How effective have been guerrilla occupation and protected areas in avoiding deforestation in Colombia?

Abstract

Impact assessment and monitoring of conservation strategies are required to guarantee successful conservation outcomes. The establishment of protected areas (PAs) is a worldwide conservation strategies, but some PAs are not effective in avoiding deforestation. On the other hand, armed conflicts have ambiguous effects on wildlife. Colombia is a megadiverse country that not only has a huge network of PAs but also shows a high deforestation rate and a 50-years-old armed conflict. Here, we assessed the impact of the Colombian PAs and the FARC-EP guerrilla (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) occupation areas in avoiding deforestation in the country. For that, we compared the forest cover of PAs and FARC areas with environmentally similar control areas to assess forest loss from 2000 to 2017. We found that only large Colombian PAs were effective in avoiding deforestation over the last 17 years and that FARC presence increased deforestation in the country. Our results showed that the establishment of PA alone is not enough to ensure a positive conservation outcome. Our study offered a broad-scale analysis of Colombian PA impacts in avoiding deforestation as well as FARC's role in forest loss. Colombia has several challenges to reduce its deforestation rate and to enhance the impact of PA in avoiding deforestation. Those challenges include the solution of the land tenure conflict, improvement of current legislation, strengthening governance, and conflict resolution. Further, Colombia needs to deal with obstacles derived from armed conflict itself, particularly in the historic FARC areas, where fundamental conservation efforts are mostly needed.