Militarisation Under COVID-19: Understanding the Differential Impact of Lockdown on the Forests of Colombia

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative analysis and anthropological histories, we argue that deforestation rates in the Inter-Andean Valleys and in the Amazon Belt of Colombia reflect the specific role of the military in different articulations of the political forest along with new connections between conservation and the war on drugs. This paper examines the increase in deforestation in Colombia in 2020 that partially coincided with the “lockdown” imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Early media analysis linked this with the redeployment of military forces away from forest protection to impose lockdown restrictions. However, closer investigation reveals significant regional variation in both the reorganisation of military groups, and in the rate at which deforestation has materialised; military presence has increased in some regions, while in others deforestation has increased. To explain this, we unpack the “biopolitical” dimensions of international conservation to show how the specific deployment of military groups in Colombia reflects an interplay between notions of the protection of (species) life, longer colonial histories, and more recent classification of geographies in terms of riskiness and value.

Between monitoring and surveillance: Geographies of emerging drone technologies in contemporary conservation

“…For others, it is rather the moral association of conservation with protection and progress that makes it open to co-optation by accumulation and securitisation agendas alike (Massé and Lunstrum 2016). Either way, critical scholars note that the imperative to protect biodiversity is increasingly being associated (whether purposefully, or unintentionally) with calls to police and contain those long considered ‘risky’ by state or neo-colonial actors (Amador-Jiménez and Millner, 2021; Bocarejo and Ojeda 2016).…”

“…However, building on a history of exclusion and displacement of Indigenous people from the reserve (Strahorn 2009), and of continued policed/restricted access of local communities to forest resources (Hussain, Dasgupta and Bargali 2016; Rastogi et al 2014), these surveillance technologies have functioned primarily to discipline local populations. At the same time, they have created and maintained landscapes of fear and fear of being watched (Author 4 2021).…”

Quantifying resilience of socio-ecological systems through dynamic Bayesian networks

“…The Monquentiva community has high social cohesion and a considerable level of organization that aims to sustainable use and manage natural resources (Amador-Jiménez, 2020). The Monquentiva community runs a cheese and dairy cooperative since 1990 and rates of deforestation have decreased in the area even when deforestation has intensified in Colombia (Amador-Jiménez and Millner, 2021). Today the relationship between the social and ecological subsystems at Monquentiva is therefore thought to be stable and harmonious, and if so, the Monquentiva SES could be an example of a resilient socio-ecological system in the 2nd most diverse country on earth (Hernández, 2016).…”

Complementary ways of seeing “the Nature”: Integrating varieties of knowledge practices in the management of local environmental conflicts in Colombia

“… 2. A major equivocation of the analysis behind Artemisa is the idea that the peasant poor [ colonos ] of the region are responsible for deforestation. Analysis shows that mafia and poverty force colonos to work felling trees when state governance is absent (see Amador-Jiménez & Millner, 2021). …”