November 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 43FELIPE VILLEGAS
Humboldt Institute
analyzed deforestation patterns from 2000 to 2015 to identify
contributing factors, including road expansion, coca plantation
presence, and conflict. They used those data to build a predictive
model and found that if conditions do not change, Colombia will
lose an additional 18 million acres of forest—7 percent of the
country’s total forest cover—by 2050. More than 50 percent of the
losses will occur in postconflict zones.
Ultimately the fate of these forests and other natural re -
sources depends on whether Colombians embrace the environ-
ment as a pillar of the new green economy rather than seeing it
as an obstacle to improving their well-being. “Unless we create
real opportunities for them based on value they can get out of
biodiversity, conservation is not going to work,” says Jose Man-
uel Ochoa Quintero, a program coordinator at Humboldt.
Baptiste has become something of a celebrity for taking on a
leading role in pushing this agenda. She is famous in Colombia
for both her charismatic evangelizing about the environment
and her status as a transgender woman in a conservative coun-
try. She regularly appears on television and is quoted in the
media—as are an increasing number of celebrities who have
aligned themselves with antideforestation initiatives.
The culture seems to be shifting. When Colombia’s new presi-
dent, Iván Duque Márquez, took office in August 2018, his
ad ministration’s plan to end deforestation entailed dousing coca
crops in herbicide and allowing that thousands of square miles of
wild nature would still inevitably be lost. But the announcement
received major condemnation from the public and the media,
and the Duque administration began preparing a new approach.
Deforestation is now considered a national security threat.
If there is a cultural signal that national enthusiasm for bio-
diversity is on the rise, it might be associated with the fact that
Colombia is home to 20 percent of the world’s recorded bird
species. Birding tourism holds “immense potential” for thecountry, according to a 2017 paper in Tropi-
cal Conservation Science. (Peru, the authors
write, doubled its bird-watching tourism
from 2012 to 2013 and now enjoys $89 mil-
lion of annual revenue, much of which re -
mains in local communities.) Despite this
wealth of bird life, it was not until 2015 that
Colombia participated in Cornell Universi-
ty’s Global Big Day, an annual event in which
birders around the world compete to see
which nation can log the most species in 24
hours. In 2017, after two years of “dysfunc-
tional participation,” as Acevedo-Charry puts
it, the country emerged victorious, with 1,486
species sighted. Na tional pride soared.
Confident Colombia could hold on to the
title in 2018, national radio stations ran
commercials encouraging participation, and
television media and newspapers featured
stories about the event. The blitz worked:
Some 4,500 birders, including members of
the air force and police, turned out at 730
sites. In Cubará, Acevedo-Charry, Johana
Zuluaga-Bonilla, president of the Ornitholo-
gist Association of Boyacá-Ixobrychus, and
Saul Sanchez, a former hunter turned local
conservationist, recorded 111 species among the three of them,
transforming the region from a question mark on the map to
one rich in verified biodiversity. Across the nation birders saw
and heard 1,546 species—an “unfathomable” number for a sin-
gle country in a single day, the competition organizers wrote. In
2019 Colombia took the gold yet again.
This enthusiasm is translating into economically viable
options for rural residents, where former hunters, monocrop
farmers and timber harvesters are turning to birding, ecotour-
ism and agroforestry. Less than a decade ago Colombians could
not conceive of coming together to celebrate their biodiversity
through birding, let alone becoming a country powered by
its natural heritage, Acevedo-Charry says. As more people
gradually embrace this vision, there are signs it might be mak-
ing a difference: Satellite imagery recently analyzed by re -
searchers at the University of Medellín indicates that defores-
tation rates, compared with the beginning of 2018, are going
down. “The biodiversity-based economy is injecting hope for
those who need it most,” Acevedo-Charry says. “It is already
changing lives.”MORE TO EXPLORE
Chocolate of Peace. Documentary directed by Gwen Burnyeat and Pablo Mejía Trujillo,- Available at https://vimeo.com/179038624
Greening Peace in Colombia. Brigitte Baptiste et al. in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 1 ,
Article No. 0102; March 1 , 2 017.
Colombia: After the Violence. Sara Reardon in Nature, Vol. 557; May 2, 2018.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Can Sustainable Management Save Tropical Forests? Richard E. Rice et al.; April 1997.
The Race to Save Colombia’s Uncontacted Tribes from Outsiders. Adam Piore;
February 2 019.
scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa
ECOLOGIST BRIGITTE BAPTISTE, who led the Humboldt Institute until September
2019, has become famous in Colombia for advocating for a green economy.© 2019 Scientific American