- Goals to reduce deforestation by 2030 set by Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia have been undermined by policies that drive deforestation.
- In Colombia, the Petro administration aims to reduce land inequality by redistributing confiscated land, while investing in rural infrastructure with the hope of motivating individuals to stay in previously deforested landscapes.
- In Ecuador, although illegal deforestation is subject to criminal prosecution, infringers are seldom prosecuted and the permitting system is largely used to manage the timber trade.
- Despite its conservation policies, Peru has no coherent, integrated policy to fight illegal deforestation, while many local public officials are compromised by their participation in the illegal land market.
Colombia, Peru and Ecuador have all signed the Glasgow Pact, a UNFCCC-linked agreement by which, among other commitments, countries agree to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. Bolivia, while not a signatory to that component of the climate treaty, pledged to reduce forest loss by eighty per cent when it submitted a draft version of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the UNFCCC in 2022. All four nations have long-established policies to create protected areas and recognize Indigenous lands, as well as land-use zoning mechanisms that, theoretically, restrict forest clearing on private lands. Similarly, all have launched multiple programmes over decades to promote sustainable development, forest management and social wellbeing.
Despite these policies, however, none has laws comparable to Brazil’s Forest Code, or anything approaching an ‘all-of-government’ strategy comparable to the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm). The current governments of Colombia and Ecuador appear to be sincerely seeking a solution to deforestation; their counterparts in Peru and Bolivia, however, are openly ambivalent. Across the Andean Amazon, elected officials voice support for zero deforestation development while tolerating, or even promoting, policies that drive deforestation. Disturbingly, every country has seen its mean annual deforestation rate increase over the last decade.
Colombia’s penal code has long included the concept of environmental crimes, including illegal logging and deforestation on public lands. The first iteration of the law, however, contemplated penalties that were insignificant compared to the potential gains from illegal acts, a mismatch remedied by the Ley de Delitos Ambientales (2021), which increased penalties and expanded culpability to include financiers and perpetrators, while more clearly criminalising the appropriation of public lands.
It remains to be seen, however, whether a well-written statute can compensate for that country’s failure to establish the ‘rule of law’ on frontier landscapes. Parallel to implementing the legal reform, President Ivan Duque launched Campaña Artemisa, which mobilised more than 23,000 police and soldiers to combat the invasion of protected areas in the Colombian Amazon. The operation led to the confiscation (recovery) of 27,000 hectares (about 66,720 acres); however, it did not materially impact deforestation in Colombia, which increased from 159,000 hectares (392,900 acres) in 2019 to 174,000 hectares (429,960 acres) in 2021. The programme was criticized for alleged human rights violations because it largely targeted campesinos who had inhabited many of these landscapes for decades (PNN Tinigua, for example), while overlooking land grabbers financing the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the borderlands surrounding Colombia’s largest Amazonian national park (PNN Serranía de Chiribiquete).
President Duque’s successor, Gustavo Petro, has shifted the focus to improving the livelihoods of the region’s inhabitants, many of whom have been displaced by violence or attracted by the economic opportunities of an expanding agricultural frontier. Like several past governments, the Petro administration proposes to reduce land inequality by redistributing confiscated land, while investing in rural infrastructure with the hope of motivating individuals to stay in previously deforested landscapes. Central to this concept is the aspiration that agroecology and agroforestry will increase yields and improve livelihoods, reducing the motivation to increase production on an expanding agricultural frontier. As of February 2024, however, these were declarations of future policy, rather than a concrete action plan.
The Petro administration will continue its predecessor’s actions to promote law and order, particularly within protected areas, many of which have suffered from decades of domination by armed militias. The president has also announced that he will abandon Colombia’s history of exploiting fossil fuels in its Amazonian provinces, arguing that those activities have contributed to deforestation through infrastructure development. Part of his proposed action plan relies on collaboration with neighbouring countries in an effort to mobilize international financial support for sustainable development.
Clearing any type of natural forest in Ecuador without a permit is illegal, although there are exceptions for traditional communities (one hectare per year per family) and some landholders, which vary depending on the size of the holding. As an environmental crime, illegal deforestation is subject to criminal prosecution and punishable by up to three years in prison and fines of US$20,000. If the illegal deforestation is part of a land-grabbing scheme, additional charges can prolong imprisonment for up to five years and increase fines to about US$130,000; additional penalties include confiscation of machinery, the permanent suspension of a business and the revocation of a land title. Despite the legal framework, however, infringers are seldom prosecuted and the permitting system is largely used to manage the timber trade.
The country has an integrated programme for fostering conservation and sustainable development, outlined in the Plan Integral para la Amazonía (PIA), a strategic document developed by the environment and agriculture ministries, which jointly manage the PROAmazonía programme sponsored by the United Nations (UNDP) with financing from the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Its many projects include a pre-existing (and successful) payment for ecosystem services initiative (Socio Bosque), which gives landholders annual cash payments to maintain natural forest cover. Although resources are allocated to monitor deforestation, there is no evident initiative to enforce anti-deforestation laws, presumably, because most land clearing is practised by smallholders who can reasonably claim to be members of traditional communities. The goal is to convince the inhabitants to stop clearing the forest by improving their standard of living.
