their impoverished conditions (Brady, 1996; Schuck et al., 2002;
Skutsch and Turnhout, 2020). This narrative is still present in REDD+
policy discourse, and particularly in national REDD+ policy documents
(Skutsch and Turnhout, 2020), together with the assumption that
poverty is one of the main factors driving deforestation (for a counter
narrative, see Geist and Lambin, 2003). In this sense, narratives can be
considered as “stories” that frame environmental problems in particular
ways and in turn suggest particular solutions that legitimize particular
development interventions (Fairhead and Leach, 1998). However, as
Goldman et al. (2011:3) stress, “the politics surrounding environmental
management is not simply the playing out of material interests but is
animated by competing knowledge claims about the environment”.
Actual knowledge of specific environmental problems such as defores­
tation and forest degradation is characterized by great uncertainty and
consequently by multiple and competing knowledge claims (Goldman
et al., 2011). It is important to assert that historically Colombian policies
on the Amazon region reproduced powerful narratives about campe­
sinos and indigenous communities inhabiting these areas. In the first
case, for decades campesinos were seen as agents of civilization bringing
development to the unproductive wild natural landscapes of the
Amazon. However, after global environmental concerns regarding
tropical lands emerged during 1980s, this narrative started to change,
framing campesinos as predators and as the main agents of environ­
mental degradation in the Amazon owing to their backward agricultural
practices and the cultivation of coca. Likewise, indigenous people were
initially portrayed as the savage inhabitants of these unproductive lands,
and later as stewards of the forests (Del Cairo, 2012; Hein et al., 2020).
In this article, we analyze the challenges of forest conservation in the
transition from armed conflict to peacebuilding in the Colombian
Amazon. We conceive deforestation as a multidimensional process that
must be understood by acknowledging the historical roots and narra­
tives that shape contemporary socio-ecological dynamics. In doing so,
we reflect upon how REDD+ relates to the historical processes in the
region and to the above-mentioned narratives, and how it aims to tackle
drivers of deforestation in the case studies. We emphasize the impor­
tance of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the way in
which war-peace transitions affect deforestation processes in a multi­
dimensional milieu, where historical, social, economic, cultural and
political factors converge.
The article is structured as follows. In Section Two, the area of study
and methods used for this research are described. In Section Three, we
describe REM/Vision Amazonia. We focus on knowledge claims made by
the involved agencies and identify intertwined policy narratives. In
Sections Four and Five, based on historical insights into environmental
governance, deforestation and colonization processes and on post-
conflict drivers of deforestation, we explain the reasons why REM/
Vision Amazonia is not able to reduce deforestation sustainably. The
article closes with a section discussing our findings and suggestions for
future research and policy.
2. Research methods
This study was designed as an in-depth case study of the REM /Visión
Amazonia program in the Amazon region of San José del Guaviare,
Colombia. Because of its exploratory nature, the research followed a
qualitative approach.
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Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
2.1. Case study area
Two rural areas of the municipality San Jose del Guaviare were
selected as case studies. San José del Guaviare covers an area of 16,500
km2 and consists of the departmental capital San José, with 48,877 in­
habitants, and 12 sparsely populated rural centers, with 20,000 in­
habitants in total. The municipality of San José del Guaviare lies along
the right bank of the Guaviare River, in a transition area between the
grassland plains of the Orinoco region to the north and the Amazon
tropical rainforests to the south. Until 2017, many parts of the munici­
pality, mainly those located far from the town, were strongholds of the
FARC.
In San José, this research focused on two areas (see Fig. 1), selected
because of their unique features regarding land tenure, land use and
conflicts, and because of previous research there on local participation,
development, and conflict and cooperation in socio-environmental
processes. At the time of the fieldwork, REM/Visión Amazonia had
just started activities in this region. The first rural area of the munici­
pality to be selected was the conservation zone of the Serranía de la
Lindosa (west of the city of San José). In this location, the aim was to
analyze how a protected area influences the land tenure of campesinos
(peasants) and indigenous people. The second rural area selected was at
the border of the Forest Reserve Zone, towards the east of San José city,
including the neighborhoods of Damas del Nare, La Fuga. The aim in the
second area was to explore the limitations that the Forest Reserve Zone
creates for the land tenure of the local population (c.f. Hein et al., 2020).
2.2. Data collection and analysis
The research on which this article is based was carried out in 2017.
Qualitative research methods included observations, semi-structured
interviews, open interviews, focus groups and bibliographical and
document research. Initially, five open interviews were conducted with
donors, policy designers and implementers in Germany (i.e. BMZ, KfW,
and GIZ). Subsequently, fieldwork was carried out in two phases in
Colombia. The first field work phase consisted of interviews with 13
stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of REM in
Bogotá. The interviewees represented Visión Amazonia, the Ministry of
Environment and Sustainable Development (Minambiente), GIZ
Colombia, the Global Green Growth Institute and the Fondo Patrimonio
Natural. In addition, representatives from the three funding countries
(German, British and Norwegian embassies) were interviewed. The
second field work phase was carried out in San José del Guaviare, where
35 stakeholders from the regional authorities (e.g. Guaviare government
and Corporation for Sustainable Development of the North and East
Amazonia − CDA), campesino associations (e.g. Corpolindosa), local
organizations (e.g. Communal Action Boards or Juntas de Accion
Comunal − JACs), indigenous reservations (e.g. resguardos La María, La
Fuga and Barrancón) and demobilized guerrilla combatants were
interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Interview partners were
identified using snowball-sampling. In addition, three focus groups were
conducted separately with campesinos, indigenous peoples and ex-
guerrilla combatants: one in the Serranía de la Lindosa and two in the
rural areas bordering the Forest Reserve Zone.
