Scientific American - 11.2019

November 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 41

RACHEL NUWER (

1 ); DIRK WEINMANN

(^2 );

FROM “THE POVERTY OF ADULT MORPHOLOGY: BIOACOUSTICS, GENETICS, AND INTERNAL TADPOLE MORPHOLOGY

REVEAL A NEW SPECIES OF GLASSFROG (ANURA: CENTROLENIDAE:

IKAKOGI

) FROM THE SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA,” BY MARCO RADA ET

AL.,

IN^ PLOS ONE,

VOL.

14, NO.

5, ARTICLE E0215349;

MAY

8,^

2019;

(^3 );

MARTA KOLANOWSKA

(^4 )

to look for other ways of living like growing coca crops and

undertaking illegal mining.”

Although Humboldt scientists and other researchers believe

that biodiversity can play a key role in this equitable development,

the question is how to actually make that happen across an entire

nation. Colombians do not want their country to go the way of San

Martín in Peru—a postconflict region that developed quickly yet

now is completely deforested and suffers from frequent and

severe fires, landslides and flooding as a result. They also cannot

base their plans entirely on positive case studies of environmental

conservation in places such as Costa Rica and Rwanda, both of

which are much smaller and did not experience 50 years of war.

Nordic countries provide leading examples of sustainable energy

and natural resource use, but unlike Colombia, they benefit from

having some of the strongest economies in the world.

So Colombia plans to forge its own path, led by the National

Planning Department and backed by the country’s scientists. In

addition to growing a thriving ecotourism industry, ideas for this

new bioeconomy range from helping indigenous and rural com-

munities benefit from bioprospecting—the search for medicinal,

edible and otherwise commercially useful plant and animal spe-

cies—to using technology to boost aquaculture production and

increase recycling, which is nearly nonexistent in the region. The

Ministry of Finance is considering a bill that would expand

Colombia’s carbon tax, which currently applies to six liquid fuels,

to include coal and gas. The government also aims to establish its

first serious fleet of renewable energy sources through a special

task force dedicated to energy transition.

The biggest focus is on reforming Colombian agriculture, a

sector set to grow by 2.5 percent annually and increase its land

use area by 44  percent over the next 15  years. “The way we use

land is very, very destructive,” says Brigitte Baptiste, who direct-

ed Humboldt for 10 years before recently taking up a position

as head of EAN University in Bogotá. Ranchers clear-cut forests

to graze just a couple of cows per acre. Irrigation systems are

woefully out of date and wasteful—something even the produc-

ers acknowledge, Baptiste says. And pesticide use ranks among

the highest worldwide, poisoning farmers and contaminating

the environment.

Agroforestry, which could be huge in Colombia, is one alter-

native, according to Baptiste and her colleagues. This agricul-

tural method incorporates livestock and crops into forests rath-

er than cutting the trees down and in doing so brings benefits

such as water provision and mitigation of floods and droughts.

Cattle account for about 70  percent of Colombia’s agricultural

land use, but the country is also the third-largest coffee produc-

UVALDINO VILLAMIZAR ( 1 ) grows cacao using agroforestry prac­

tices. Such sustainable methods help to preserve Colombia’s bio­

diversity, including species ( 2, 3, 4 ) discovered in the past few years.

1

2

4

3

© 2019 Scientific American