Peru professes to have several national strategies to promote forest conservation, including a relatively robust protected area system and strong legal protections for Indigenous lands, as well as numerous REDD+ projects. The environment ministry has developed a sophisticated system to monitor deforestation, which is timely, accurate and transparent. Besides its commitment to the Glasgow Agreement, Peru has announced a goal of reducing net deforestation in the Amazon by 40% by 2030 and reaching zero net deforestation by 2050.
Peru’s approach to reducing deforestation relies on a legal framework that, theoretically, outlaws forest clearing in its Amazonian provinces. Large tracts of primary forest have been designated appropriate only for sustainable forest management by a technical process known as the Zonificación Ecológica Económico (ZEE). The legal basis for the ZEE was established in 1997 by the Ley de Recursos Naturales. Supporting regulations issued in 2004 made the Ministry of Environment (MINAM) responsible for compiling these regional planning documents, in collaboration with regional authorities. Most of the ZEE studies were executed between 2000 and 2015; although they are not complete, they have been finalized for all the major agricultural frontiers.
A contrasting zoning system exists in parallel to the ZEE, however, and is routinely used by advocates of conventional development to override the designations of appropriate (and legal) land use. Referred to as the Clasificación de Tierras por su Capacidad de Uso Mayor (CTCUM), this system relies on the same biophysical data but applies different criteria to identify soils that are appropriate for crops and livestock. Ironically, the regulations that establish the CTCUM are based on the same law as the ZEE, but refer to a 1970s-era land classification system that was resurrected in a 2009 regulatory ruling by the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MINAGRI). The CTCUM methodology has been used to justify the expansion of large-scale oil palm plantations and the recent proliferation of Mennonite colonies along the Ucayali River.
Deliberate policies favouring deforestation-linked production were also evident in 2021, when Congress modified the Ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre (2011) to exempt private landholders from a clause requiring them to maintain a 30% forest reserve within their properties. Moreover, the revised regulations will allow landholders to request an official document exempting them from a CTCUM-type evaluation prior to clearing additional forest, which experts in environmental law assert has created a legal loophole that can be used to legalize an otherwise illegal landholding. The revised 2024 version of the law goes further by elevating MINAGRI over MINAM as the ultimate authority regarding forest zoning.
Although there are occasional reports of public prosecutors (fiscales) investigating illegal deforestation, the country apparently lacks any coordinated initiative to combat illegal deforestation through law enforcement. Despite its conservation policies, Peru has no coherent, integrated policy to fight illegal deforestation, while many local public officials are compromised by their participation in the illegal land market.
El Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia has twice committed to reducing or eliminating deforestation via its periodic filings with the UNFCCC. These include its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) statements in 2016, which pledged to eliminate all illegal deforestation by 2020, and 2022, which committed to reducing all types of deforestation by 80% by 2030. To support efforts to reach these goals in adherence to the UNFCC process, the Environment Ministry established a monitoring programme (Nuestros Bosques) which has successfully compiled accurate forest cover and deforestation maps.
Unfortunately, these deforestation goals are unlikely to be met, because a significant percentage of Bolivians believe undesignated state lands should be settled and made ‘productive’. This belief is supported by clauses in the Bolivian constitution (Articles 311, 393, 395, 397, 398) and key statutes such as the Ley de Reforma Agraria (2007), the Ley Marco de la Madre Tierra (2012), and the aptly named Ley de autorización de desmonte hasta 20 hectáreas (2015), as well as regulatory documents designed to promote expansion of the agricultural frontier and commodity exports, most recently the Ley de revolución productiva comunitaria agropecuaria (2020).
Ironically, the constitution criminalizes deforestation (Article 389), but creates a large loophole by stating that forest clearing is legal when done in accordance with land-use planning documents prepared at the regional or property scale. This provision was applied in 2013 and 2017, when the government used the land tenure regulatory process (Plan de Ordenamiento Predial – POP) to issue legal titles for land claims made between 1996 and 2017. This legalized 850,000 hectares (2.1 million acres) of recent (illegal) deforestation, while the government also issued new forest-clearing permits for 154,000 hectares (380,540 acres).
More recently, the current president (Luis Arce Catacora) has been accused of distributing public land to a key component of his electoral coalition, who self-identify as Interculturales, domestic migrants who have been colonizing remote landscapes with the tacit support of the Instituto de la Reforma Agraria (INRA). The administration’s support for this social group apparently is part of an electoral strategy to defeat Evo Morales, who competes with Arce for this constituency, in the 2025 election. Arce also has negotiated an agreement with agribusiness to expand production of export commodities in response to an economic crisis that threatens the country’s macroeconomic stability. Bolivian diplomats may be sincere when they make commitments to the UNFCCC to reduce deforestation, but their efforts are superseded by short-term political and economic considerations within Bolivian society that point in the opposite direction.
Banner image: Deforestation, like that shown in the Peruvian Amazon, is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions – more than the entire transportation sector. Despite the Paris Agreement’s specific call for nations to protect tropical forests, trends continue moving in the opposite direction, driven by precious metals mining, fossil fuel extraction, agribusiness and development. Image by Jason Houston.
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