In addition, bibliographic and documentary research was conducted,
systematizing and analyzing technical and legal documents related to
environmental and territorial planning in Guaviare. To relate the gath­
ered information to land-use patterns, we employed data from Global
Forest Watch and IDEAM. Interviews were recorded in the form of field
notes and audio recordings (with informed consent), and systematized
in field journals. All information was systematized and manually coded
for analysis. All information was handled anonymously and the in­
terviewees were debriefed on the outcome of the research by means of
expert panels in Bogotá and at the BMZ in Germany.
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
Fig. 1. Case study area and land designations in San José del Guaviare, Colombia. Source: Hein et al. (2020).
3. REM/Vision Amazonia and its approach to reducing
deforestation
REM/Vision Amazonia is an anti-deforestation strategy based in five
pillars. Pillar 1 (Forest Governance) focuses on forest resource planning,
strengthening of managerial and control capacities (including a military
environmental control unit called the environmental bubble1) and the
promotion of participatory processes and environmental education. The
establishment of forest business cores (FBC) for timber and non-timber
products, together with the signing of conservation agreements are
considered key measures of pillar 1 for developing a community-based
and conservation-oriented forestry sector. Forest business cores are ex­
pected to create a reliable income for frontier communities through
sustainable timber extraction (Minambiente, 2019). Initially, the CDA
and the regional associations for sustainable development invested ca.
USD 1980 for direct payments for families of FBCs. Payments will be
made on the condition that IDEAM approves families of NDFs who fulfil
the predefined conservation goals (Minambiente, 2019). Thirty-six
families in two FBCs in Guaviare received an initial payment of ca.
USD 250 for the period between November 2019 and January 2020
(Minambiente, 2019). Moreover, a tender for the establishment of a
jungle school (Escuela de selva) for 600 community leaders to promote
environmental education was launched in 2019, and 176 joint opera­
tions to control deforestation were conducted by the environmental
bubble (Minambiente, 2019).
Pillar 2 (Intersectoral Coordination) focuses on coordination be­
tween ministries (e.g. Agriculture, Mining and Environment) to prevent,
1 on governing capacity-building for indigenous leaders, spatial planning
The environmental bubble is composed of the Colombian army, the Na­
tional Police, the Attorney General’s Office, Environmental Authorities, Natural
National Parks and the Governor’s Offices.
3
Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
mitigate and compensate (for) deforestation. This pillar seeks to create a
consensus that development interventions should not lead to additional
deforestation, to connect peripheral regions to the transport system, and
to promote commercial activities that maintain biodiversity (Min­
ambiente, 2017). In practical terms, this includes measures such as the
development of a multipurpose land register by the National
Geographical Institute Agustín Codazzi and the strengthening of spatial
planning at the municipal level and in the wider Amazon region (Min­
ambiente, 2019).
Pillar 3 (Agro-environmental Development) has a special focus on
agricultural producers (campesinos and farmers), seeking to create pri­
ority value chains for sustainable non-timber products, rubber, cocoa,
meat and milk products. The implementation of pillar 3 builds on a
number of projects involving campesino associations, with seven pro­
jects in Guaviare in 2019, for example, contributing to the conservation
of 22,886 ha of forests. These projects include conservation agreements
signed by the campesino associations, and support agroforestry, the
reconversion of pastureland, ecotourism and the production of non-
timber forest products. In the Serrania la Lindosa, for example, the
eco-tourism initiative Corpolindosa receives support for conserving
4649 ha of forest (Minambiente, 2019).
Pillar 4 (Supporting Environmental Governance of Indigenous Ter­
ritories) tries to address its goals by combining policies that acknowl­
edge the indigenous land-use practices that have contributed to
maintaining the forest cover of the Colombian Amazon. The REM
2018–2019 management plan lists 10 projects that cover more than 1
million ha of land in the Amazonia. One project focusing on strength­
ening indigenous land tenure and traditional land management prac­
tices is located in Guaviare (Minambiente, 2019). Other projects focus
by indigenous communities, food security and life planning and the
transnational REDD Indigena initiative.
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
Pillar 5 (Enabling Policies) places emphasis on policies that
strengthen the remote-sensing forest and carbon monitoring system and
the national forestry inventory for the Amazon region (Minambiente,
2015, 2016). This includes a system operated by IDEAM that localizes
and identifies deforestation hotspots, based on Sentinel 1/2 and Planet
Scope images (Minambiente, 2019).
REM/Visión Amazonia acknowledges that the peace agreement and
the associated power void has created new risks to the integrity of the
Amazon biome. Its work plan clearly states that land speculation and the
expansion of the “cattle frontier” increase the pressure on natural forests
(Minambiente, 2019). Hence, the responsible government department,
Minambiente, concludes in its REM work plan that monitoring and law
enforcement have to be improved, the insecure atmosphere in the region
has to be addressed, and the alternative deforestation-free productive
systems of campesinos and indigenous communities have to be sup­
ported (Minambiente, 2019).
