Scientific American - 11.2019

40 Scientific American, November 2019 Map by Mapping Specialists

which biodiversity is both cherished and sustainably capital-

ized. Despite Humboldt’s relative influence, observers say that

the environment remains low on the government’s priority list

and that deforestation continues to ravage much of the country.

Didier describes this trajectory as “putting in a bulldozer and

chopping down everything in front of it. Everything is at stake.”

WAR AND (GREEN) PEACE
that so much wildlife and habitat remain in Colombia today is,
in part, a serendipitous side effect of conflict. Civil war officially
broke out in 1964, when members of the peasant class, a group
largely composed of small farmers, miners and land workers,
rose up to fight gross inequality and formed FARC. The half-
century of fighting froze not just ecological exploration but, in
some places, ecological destruction.
Millions of rural residents fled the
countryside to take refuge in cities,
giving nature time to reclaim their
properties. Rebels commanded those
who stayed behind to keep out of cer-
tain tracts of forest and forbade them
from hunting and cutting down trees.
What began as an ideological struggle
for a Marxist-Leninist government
morphed into a conflict largely fueled
by profit, especially from narcotics.
Coca fields and cocaine labs sprang
up alongside forest camps. “The guer-
rillas benefited from having forest
they could hide in, and other people
didn’t dare go there,” Didier says. “As a
result, biodiversity remained high in
hot spots for conflict.”
As narcotics trafficking spread, vio-
lence followed. Any scientist who dared
venture into rebel-controlled areas did
so at the risk of his or her life. Nearly
every field researcher in the country
today seems to have a story of being
kidnapped, interrogated at gunpoint or
otherwise scared away from study sites.
“Ten years ago the most dangerous
thing you could come across in the field
was a person,” says Lizcano, who was
held hostage for two days by rebels
who kidnapped him while he was out
looking for tapirs. Lizcano continued
his work at a different location, but
other studies were abandoned or never
attempted in the first place, and many
researchers chose to either leave
Colombia or change careers. Ecological
knowledge stagnated.
Hope for a reversal of this trend
came from one of the nearly 600 stipu-
lations of the 2016 peace agreement:
the country must develop sustainably
to improve the lives of all Colombians—
not just urbanites, who compose at

least three quarters of the population. This point was largely

meant to address the rural discontent that ignited the conflict to

begin with, and it promises marginalized countryside residents—

many of whom are members of Colombia’s 112 ethnic minority

groups—access to education and clean water, subsidies for devel-

opment programs in former rebel-held territories, and new roads

to connect their communities to the rest of the country. It also

encourages illegal coca growers to switch to legal crops in ex -

change for cash payments and government assistance.

“Because many of our problems come from lack of better

livelihoods, education and health care in rural areas, that was

the main part of the agreement for me,” says Julia Miranda Lon-

doño, director general of the Colombian National Park System.

“If our development was more equitable, people would not need

A

N

D

E

S

Pacific

Ocean

Caribbean Sea

COLOMBIA

PANAMA VENEZUELA

BRAZIL

PERU

ECUADOR

Cubará

Bogotá

Medellín

Cartagena

Panama City

Iquitos

Caracas

Guayaquil

Maracay

Quito

Maracaibo

Colón

Barranquilla

Mitú

Cali

COLOMBIA

AMAZON

Colombia’s Hotspots

With 311 different ecological zones, Colombia is a bio­

diversity powerhouse: 10 percent of all species on Earth

are found here. After a half­century of civil war, scientists

are racing to document and preserve Colombia’s natural

heritage. But peacetime means deforestation has ramped

up, as formerly rebel­occupied territories open up to mining,

logging and resettlement. Of the country’s nine hotspots for

deforestation, five are located in the Amazon basin.

© 2019 Scientific American