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| Tue, 29th Dec 2020 13:19:00 |
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Illegal deforestation rises in South America’s Indigenous territories, parks |
Satellite data show tree cover loss in South America rose 2.8% between 2018 and 2019. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia had particularly big surges in deforestation.
Preliminary data indicate the rate of deforestation has increased further in 2020 in many areas.
Among the areas affected are Catatumbo Barí Natural National Park in Colombia, Siona Indigenous territory in Ecuador, Santa Martha Indigenous territory in Peru and the Concepción Lake Ramsar site in Bolivia, which together lost more than 36,000 hectares of forest cover over the past two decades.
Sources say illegal agriculture is the driving force behind these incursions.
Between 2010 and 2020, South America lost an average of 2.6 million hectares of forest per year, according the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In other words, the continent lost an area of forest the size of Ecuador in the space of a decade.
And this rate of forest loss only appears to be increasing. Satellite data from the University of Maryland visualized on the online platform Global Forest Watch show tree cover loss in South America rose 2.8% between 2018 and 2019. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia had particularly big surges in deforestation.
“We’ve been noticing an upsurge in deforestation in recent years in the Amazon, in general,” says María Olga Borja, a deforestation specialist at EcoCiencia, in Ecuador, and an analyst at the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-environmental Information (RAISG).
Preliminary UMD data for 2020 indicate a similar trend in 2020, with many regions registering higher numbers of deforestation alerts than during the same periods in 2019. For instance, between January and October 2020, UMD registered some 16,300 deforestation alerts in just two protected areas: Catatumbo Barí National Natural Park in Colombia and Concepción Lake Ramsar site in Bolivia. In addition, UMD recorded 57,600 alerts in two Indigenous territories: the Siona territory located on the border between Ecuador and Colombia and the Cacataibo Santa Martha Indigenous community in Peru.
These four protected areas have lost more than 36,000 hectares in the last two decades, according to UMD data – the equivalent of more than 21,000 soccer fields. Sources say that among those responsible for this deforestation are armed narco-terrorist groups, smallholder farmers from surrounding areas and Mennonite communities.
Data from UMD show that between January and October 2020, 4,700 deforestation alerts were recorded in Catatumbo Barí National Natural Park, which is located in the Colombian department of Norte de Santander. Experts say the alerts are associated with small-scale agriculture.
“There are very profound changes in the protected area, which may indicate the presence of illegal crops judging by where they are located,” said Mikaela Weisse, a manager at Global Forest Watch, which is an initiative of World Resources Institute. Weisse said that the illegal crops in question are most likely coca plants – from which cocaine is made.
Coca cultivation is expanding in Catatumbo Barí, according to Colombia’s Integrated Illicit Crops Monitoring System (SIMCI). In 2018, 872 hectares of coca crops were reported within the park; SIMCI’s latest report finds that that number had nearly doubled to 1,448 hectares in 2019, making Catatumbo Barí the most affected park in the country.
“In general, deforestation seems to have continued steadily in the area since the beginning of this century,” Weisse said.
Down along the Colombia/Ecuador border, satellite data show deforestation alerts cropping up throughout a territory that’s home to the Siona people. In the Colombian Siona community of Buenavista, satellite data show deforestation has been increasing since 2009, and preliminary data suggest 2020 may be the biggest year yet for deforestation in the territory.
Deforestation appears to be particularly high in the area surrounding the Wisuyá community.
“We found small patches of deforestation that are far from the roads, which makes us suspect the presence of coca,” Weisse said.
Investigation by Mongabay Latam revealed that the small patches of deforestation found in Wisuyá are linked to clearing by drug traffickers to make space for mobile homemade drug laboratories where cocaine is processed.
Colombia isn’t the only South American country seeing an increase in deforestation in its protected areas and Indigenous territories. Many sensitive areas of Peru are also losing their forests. For instance, satellite data shows deforestation in the Indigenous territories of central Peru increased between 2019 and 2020, particularly around the Cacataibo community in the Santa Martha Indigenous territory.
“The pattern here is interesting, since the deforested spaces outside the community look very different from those inside it,” Weisse said.