4. Drivers of deforestation and other historical and current
sociopolitical issues in Guaviare
Forests cover around 51% of Colombian territory – 60 million ha
(IDEAM, 2017). The Amazon region hosts 67% of these forests, and
currently this region hosts at least 70% of the deforestation in the
country. Among the departments in this region, the two main Colombian
hotspots of deforestation were located in Guaviare from the end of 2016
until the second half of 2020 (Hotspot 1: Retorno and Hotspot 2: Mar­
ginal de la Selva) (IDEAM, 2020). Figures from Global Forest Watch (see
Fig. 2) show the increasing trend in deforestation in Guaviare.
According to CDA environmental office staff, at the time of our
research the most pressing drivers of deforestation included land grab­
bing, infrastructure – mainly related to roads, coca crops and cattle
ranching. These drivers come together in a context where violence and
weak law enforcement make it difficult to deal properly with environ­
mental crimes (interview with CDA staff, July 2017). A contextual
analysis of deforestation drivers in the area suggests that these drivers
are interlinked. For example, there are clear indications that land
grabbing is connected to powerful large-scale cattle ranchers, and at the
same time linked to infrastructure (Dávalos et al., 2014).
4.1. Praderización
Recent reports on deforestation dynamics in the region have iden­
tified praderización as the main underlying cause of deforestation (Paz-
Cardona, 2017). Praderización is described as the illegal deforestation of
large portions of forest and the de-facto establishment of property rights
over land in legal terms by fencing it and grazing cows on it to
demonstrate productive use (Armenteras et al., 2019a; Armenteras
et al., 2019b; Yunis-Mebarak, 2018). Such land is then legalized via
corrupt political connections. Cattle ranching allows landowners to le­
gally demonstrate that these lands are used “productively”. The grass­
lands are kept for speculative purposes, for example, to sell to projects
such as road construction, mining or agribusiness development.
Interviewed community members have reported such processes
leading to deforestation in several areas of the municipalities of Gua­
viare, most of them in the Forest Reserve Zone. Many of the actors
involved are enticed by capital investment and large financiers, and
appropriate land through praderización. After converting forestland to
pastureland, as a means to legitimize land tenure, some owners sell or
rent the land for profit, while others keep the pastureland for cattle
ranching. Currently, the formal and informal land market in Guaviare is
accelerated, with many actors seeking to gain control of land.
Land is later “legalized” according to de facto processes using various
techniques (e.g. testaferrato (front man), letter of purchase-sale, nota­
rized statement), resulting in rural areas becoming depopulated by their
original inhabitants and falling under the control of outside interests
(Del Cairo, 2018b). In other words, large scale praderización is linked to
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Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
cattle-ranching elites that in turn are linked to political elites (Latorre-
Coronado and Pacheco, 2019). In 2017, deforestation in the Colombian
Amazonia totaled 183,000 ha, 60% due to illegal land grabbing for
cattle ranching, 20% to illegal coca cultivation and 20% to other causes
(IDEAM cited in Semana-Sostenible, 2019.). In an interview, a staff
member of the region’s environmental authority CDA explained that:
Praderización for livestock is the main driver of deforestation in
Guaviare at the moment. However, it is not the campesinos who are
to blame, as they use secondary forests or fallow lands for their own
consumption. The problem is deforestation carried out by big capital,
who come with armored trucks and armed escorts. They come to a
village and hire the inhabitants to cut down primary forest in reserve
areas. When we arrive to carry out the operations, those who are
there are the campesinos. (Interview in Pardo-Ibarra, 2019).
Summing up, praderización for land speculation is driven by
economically powerful regional and national cattle-ranching elites who
invest money to directly hire campesinos as labor to clear trees or buy
deforested land from campesinos who are forced to move on into the
forest to establish new households. This process, says Salgado (2012), is
a cycle of colonization and land grabbing in which campesinos are
repeatedly dispossessed. It can be linked to state economic development
policies that have historically supported extensive cattle ranching and
currently push for agribusiness expansion in the area (i.e. palm oil).
Praderización is related to deforestation but also to consolidation of
the great historical inequality of land distribution that is currently
accelerating in Colombia. Today, Colombia is one of the most unequal
countries in the world in terms of land distribution, with an estimated
0.4% of the population owning 62% of the country’s most productive
land (USAID, 2017). In Guaviare, according to IGAC (2012), roughly
90% of the area is in the hands of large landholders (large-scale cattle
ranching). The expansion of latifundios is carried out via many strategies,
such as large landholders taking advantage of bankrupt campesinos to
buy cheap land: “Whenever generalized crops fail, or when forceful
eradication comes and campesinos face difficulties, then the land market
gets active” (Campesino; pers. comm. July 2017).
For example, Deispaz (2014) explains that in the past, the economic
downturn and fall in illicit production helped latifundia, causing cattle
ranches to expand, today this is still the case as wealthy people buy
complete villages and deforest 200 to 500 ha of forest in one go (Yunis-
Mebarak, 2018).
There is strong evidence suggesting that many large-scale cattle
ranchers, with political connections to the departmental government,
have joined this land rush. In this sense, many of our interview partners
explained how large-scale cattle ranchers use political connections to
dodge environmental control and to find ways to normalize land tenure
in former forested land subject to praderización.
Everyone in the department knows that Governor Nebio Echeverry
… buys land from campesinos and indigenous people at low prices
and then sells it at twice the price to large landowners, granting them
titles and all the legal documentation. And with it, the Public Force
has entered to take care of these lands, to prevent one from
approaching and asking who the owner is and what they are doing in
the jungle. (Campesino leader in PARES, 2019).
