Land areas in Colombia are now destroyed by cows and cattle ranching, and not the production of coca leaves as previously thought, shows a new study carried out by the magazine Nature.
There it emerges that it is cattle farming, and not the production of coca leaves, which is the contributing cause of the enormous destruction of the Colombian forest in the last four decades.
Sounding the cocaine alarm
The country’s government has for years used environmental concerns to justify the war on drugs, but the research report shows that the amount of forest cleared to grow coca plants, the basic ingredient in cocaine, accounted for only a fraction of the deforestation.
The study’s findings, however, vindicate conservation experts who have long argued that Colombia’s strategy to conserve the Amazon – often centered on combating coca production – has failed.
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– We want to disprove once and for all that the coca leaves are the cause of deforestation – it is cows and cattle that are the big villains here, Pablo Murillo-Sandoval told the study.
– Smuggled cocaine worth 170 million
Dagbladet has been in contact with Bob van Oort at Cicero Center for climate research.
He only wants to comment on deforestation in Colombia on a general basis.
– Soya production contributes to deforestation in South America, where part of the trees and vegetation are cut down to make room for soya plantations. In order to reduce this deforestation problem, some soy production has been relocated to other areas – in some cases to areas that previously had grazing animals. This has led to the grazing animals now being relocated, often to forest areas, and on the way there they contribute to deforestation. The deforestation problem has been attributed to various products, but of course must be solved in a holistic way, but whether that is what has happened in this case, I unfortunately cannot comment on, he says.
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False justification for drug war
The study also reveals that there was “only” 45,000 hectares of forest that was cleared of coca leaves in 2018 – the last year available in the study.
Using a deep learning algorithm to distinguish between land used for coca leaves and cattle, Murillo and his colleagues were able to distinguish for the first time between the mass-scale activities from 1985 to 2019.
– We have always contested the government’s argument that the production of coca leaves led to deforestation, but have long lacked conclusive evidence. Now we have real data that allows us to oppose the government’s claims. The study’s findings show that previous governments have used the environmental perspective as a false justification for waging war against coca farmers, Angelica Rojas, liaison officer for the state of Guaviare told Nature.
