Deforestation can occur in zones ruled by diverse territorial planning tools. After a comprehensive revision of territorial land use plans (Planes de Ordenamiento Territorial in Spanish) and protected areas mapping in five Colombian municipalities, an analysis of land use and land cover changes shows evidence of forest cover loss, despite the restrictions on land conversion to urban, agricultural, and livestock uses imposed by these planning instruments.
Fernando Carriazo, a researcher at the EfD Partner Center in Colombia, has co-authored a chapter in the book Diagnosis and Recommendations for Territorial Planning in Colombia. The book revises the territorial plans of 26 cities in Colombia with more than 100,000 people and some towns with smaller populations. The book aims to give policy recommendations for territorial planning in Colombia to fulfill the country’s commitments to the Paris Agreement. The chapter is titled Deforestation trends and its relationship with environmental and planning instruments in the municipalities of Florencia, Cartagena del Chairá, San Vicente del Caguán, Yopal, and Tumaco.
In the chapter, Fernando Carriazo and his co-authors do not seek to determine the causes of deforestation but to indicate how environmental tools for territorial planning help to explain deforestation trends. Their analysis also fills a gap in describing the role of the instruments for territorial planning in the deforestation processes. For the analysis, they used satellite images to evaluate changes in forest cover, calculated the deforested areas, and built a transition matrix that indicates how the land cover has changed from 2000 to 2020.
National deforestation trends in Colombia
In the last 30 years, Colombia has had a significant forest cover loss. In the period 2016 – 2020, deforestation accelerated, which can be related to an increase in the loss of forest in the Colombian Amazon region. This acceleration coincides with the post-peace agreement period (the peace agreement with guerrilla FARC was signed in 2016). The deforestation trends differ across the country, mainly due to differences in socio-economic dynamics and variable forest coverage stock. In the last three decades, Colombia has lost more than 5.000.000 hectares of forest.
For the analysis, the authors selected five municipalities, which are located in three regions: The municipalities of Florencia, Cartagena del Chairá, San Vicente del Caguán, are in the southwest region of Colombia. These municipalities are part of the Colombian Amazon and have experienced armed conflict and expansion of the agricultural frontier and land colonization. The authors also analyzed the municipality of Tumaco in the Pacific Region and Yopal in the central-east region of Colombia. The latter has extensive land colonization and livestock farming, strong linkages between the urban and rural sectors, and oil-extracting activities.
Forests decreased – pastures increased
Researchers observed that during the period 2000 – 2020, there was a decrease in the forest cover for the Amazon region municipalities and in Tumaco, the Pacific region municipality. The forest cover decreased by more than 11% in that period. In Florencia, the forest cover was 66% in 2000 and 58% in 2020. In San Vicente del Caguán, the forest cover went from 78% to 65% in the same period.
Mostly, the forest became pasture. In Tumaco, the increase in land use for pasture to substitute forest went from 2% in 2000 to 17% in 2020. This municipality has also experienced an increase in land use for agriculture, from 5% of land use in 2000 to 8% in 2020, mainly related to palm farming. On the other hand, Yopal has a predominance of savanna over forests. However, for the period 2000 – 2020, this municipality has transited from pastureland use to forest land use in more than 10.000 hectares, thus recovering forest areas.
Forest cover decreases in protected areas too
Protected areas is a tool for environmental and territorial planning. They relate to different benefits of the forests, from protecting the water sources and getting wood and other materials to biodiversity protection and maintenance of ecosystem services.
The National System of Protected Areas (SINAP in Spanish) has seven types of protected areas, including natural parks, forest reserves, regional natural parks, districts of integrated management, districts for soil conservancy, recreation areas, and natural reserves for civil society.
The researchers found that in Cartagena del Chairá, Florencia, and Yopal, the forest cover increased in the protected areas. The opposite happens in San Vicente del Caguán, where there is a decrease in the forest cover in its protected areas.
The Forest Reserves of the Second Law (Reservas forestales de Ley Segunda, in Spanish) were established in Colombia in 1957 for the development of the forest economy and protection of soils, water, and wildlife. For the municipalities of Cartagena del Chairá, San Vicente del Caguán, Florencia y Tumaco in the zones with these kinds of forest reserves, there is a decrease in forest cover, and many of those are replaced by pasture covers.
The Indigenous protection zones (Resguardos indígenas, in Spanish) are spaces where the indigenous communities exercise their autonomy, their subsistence activities, and the free development of their culture. In these areas, there was an increase in pasture for the municipalities of San Vicente del Caguán and Florencia in the year 2020.
The zones for Afro-Colombian communities (Zonas de titulación de comunidades negras, in Spanish) are areas where Afro-descendant communities manage the land they have occupied for many generations. This type of territorial planning tool also aims to protect vital ecosystems. Among the municipalities studied, only Tumaco has this territorial planning tool in place. From 2000 to 2020, researchers found an increase in pasture and agricultural land, alongside a decrease in forest cover. This can be attributed to the introduction of coca and palm crops.
Nearness to settlements, roads and water matter
Fernando Carriazo and his colleagues also calculated the probability of deforestation events for the municipalities using the data for 2013 – 2020. They found that for Tumaco and Florencia the probability of deforestation is 83% and 70%, respectively. The explanation is that the farther the municipality is from a consolidated settlement, the higher the risk for deforestation. The opposite occurs in Yopal. The forest near the municipality has a higher chance of deforestation and being transformed into other land use. However, Yopal is the municipality with the least risk for deforestation, at approximately 32%.
Overall, even though the important role of protected areas to reduce deforestation, different territorial characteristics may influence spatial deforestation trends. The analysis of satellite images and the probability model of deforestation events suggest that deforestation is concentrated to the vicinity of roads, illicit crops, and pastures, mainly. Although the risks of deforestation increase with the distance/remoteness from protected areas, the proximity of water bodies such as rivers is a key driver of deforestation as they are mainly used for transportation routes, as resources for agricultural production, including that of illicit use crops, and for consumptive uses in riverside human settlements.
|
This project was led by the Colombian think tank Fedesarrollo and had financial support from the UK Pact. The dissemination of results was a requisite for the project. Fernando and his colleagues shared the results with policymakers in the municipality of Florencia, among other stakeholders. |
By: Manuela Fonseca and Fernando Carriazo