The identity of actors responsible for the deforestation in Guaviare
has been made public at the national level in news stories, as in one
entitled “Deforestation in Guaviare finally has a name” (Latorre-Coro­
nado and Pacheco, 2019). This report highlighted that the former
governor of Guaviare, Nebio Echeverry, was one of the many large-scale
cattle ranchers responsible for deforestation. Furthermore, in 2019, the
governor and two mayors of municipalities in Guaviare were formally
sanctioned with fines for allowing (or driving) deforestation to build or
improve roads in protected areas (Ardila, 2019). The irony of these cases
is that the officials in charge of law enforcement were directly
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
Fig. 2. Deforestation in Guaviare in kha for period 2002–2019. Source: Adapted from GFW (2019).
responsible for breaking the law.
4.2. Infrastructure
As a driver of deforestation in this case study context, infrastructure
development refers to the illegal road between Calamar and Miraflores,
and other secondary roads such as Marginal de La Selva (Dávalos et al.,
2016). Some 40 years ago, fur and rubber traders opened the road that
connects Calamar and Miraflores. Since then, inhabitants and the FARC
have gradually added stretches to it resulting in its current 138 km
trajectory.
The construction of this road is a source of conflict between the
neighboring communities (which demand it), the Guaviare Government
(which promised it), the CDA (which rejects it), and other actors who
want to protect the forest. Planned since the 1950s, the Marginal de la
Selva is a highway project intended to create a paved land passage
through the Andean foothills into Colombia’s Amazon region. The
highway, when completed, would allow land freight to cross South
America from the Atlantic to the Pacific without having to enter the
Andean Mountains, opening an enticing trade route from Venezuela to
Ecuador through Colombia. In Guaviare, the Marginal de la Selva would
connect San José del Guaviare with San Vicente del Caguán. In 2018,
this project was cancelled due to the expansion of the Chiribiquete
National Natural Park, but deforestation in the area continues, as many
actors, especially big capital investors from Bogotá (Del Cairo, 2018a),
are grabbing land, through praderización, in the areas where the road is
planned in order to speculate with land or claim compensation.
Infrastructure influences the dynamics of praderización for specula­
tive purposes, as investors seek to gain clear land close to the projected
highway and secondary roads, which guarantees future land valoriza­
tion, therefore road investment has enhanced the value of land (Dávalos
et al., 2014). This encourages land grabbing processes related to
deforestation not due to an expectation of income based on value
changes in cattle ranching, but due to expectation of land revenues
obtained by future valorization resulting from infrastructure invest­
ment. In other words, the expectation of infrastructure investment is a
key factor to understand land grabbing practices associated with
praderización.
4.3. Illicit crops
Control of illicit crop production such as coca is now being contested
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Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
by several criminal groups, including BACRIM (criminal bands)2
(McDermott, 2014). For example, the Gulf Clan, which mainly operated
in the Cordoba and Urabá regions (Chocó and Antioquia), has expanded
its area of influence into the Amazon territory. The Puntilleros, a
BACRIM, are also fighting for control over coca production and distri­
bution. Remaining FARC dissidents, who have more territorial control in
Guaviare than other criminal groups, are also fueling deforestation,
among others, through coca production. Recent journalistic in­
vestigations state that FARC dissidents offer up to ca. USD 1400 to
impoverished campesinos for each hectare of deforested land for coca
crops (Semana-Sostenible, 2020). These various groups are also linked
to deforestation in a large part of the Guaviare, as the presence of these
groups and their interest in buying pasta base (coca paste) gives
impoverished campesinos an incentive to expand coca crops.
Looking back in history, one of the main factors that helped illicit
economies thrive in Guaviare included the promotion of colonization by
landless campesinos without agricultural extension services, limited
commercial connections to Colombia’s major markets, and the weak and
sporadic on-the-ground attention paid to colonization programs (Arcila
et al., 1999; Del Cairo, 2012). All this combined with the strategic in­
terest of illegal groups in strengthening their economic income from the
collection of taxes on coca transactions (a practice known as gramaje)
and on coca commercialization. This accelerates the coca economy by
opening new veins of colonization following the course of certain rivers,
such as Guaviare, Vaupés and Inírida, which represented new hotspots
of deforestation during the 1970s and 80s.
In the late 1980s, the government began implementing anti-drug
policies that included the eradication of coca crops through aerial-
spraying of herbicides (Ortiz, 2016) and the substitution of coca crops
for legal crops (e.g. rubber, cocoa, amazon fruits). Aerial fumigations
meant that deforestation moved inside the national parks and also into
indigenous resguardos (reservations), as Colombian legislation prohibits
fumigations inside resguardos or national parks (Gómez-Maseri, 2015).
2
McDermott (2014) explains that the name BACRIM was created by the
government of former President Alvaro Uribe in the aftermath of the demobi­
lization of the AUC. Any drug trafficking organizations post-2006 were not to
be considered paramilitary groups but, rather, “criminal bands” (from the
Spanish “bandas criminales” – BACRIM). Yet all but one of the BACRIM had
their roots in the AUC. The exception that proves the rule was the Rastrojos,
which emerged from the military wing of a faction of the Norte del Valle Cartel.
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
The war on drugs reinforced the narratives of coca growers as “criminal”
campesinos who were one of the key pieces of the illegal value chain of
the drug trade and also allies of the FARC rebels who must be prose­
cuted. This framing of campesinos as doubly illegal became another
growing driver of land dispossession and further colonization of the
Amazonian forests (Ortiz, 2016; Ramírez, 2017; Salgado, 2012). This,
and the intensification of the armed conflict in the mid-1980s, resulted
in an unprecedented mobilization of campesinos demanding land
property rights and better infrastructure, such as the 1985 and 1986
campesino strikes in Guaviare. As a result of these strikes, the Ministry of
Agriculture freed up (subtracted) 221,000 ha from the Amazon Forest
Reserve Zone (ZRF) in Guaviare (Incora Resolution 128 of 1987) and
distributed this land among the strikers.
