Conservation Opportunities of the Land Restitution Program Areas in the Colombian Post-Conflict Period

Abstract

The Land Restitution Program (LRP) is one of the greatest challenges for Colombia’s post-conflict period; it implies the recognition of the victims of dispossession or abandonment of lands and sets the discussion for future land use planning in these areas. The 1,119,959 Ha of LRP areas (August 2018) require knowledge of their state to promote land uses that favor the conservation of priority ecosystems and forest cover. Spatial and statistical analyzes where used to study the land-cover change in and around LRP areas at the national and regional level. An index of naturalness using a multi-criteria framework was used to identify important areas for conservation. Within areas, forest cover changes, resulting from deforestation and regeneration processes, decreased between 1990 and 2017. A total of 9.4% of their area show high naturalness, while 20% of them show high importance for conservation. The results show that, despite their dispossession/abandonment, these areas continued a deforestation process. Most of the areas show low naturalness, but conservation priorities can be identified in the Andes, Amazon, and Orinoco regions.

Exploring social-ecological systems in the transition from war to peace: A scenario-based approach to forecasting the post-conflict landscape in a Colombian region

“…6). This regional tendency is consistent with the data of increase of agricultural production at country level (45% of the territory has recently turned to agricultural uses, Unda and Etter, 2019).…”

“…Thus, post-conflict changes could imply negative effects on biodiversity conservation. These could arise if political stability and an imperative for growth stimulates rapid ecosystem transformation and land use intensification favouring the enrichment of new landowners, well placed to exploit an intensive agro-industrial model (Morales, 2017;Unda and Etter, 2019) as the simulation foretells. But also, the scenario predictions could trigger positive effects through proactive design of effective governance structures that produce better ecosystem management for a good social and ecological alignment (Kininmonth et al, 2015;Sierra et al, 2017), recovering and improving simultaneously human wellbeing and the resilience of local communities (Ibáñez and Vélez, 2007).…”

“…However unregulated increases in the exploitation of natural resources and agricultural intensification constitute a clear and present threat to the conservation of Colombian ecosystems (Dávalos, 2001;WWF-Colombia, 2017;Unda and Etter, 2019).…”

Parasites Circulating in Wild Synanthropic Capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris): A One Health Approach

“…Accordingly, the Orinoco River constitutes a huge tropical watershed with extensive wetlands, marshes, and lakes nourished by the fourth largest river in the world. Unfortunately, this diverse and unique ecosystem has suffered dramatic anthropogenic changes during the last decades because of legal and illegal agroindustrial crop development [ 7 ], the expansion of the agricultural frontier due to livestock, illegal mining, logging [ 8 ], hunting [ 6 ], and wildlife trafficking [ 9 ]. Thus, free-ranging capybaras distributed in the human-altered Orinoco Basin are constantly interacting with a plethora of endemic wildlife species, humans, and domestic animals such as horses ( Equus caballus ), cattle ( Bos taurus indicus ), chickens ( Gallus gallus domesticus ), dogs ( Canis familiaris ), and cats ( Felis catus ).…”

Assessing Environmental Criteria to Support Forest Connectivity

“…Importance that has been highlighted in the literature review. (Ayram et al, 2016, Fernádez and Morales, 2016, Unda and Etter, 2019 and Rincón et la., 2019). This way, the criteria selection based on literature review brings robustness to the study, considering that the set was previous evaluated in other researches.…”