A new war on nature and people: taking stock of the Colombian peace agreement

Abstract

Non-technical summary:Almost six years have passed since the Colombian peace agreement was signed. However, the promise of a 'Stable and lasting peace' is slipping away as the transition towards peace is increasingly tainted and overshadowed with violence. The future of Colombia is at a crossroad and without international support and action taken to monitor global supply chains, these particular drivers of conflict, violence and environmental degradation will persist. We summarize the current situation and shed light on the complexities of building peace in Colombia, with a particular focus on the environmental changes that took place since the peace agreement was signed. Technical summary:The Colombian peace agreement officially ended one of the world's longest internal armed conflicts. But the transformation of land use that takes place in the wake of the peace agreement, has made the historic inequalities of access to land more visible and revealed inherent and violent struggles over resources that persist across the country. In this briefing we analyse the current status of peacebuilding in Colombia and highlight the major barriers and challenges in the current peacebuilding efforts. We show how the last years brought severe and negative repercussions for people, communities and the natural environment in Colombia as cattle ranching, 'productive agriculture' and extractive industries are increasingly encroaching into indigenous territories, protected areas and forest ecosystems, replacing diverse natural forests that support biodiversity and contribute to human well-being locally and globally. The resurging presence of numerous armed groups seeking to control the profitable drug trade and mineral deposits are a major problem and obstacle for building lasting and sustainable peace among people and with the natural environment in Colombia. We conclude

Examining factors for the adoption of silvopastoral agroforestry in the Colombian Amazon

“…Cattle ranching livestock systems still dominate the Amazonian foothills of Colombia 15 , 16 . Since the 2016 peace agreement a number of studies have argued that the withdrawal of the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) has increased land and tenancy speculation, natural resource extraction, and the expansion of the agricultural frontier 17 , 18 . Accordingly, the conversion of native forest to cattle ranching is often facilitated by non-legal actors and land speculation 19 , 20 .…”