Dávalos et al. (2011:1220) argue that in recent decades, coca culti­
vation has been directly or indirectly associated with drivers of defor­
estation in Amazonia, and that the “eradication program itself could
contribute to deforestation by facilitating the degradation of forest
remnants, pushing growers out of targeted areas to new lands making
colonization and deforestation more dynamic”. In addition, the histor­
ical conditions that have produced these frontier areas make political
and social violence a decisive factor in the way in which many powerful
actors compete with campesinos and indigenous people over land and
local resources.
Interestingly, Latorre-Coronado and Pacheco (2019) reported that in
Guaviare, between 2016 and 2017, deforestation grew by 233% while at
the same time, coca cultivation decreased by 28%. A similar finding was
confirmed by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC, 2018). This
contradicts the official narrative of the government about illicit crops as
the main current cause of deforestation, suggesting that other drivers
such as land grabbing play a larger role than officially recognized.
4.4. Changing development paradigms in the Amazon and social
differentiation
The colonization of the Amazon was a state-led strategy aimed
mainly at consolidating state control in this frontier area by supporting
agrarian colonization, instead of redistributing the highly concentrated
land in the Andean region of the country (Dávalos et al., 2016; Del Cairo
et al., 2014). At the beginning of 20th century, land concentration was a
source of social conflict, and the Law 200/1936 was an attempt to solve
such conflict by declaring the Amazon as vacant land (or tierra baldia)3
to be colonized and developed by Andean campesinos. However, most of
this land lacked (and still lacks) infrastructure for development,
contributing to the continued livelihood struggle of migrant campesino
populations. With Law 200/1936, the Colombian state claimed to be the
owner of this “empty” land, thereby denying any form of pre-existing
land tenure, such as might be held, for instance, by indigenous peo­
ples. At the time, indigenous peoples – mainly those established in
frontier areas – were portrayed by policymakers, among others, as un­
productive, savage populations that had to be “civilized” to truly
become part of the Colombian nation (Escobar, 2010; Molano, 1987).
Between the 1940s and 1970s the Colombian state started to pro­
mote a model of directed migration to colonize the Amazonia following
the narrative: “a land without men, for men without land” which was
also used in other Amazonian contexts (Del Cairo and Montenegro-
Perini, 2015; Hecht and Cockburn, 1989). Colonizers who converted
wild frontier land4 (Billington, 1971; Turner, 1962) – or transformed it
3 5
Tierras baldias refers to urban or rural unconstructed or uncultivated land
that is part of the State’s property. De jure, tierras baldias are owned by the state
and are imprescriptible. However, the state can grant ownership under certain
conditions.
4
Turner (1962) and Billington (1971) refer to frontier areas as underpopu­
lated, peripheral areas on the fringes of civilization and state control, waiting to
be civilized and put into production.
6
Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
from its natural condition – into productive agricultural land were
granted property titles. However, the state did not grant access to all
areas and established National Forest Reserve Zones (Zonas de Reserva
Forestal (ZRF) – Law 2/1959) in order to establish a “land reserve or
cushion” (Del Cairo, 2012) on which the state could draw for “free” land.
Thousands of campesinos in the Andean region of Colombia who did not
have land or had been violently displaced were able to access the tierras
baldías in the northwestern Amazon (Molano, 1987; Salgado, 2012), and
deforestation rates increased as a result of the very conditions that the
state promoted in order to give titles to landless campesinos. Later, in
response to the large number of land claims and colonizers, the state
issued Law 4/1973 to free up (subtract) more land from the forest
reserve zone (ZRF).5 These colonization programs followed the narra­
tive of migrant campesinos as agents civilizing unproductive natural
wild lands and, later, as key actors for rural development.
However, in general, many scholars argue that the promises of rural
development that were part of the state-led agrarian colonization pro­
grams did not materialize, as is evident in the current lack of infra­
structure, tertiary roads and services such as drinking water, healthcare,
education, access to credit, technical assistance and social security for
the majority of inhabitants (Dávalos et al., 2016; Moreno-Sanchez et al.,
2003).
Along with the convoluted precedents of the coca economy, coloni­
zation, expansion of cattle ranching, coca eradication and alternative
development policies in Guaviare, the Colombian government has
striven since 1990 to manage the Amazon according to the international
environmental script (Del Cairo et al., 2014). In fact, environmental
legislation began to boom in Colombia’s northwestern Amazon, aligned
with growing global concern over the environmental crisis and climate
change. Policy implementation progressively echoed the narrative of
campesinos as predators of natural forests and biodiversity and, conse­
quently, led to new land ownership limitations outside the ZRF and,
above all, to various types of restrictions on land use (Del Cairo et al.,
2014).
