Luz Angela Rodriguez

Research on land cover and land use change (LCLUC) in Colombia has increased precipitously since the 2016 Peace Agreement. While prioritizing different drivers, existing research consistently and negatively links LCLUC and socio-ecological security – pointing to the idea that LCLUC in Colombia is an indicator of unstable peace. In this article, we interrogate the assumption that LCLUC – particularly deforestation – is indicative of unstable peace by examining how stakeholders in El Carmen de Bolívar understand the relationship between LCLUC, conflict, and peace. Using a multi-method participatory approach, we trace perceptions of LCLUC between 2000-2023 and assess how LCLUC perceptions shape understandings of peace. Employing an environmental peacebuilding lens, we argue first that participants linked LCLUC to security via two environmental peacebuilding concepts: capabilities and substantial integration. We argue second that participants perceived LCLUC as indicative of episodic peacebuilding – communities in El Carmen slip between moments of relative stability and substantial insecurity. While the municipality momentarily consolidated peace and, overall, moved toward durable peace relative to 2000, these gains have eroded since 2018. Theoretically, we highlight a need to view LCLUC as a dynamic signal whose meaning is contingent on the type of landscape change occurring and its effects in specific contexts. Methodologically, we show the necessity of perception-based analysis in interpreting the implications of LCLUC for peacebuilding. Ultimately, exploring the forms of LCLUC perceived to consolidate or erode peace is essential for understanding whether and how peace is being built — and for whom.

The Government of Colombia has enacted protected area and counter-narcotic policies to produce a “triple win”: promoting conservation, combating drugs, and fostering peace. Combining qualitative fieldwork with geospatial analysis, we analyze the Drug–Conservation interface in Alto del Fragua Indi-Wasi National Natural Park in Caquetá (Amazonia). We argue that the convergence of two independent but overlapping policy regimes, conservation and anti-drug enforcement, produces “double illegality”—a structural condition wherein the legal order produces precarity as it constitutes campesino identities simultaneously as forest invaders and illicit producers. We further demonstrate how this convergence amplifies feedback loops that foreclose legal land access, pushes campesinos deeper into protected areas, and perpetuates deforestation and coca dependency. Double illegality thus reproduces the very conditions both policies seek to prevent. We contend that it manifests ecologically in a vicious cycle of deforestation as campesinos seek to escape structural marginalization emerging at the drug–conservation interface. Ultimately, these dynamics have profound implications for peasant livelihoods, conservation outcomes, and long-term peace.

Cooperation plays a central role in the sustainability of agricultural value chains. This study analyzes cacao and dairy producer organizations in the Department of Caquetá, Colombia, with three objectives: to characterize their current organizational status, to understand legal representatives’ perceptions of the role of cooperation in strengthening their organizations, and to examine the structure of cooperation networks across different stages of the value chains. A qualitative approach was adopted, based on structured interviews, participatory network-mapping workshops, and secondary data analysis. The results show that cacao organizations exhibit higher levels of institutional consolidation than dairy organizations. Representatives’ perceptions indicate that in cacao, cooperation is primarily oriented toward administrative and strategic strengthening, whereas in dairy it is concentrated on production, budgeting, and marketing. Network analysis reveals a predominance of linking-type cooperation, characterized by vertical relationships with external actors, which enhances access to resources but also generates dependency. Overall, network structure and the prevailing types of cooperation influence organizational autonomy and collective performance in Amazonian contexts.

Los escenarios de construcción de paz en Colombia coinciden con ecosistemas biodiversos, altamente frágiles y amenazados; por tanto, la construcción de paz territorial debería pensarse en el marco de las discusiones sobre construcción de paz ambiental. A partir del caso del municipio de La Montañita, en el departamento del Caquetá, exploramos el significado de la construcción de paz ambiental en territorios campesinos de la Amazonía, los cambios en la gobernanza de los recursos naturales y las amenazas a las que se enfrentan las comunidades. Concluimos que la paz es más que la ausencia de violencia e incluye la capacidad de organizarse, tomar decisiones sobre el territorio y agenciar el futuro. A pesar de los grandes desafíos, las comunidades se han reconfigurado institucionalmente a partir de acuerdos y relaciones para construir paz territorial y paz ambiental.

In 2016, the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) that included the implementation of a Comprehensive Rural Reform (CRR) with the purpose to allocate and formalize land for peasant populations. In parallel, Colombia was committed to implement the global environmental agendas, including efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by reducing deforestation in the Amazon. Campesino communities in Colombia have historically been marginalized and pushed into forested lands and protected areas. This study seeks to understand the configuration of land-use conflicts in the Amazon Forest Reserve Zone (AFRZ) - a land management category in the Colombian Amazon - amid the implementation of the global environmental agendas and the Peace Agreement, with a focus on the environmental justice implications for peasant communities. After undertaking a historical review of peasant colonization of the Amazon, we focus on the administration of the former president Iván Duque (2018-2022) in which military operations were deployed to counteract the increase of deforestation. These operations resulted in the destruction of private and community infrastructure, and the stigmatization, criminalization, and even homicide of rural inhabitants. Militarization is only the most obvious of the conservation strategies that limit access to nature by peasants, who depend on it for their livelihoods. We further explore the environmental justice implications of this military conservation approach through a case study in the village El Camuya, located in San Vicente del Caguán (Caquetá), in the Colombia’s “arc of deforestation”. Using qualitative methods, we demonstrate how the Comprehensive Rural Reform included in the Peace Agreement has been insufficient to fulfill the needs of Amazonian peasants and that, when intersecting with the environmental agendas, it has fostered land use conflicts that can be understood as environmental injustices.

Rueda, X., M. A. Velez, L. Moros, and L. A. Rodriguez. 2019. Beyond proximate and distal causes of land-use change: linking Individual motivations to deforestation in rural contexts. Ecology and Society 24(1):4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10617-240104