RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) \u2014 Gustavo Petro,\u00a0Colombia\u2019s first elected leftist president,\u00a0will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Petro has promised to limit agribusiness expansion into the forest, and create reserves where Indigenous communities and others are allowed to harvest rubber, acai and other non-timber forest products. He has also pledged income from carbon credits to finance replanting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrom Colombia, we will give humanity a reward, a remedy, a solution: not to burn the Amazon rainforest anymore, to recover it to its natural frontier, to give humanity the possibility of life on this planet,\u201d Petro, wearing an Indigenous headdress, said to a crowd in the Amazon city of Leticia during his campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But to do that he first needs to establish reign over large, lawless areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The task of stopping deforestation seems more challenging than ever. In 2021, the Colombian Amazon lost 98000 hectares (more than 240,000 acres) of pristine forest to deforestation and another 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) to fire. Both were down from what they had been in 2020, but 2021 was still the fourth worst year on record according to Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), an initiative of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 40% of Colombia is in the Amazon, an area roughly the size of Spain. The country has the world\u2019s largest bird biodiversity, mainly because it includes transition zones between the Andes mountains and the Amazon lowlands. Fifteen percent of the Colombian Amazon has already been deforested, according to Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development, or FCDS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Destruction of the forest has been on the rise since 2016, the year Colombia signed a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that ended decades of a bloody armed conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe peace process allowed people to return to formerly conflict-ridden rural areas. As the returning population increasingly used the natural resources, it contributed to deforestation and increases in forest fires, especially in the Amazon and the Andes-Amazon transition regions,\u201d according to\u00a0a new paper\u00a0in the journal \u201cEnvironmental Science and Policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The presence of the State is barely felt in Colombia\u2019s Amazon. \u201cOnce the armed groups were demobilized, they left the forest free for cattle ranching, illegal mining and drug trafficking,\u201d said Ruth Consuelo Chaparro, director of the Roads to Identity Foundation, in a telephone interview. \u201cThe State has not filled the gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main driver of deforestation has been the expansion of cattle ranching. Since 2016, the number of cattle in the Amazon has doubled to 2.2 million. In the same period, about 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of forest were lost, according to FCDS, based on official data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This cattle expansion goes hand in hand with illegally-seized land, said FCDS director Rodrigo Botero. \u201cThe big business deal is the land. The cows are just a way to get hold of these territories,\u201d he told the AP in a phone interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts affirm that illegally-seized lands are often resold to ranchers, who then run their cattle free of land use restrictions, such as the propriety\u2019s size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the destruction occurs in an \u201carc of deforestation\u201d in the northwestern Colombian Amazon, where even protected areas have not been spared. Chiribiquete, the world\u2019s largest national park protecting a tropical rainforest, has lost around 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) since 2018, according to MAAP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the campaign, Botero took Petro and other presidential candidates on separate one-day trips to the Amazon. They flew over cattle ranching areas, national parks and Indigenous territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA very interesting thing Petro and other candidates said was that they never imagined the magnitude of the destruction.\u201d The feeling of ungovernability made a deep impression on each of them, Botero said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost 60% of Colombia\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, deforestation and other land use, according to the\u00a0World Resources Institute. In 2020, under the Paris Agreement, Colombian President Ivan Duque\u2019s government committed to a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030. To do that, it pledged to reach net-zero deforestation by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Amazon is the world\u2019s largest tropical rainforest and an enormous carbon sink. There is widespread concern that its destruction will not only release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, further complicating hopes of arresting climate change, but also push it past a tipping point after which much of the forest will begin an irreversible process of degradation into tropical savannah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although it holds almost half of the nation\u2019s territory, the Amazon is the least populated part of Colombia, so historically it is neglected during presidential campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year\u2019s campaign was not a complete departure from that. But this year, for the first time, there was a TV presidential debate dedicated solely to environmental issues before the first round in the election. Petro, who was leading the polls then, refused to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his government program, Petro further promises to prioritize collective land titles, such as Indigenous reservations and zones for landless farmers. He also promises to control migration into the Amazon, fight illegal activities, such as land seizures, drug trafficking and money laundering via land purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petro\u2019s press manager did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPetro has studied and understands deforestation,\u201d said Consuelo Chaparro, whose organization works with Indigenous tribes in the Amazon. But the president alone can do nothing, she said. Her hope is that he will listen and move things forward. \u201dWe don\u2019t expect him to be a Messiah.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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