In the 1990s, an environmental legislative started to develop in
Colombia. First, the 1991 Political Constitution upgraded Guaviare from
a “special commissariat” to a department with administrative auton­
omy. This change allowed for the consolidation of local power by eco­
nomic elites of the region. Over time, these elites made convenient use of
environmental surveillance instruments in order to exert pressure on
small rural landowners to leave the land, seeking to increase land con­
centration among the elite, and banish campesinos to more distant
agrarian frontiers that extended into the national forest reserve (Del
Cairo et al., 2014). Second, Colombia subscribed to the 1992 Rio Con­
ference agreements and the ratification of the 1992 United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change. In Guaviare, these inter­
national conventions translated into the promotion of several protected
areas to reduce carbon emissions, placing the need to conserve
Amazonian ecosystems at the center of the global public debate (Ruiz,
2003). In the case of Guaviare, the rise of environmental legislation and
the legal capacities of state institutions to carry out environmental
surveillance work led, according to our interviewees, to serious conflicts
between campesino communities and state institutions over property
rights and land use, especially when lands that had been occupied for
decades were declared as protected areas.
The emergence of the environmental agenda reconfigured the soci­
etal roles of the different actors living in Guaviare. For example,
The ZRF in Guaviare has been reduced in size through various legal sub­
tractions (e.g. Res. 217/1965, Res. 222/1971 and Res. 128/1987). These sub­
tractions were the result of social pressures to which the state has responded by
liberating land for private and communal titling. What remains of the original
ZRF in Guaviare is now under Res. 1925/2013, sub-classified into three types:
allowing no intervention (type a), allowing sustainable forestry activities (type
b) and allowing agro-forestry activities (type c).
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
campesinos initially labeled by the state as the development engines of
the region (through the establishment of agricultural activities), were
now labeled as nature’s destroyers. Likewise, indigenous communities
moved from being perceived by the state as backward, savage and un­
productive actors to being stewards of conservation (Del Cairo, 2012;
Hein et al., 2020). Such changes in the connotations of social classifi­
cations also imply changes in what was considered legal and appro­
priate, and redefined the rights and responsibilities of social actors
regarding access to /control of land and related natural resources. In
general, the presence of the state authorities was always relatively weak
(other than in close proximity to San Jose del Guaviare, the de­
partment’s capital) and large parts of Guaviare were controlled by
armed groups and/or self-governed by local communities (Del Cairo and
Montenegro-Perini, 2015).
This brief historical account of agrarian colonization, coca crops and
eradication policies in Guaviare shows the context of deforestation,
which has been part of the historical construction of the economy and
landscape of the region, closely linked to multiscale dynamics such as
land distribution changes and international trade and environmental
agreements.
5. Deforestation in the post-conflict period
The peace agreement with FARC influenced the reconfiguration of
socio-ecological dynamics in the region, leading to rising rates of
deforestation (Sierra et al., 2017). According to Tobón-Quintero and
Herrera-Jaramillo (2016) and Fajardo (2017), the cause of this peace­
–deforestation paradox is the power vacuum left by the FARC. As
guerrilla fighters began to demobilize, several groups (e.g. guerrilla
dissidents, criminal bands and large-scale cattle ranchers with strong
political connections) started to move in, taking advantage of the power
vacuum left behind in order to accumulate land for speculation, cattle
ranching and mining (Brodzinsky, 2017). Some of the illegal groups
rushing for land include FARC dissidents and criminal gangs such as the
Gulf Clan and Los Puntilleros (Paz-Cardona, 2017).
It has become evident that the de facto withdrawal of the FARC from
its controlled territories in the context of the peace process generated
opportunities that ultimately increased deforestation in areas where the
FARC was previously present (Prem et al., 2020). Prem et al. (2020)
shows how deforestation is mainly linked to large-scale cattle ranching
and land speculation, rather than to small-scale agriculture (including
coca growing). Castro-Nunez et al. (2017) confirm these findings,
explaining that campesinos work mainly on fallow land and – to a lesser
extent – in secondary forests. Dávalos et al. (2016) further supports this
by stating that even before the signing of the peace agreement, defor­
estation rates from coca cultivation were at least one order of magnitude
lower than deforestation for legal uses. In this sense, there are vested
interests from powerful actors in pushing forward the narrative that
deforestation is mainly carried out by small farmers linked to coca
cultivation, although this is not the case as we have shown in the article.
The focus of REM/Vision Amazonia on environmental control is also
controversial. During our interviews with campesinos and members of
campesino associations, participants argued that law enforcement is
highly unequal, mainly tackling “small holders” and not land specula­
tors, whom they consider mainly responsible for deforestation. This
view is shared to some degree by CDA staff, who argue that it is difficult
to control environmental crimes by armed groups but that it is even
more difficult to control large-scale cattle ranchers with political con­
nections. Moreover, a staff member explained that because of the se­
curity situation and a recent incident in which a soldier and CDA staff
member were killed in a joint operation against environmental crimes,
the environmental bubble is not currently operating in areas where
armed groups and organized crime are present. Until 2019, the activities
of the environmental bubble and environmental law enforcement were
mainly focused on areas close to the department’s capital. Under the
military operation Artemisa, implemented since 2019, deforestation
7
Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
control is carried out in deforestation hotspots in the Amazon region,
and has to date deployed seven military operations. Artemisa has led to a
shift of government strategy in which the policies based on incentives
such as Vision Amazonia/REM have become less relevant in comparison
to disincentive or military conservation policies in which deforestation
is made a national security issue (Ortiz and Sánchez, 2021). Nonethe­
less, Artemisa is a controversial military operation as it has focused
mainly on controlling campesinos with small plots of lands, while large
landowners, illegal groups and the investors behind deforestation
remain untouched (El-Tiempo, 2020).
There is a selective application of the law: there is no control or
surveillance towards latifundistas [large-scale cattle ranchers], usu­
ally the law captures those with the axe, but not those directing
major land grabs (Campesino, pers. comm. July 2017).
A member of a Guaviare-based campesino association argued that
land speculation and the conversion of forests to pasture is backed by
large-scale cattle ranchers and other groups that he calls “neo­
paramilitary”, with close ties to regional elites. These statements indi­
cate that despite attempts to strengthen environmental law enforcement
by REM/Visión Amazonia, and new initiatives such as Artemisa, actors
driving large-scale deforestation are well positioned within webs of
political and economic power, and are consequently, in most cases, not
targeted by environmental control actions.
The relationship between deforestation and agribusiness is becoming
increasingly apparent in Guaviare. During our research, one of the ru­
mors brought to our attention by some of our interviewees was the
potential creation of a Zone of Interest for Rural, Economic and Social
Development, Zidres for short (Law 1776/2016). According to inter­
viewee statements, this is on the local decision-making agenda. This
potential future development illustrates the interest of the government
in supporting the expansion of agribusinesses on tierras baldías. Zidres
are promoted as a means of incorporating landless campesinos into
agricultural production in alliance with large private investors. How­
ever, many such campesinos have land that is used/managed without
official legal rights, although it is recognized by communal institutions
such as JACs. In this sense, customary land rights such as continued use
and occupation are tied to local legitimacy.
Even though a Zidres has not been officially confirmed in Guaviare,
in some political circles at regional level this idea has been discussed in
relation to the introduction of intensive, monoculture crops like palm oil
in Guaviare (Ebus, 2017; Minagricultura, 2018). During a field visit to a
recently established water buffalo farm, a worker explained the
following to us:
Water buffalos are widely used for palm oil cultivation in the
neighboring department of Meta and we are now preparing for its
development in Northern Guaviare (pers. comm. July 2017).
At the social and economic level, analyses of the implementation of
Zidres show how alliances between private investors, the state and
campesinos negatively affect campesino rights to property, as well as
producing negative environmental effects (Arias-Henao, 2016; Burgos,
2016). In this context, foreign and national capital investments might be
deployed to erode the land rights of campesinos, and to enhance the land
rights of large investors aligned with land deals for large-scale export
agribusiness. This could occur in territories where, according to Law
160/1996, land should be distributed to landless campesinos.
As long as deforestation and extractivist practices are deeply
entangled with regional elites and actors that operate beyond the law, it
remains unclear how REM/Visión Amazonia can effectively reduce
deforestation. Fundamentally, underlying causes of deforestation are
not being adequately addressed. These include direct drivers such as
praderización, illicit crop production (and eradication policies), along­
side governmental economic development policies linked to extracti­
vism, agribusiness expansion and land grabbing. In this sense, REM/
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
Visión Amazonia failures are related to the political economy of result-
based aid (Angelsen, 2017; Hout, 2004; Klingebiel and Janus, 2014).
Hout (2004:591) argues that “donors tend to overlook the underlying
structural causes of bad governance”. In our case study, donors, in the
search for potential new REDD+ success candidates, were plausibly
attracted by decreasing deforestation rates prior to the peace accord and
by the subsequent political momentum for policy change. Donors likely
hoped that peace, followed by the strengthening presence of the state
and the additional incentives provided through REM, would help to
further reduce deforestation rates. In this context, however, donors may
have overlooked or ignored at least two issues. First, low deforestation
rates were likely caused by political uncertainty and insecurity and were
also, at least to some extent, the result of the FARC preventing the entry
of other actors. Second, as Hook (2020) has shown for Guayana and
Krause (2020) for Colombia, the result-based payments are often
insufficient to control deforestation and the REM/Visión Amazonia is
not designed to replace the extractivist development paradigm (Krause,
2020), and is consequently not able to reduce deforestation in the long
run. In addition, REM’s relatively unambitious baseline (Kill and
Fatheuer, 2018) seems to be designed to spend REDD+ funds, rather
than to promote real structural change (Hook, 2020; Krause, 2020). If
funds are not fully disbursed, as in 2019 because of rising deforestation
rates (Krause, 2020), this indicates a lack of success for the recipient
country as well as for the donor, which is a scenario both parties seek to
avoid (Angelsen, 2017). Referring to the global Norwegian REDD+
engagement, Angelsen argues that “donors [are] eager to spend and
recipient countries unwilling to reform” (2017: 242). This analysis
suggests REM may have little capacity to force a political system change
so that the political drivers of deforestation are tackled. Moreover, many
of the measures, such as the incentives provided by the FBCs and by
pillar 3, are rooted in a typical deforestation narrative or even myth
(Fairhead and Leach, 1998) that deforestation is ultimately caused by
poverty. Or they follow the assumption that environmental problems
can be solved by a number of technical fixes such as improved moni­
toring based on remote sensing, improved forest zoning and better
equipped law enforcement. The Vision Amazonia, as an environmental
activist in Guaviare explains, “is a technocratic initiative that was
formulated in Bogota and which underestimates complex social condi­
tions in the Amazon” (pers. Com. July 2017). Critical analyses of REDD+
suggest that it rarely targets underlying drivers of deforestation and
forest degradation as they are mainly found in the global political
economy (Hein et al., 2020; Henders et al., 2015; Krause, 2020; Skutsch
and Turnhout, 2020; Weatherley-Singh and Gupta, 2015).
Our research suggests that REM/Visión Amazonia should further
support campesinos and indigenous groups in conservation activities.
Now that secure land tenure for indigenous peoples has made some
headway (at least in formal terms), it is important to start promoting
secure (common and private) land tenure for campesinos together with
an effective rural development policy (access to credit, roads, technical
assistance, agricultural insurance, etc.) in order to avoid “titled exclu­
sions” (Hall et al., 2011). Promoting the legal adoption and effective
implementation of legal figures like territories and areas conserved by
indigenous peoples and local communities (abbreviated to ICCAs),
OECMs (other effective area-based conservation measures) and campe­
sino reserves (ZRC- Zonas de Reserva Campesina)6 can provide effective
conservation solutions under local modes of governance. The REM
support for indigenous communities, in particular, has some
6 of REM actions. If these issues are not addressed by conditional pay­
The first ZRC was established in Guaviare in 1997, granting collective
property titles for productive land and forest conservation inside ZRF. However,
ZRCs were discriminately stigmatized as narcoterrorism hotspots by the gov­
ernment of Uribe and their organizations and leaders were harassed, threat­
ened, displaced or killed (Ortiz, 2016). This and the lack of political will to
support them, ended up weakening campesinos to effectively control and defend
ZRCs against interventions by external agents.
8
Forest Policy and Economics 127 (2021) 102450
commonalities with more progressive concepts such as the “conserva­
tion basic income” proposed by Büscher and Fletcher (2019). However,
these measures are unlikely to reduce deforestation rates since most of
the targeted actors are already practicing “low carbon and low defor­
estation” lifestyles.
6. Final remarks
The deforestation trends in Colombia demonstrate what Grima and
Singh (2019:273) have shown for Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Ivory Coast and
Peru: deforestation rates increase during the transition period between
war and peace because “the immediate aftermaths of violent conflicts
present windows of opportunity for resource appropriation”. The
contribution of our article is to show how REDD+ operates with respect
to deforestation politics and narratives. In the transition from armed
conflict to peacebuilding, this case study has been framed by the his­
torical, economic and political processes surrounding structural social
struggles for land and natural resource control in the Colombian
Amazon.
For environmental development policy, this article depicts how
certain environmental narratives, which are not necessarily based on
facts, guide anti-deforestation action. At the same time, the article also
shows the difficulties faced when tackling political drivers of defores­
tation, as environmental policy reinforcement is selective and in­
stitutions are weak. This is especially the case in frontier areas that are,
paradoxically, often biodiversity hotspots. So far, the government has
not recognized or tackled deforestation drivers related to politically
strong actors or drivers beyond the local level. While REM/Visión
Amazonia has focused on campesinos and indigenous communities,
deforestation in Guaviare is currently mainly driven by a land-control
rush where large state owners/powerful cattle ranchers and other land
grabbers operate. Until REM and similar programs − and public policy −
address these land grabbing processes, large-scale deforestation will
continue its current course.
For national anti-deforestation policy, we also show how deforesta­
tion is driven historically by ineffective state policies and national–local
state discrepancies that reflect issues of multi-level governance (Loft
et al., 2017). Furthermore, we have shown how these mainly centrist
policies are based on changing cultural essentialism or stereotypes of
actors (previously, indigenous “bad” and campesinos “good”; now the
opposite) and a lack of understanding of the natural resource conflicts
they generate (Hein et al., 2020). Moreover, deforestation is also about
politics and structural conditions favoring land grabbing, and specula­
tion associated with regional elites − similar to Brazil’s current political
storm driving Amazon deforestation (de Area Leão Pereira et al., 2020).
Karsenty and Ongolo (2012:38-42) warn that it is important to consider
the political economy of the state, especially when dealing with “fragile”
or even “failing” states, facing severe and chronic institutional crises,
which are often ruled by “governments with private agendas fueling
corruption”. The history of centralized forest ownership illustrates that
although governments may be unable to enforce forest regulations
against powerful corporate or elite interests, they are certainly able to
exclude less powerful, poor forest peoples (Agrawal, 2010). In this sense,
the impact of economic incentives to stop deforestation is not as sub­
stantial as REDD+ promoters initially considered. Rather, it is a piece in
the jigsaw puzzle of the everyday realities of deforestation and conser­
vation in the forest frontier regions of the Amazon. Despite the wide
scope of REM/Visión Amazonia pillars, there are key regional processes
acting as structural deforestation drivers that remain outside the scope
ments for basic improvements in the institutional context (e.g. regula­
tions and political will to support ICCAs or the like, regulations
hindering corruption related to land concentration and land-grabbing),
REM’s actions will remain disconnected from structural processes
driving deforestation in the local and regional context of the Colombian
Amazon.
J.C. Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al.
Author statement
Jean Carlo Rodríguez-de-Francisco: Conceptualization, Method­
ology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Writing - Original
Draft, Writing - Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration,
Discussing results with stakeholders.
Carlos del Cairo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Resources, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review & Editing, Su­
pervision, Discussing results with stakeholders.
Daniel Ortiz-Gallego: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investiga­
tion, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review & Editing, Discussing
results with stakeholders.
Juan Sebastian Velez-Triana: Conceptualization, Methodology,
Resources, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review & Editing, Dis­
cussing results with stakeholders.
Tomás Vergara-Gutiérrez: Conceptualization, Methodology,
Investigation, Writing, Discussing results with stakeholders.
Jonas Hein: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation,
Writing - Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and
Development (BMZ) supported this research. Special thanks to all the
people in Germany and Colombia that provided us with useful insights
for this article. Many thanks to the reviewers for their time, valuable
comments and suggestions that helped us to significantly improve the
article. Any errors that remain are the authors’ own responsibility.
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