According to UMD data, Santa Martha lost 14% of its forest cover between 2001 and 2019, with with 2,535 deforestation alerts recorded between January and October, 2020. “We found that deforestation had restarted in August and there was a peak of 1,253 alerts in early October,” Weisse said.
The accelerated loss of forest in Santa Martha and other Indigenous territories is linked to a wave of violence. At least one Indigenous leader has been killed this year and many others feel threatened and trapped after they confronted land invaders and drug traffickers, according to community members. Bolivia is also keenly feeling the repercussions of forest loss. Concepción Lake in the department of Santa Cruz is a Ramsar site, which denotes wetlands of international importance. But while Concepción Lake and the land surrounding it are protected on paper, it seemingly cannot escape the agricultural expansion that is gobbling up native habitat across the country.
Over the past eight years, Mennonite communities have enlarged their agricultural holdings, using heavy machinery to extend their fields of soybeans, sorghum and other crops. This large-scale agriculture is violating environmental regulations and is subject to fines. But sources say laws are not enough to dissuade the communities from clearing land for commodity crops.
“It is disturbing that when we try to inspect them and ask who authorized them, they reply that they have already paid their fine and, on that basis, they consider that the issue is already closed,” said Nair Arias, head of the environmental arm of the mayor’s office in Pailón, a district that includes the lake.
“There has been quite a lot of large-scale agriculture in this area since around 2012,” said GFW’s Weisse.
Weisse said deforestation has increased particularly quickly in the area just south of the lake. “We have two instances where incursions were made in the protected area this year: January and August,” she said.
Illegal deforestation often takes a big toll on the communities that depend on the forest to survive. In Catatumbo Barí, residents of the Barí Indigenous territory report invasions by growers of illegal coca crops. Even government intervention can inflict collateral damage on communities, with anonymous sources alleging that spray used to eradicate illegal crops also destroyed the community’s subsistence farms.
Most of Catatumbo Barí overlaps with Barí indigenous Territory, which contains two reservations: Motilón Barí and Gabarra-Catalaura. In 2019 1,448 hectares of forest were cleared for the illegal cultivation of coca within the park, according to SIMCI, representing a 66% jump over 2018.
A report produced by SIMCI found that the most significant problem in the park is the presence of four narco-terrorist groups: the National Liberation Army (ELN), the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
As of November this year, seven leaders and human rights defenders have been killed in the Catatumbo region, and more than 50 death threats have been reported for reasons related to drug trafficking, according to the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace in Colombia (INDEPAZ). Local authorities say this climate of violence makes it impossible to have monitoring bases and guard posts in the protected area.
The Siona Indigenous territory, located in the Putumayo watershed of Ecuador and Colombia, as well as the Cacataibo Indigenous Territory of Peru are report similar issues of violence fueled by deforestation activities.
“What we observed in Putumayo is that key people in the Indigenous territories represent a kind of barrier to deforestation,” said María Olga Borja from Ecociencia. She urges greater involvement from Ecuadorian and Colombian authorities.
“We see the greatest deforestation on the outskirts of the Indigenous territories, but over the years more deforestation has been observed inside them,” Borja said. In Buenavista, the Siona community located in Colombia, the latest SIMCI data indicate 172 hectares were deforested for coca cultivation in 2019.
Community advocates say one of the most important ways to protect Indigenous territories is to formally recognize community ownership through land titles. And that, all too often, this official recognition is lacking.
“From a regulatory perspective, Indigenous territories remain unprotected,” said Pedro Tipula, a specialist at the Institute for the Common Good (IBC) in Peru. Currently, only around 30% of native Colombian communities are registered, according to the National Superintendency of Public Registries (SUNARP). “And even if they are, sometimes you just find a plan or a description, but you don’t have a complete determination,” Tipula said. “They have imperfect titles.”
Lack of official land ownership isn’t just an issue in Colombia, but is a common problem for Indigenous communities around the world. For instance, the Cacataibo Indigenous community that inhabits Peru’s Santa Martha territory possesses titles for its land; however, sources say that because the titles don’t contain specific language regarding communal use, outsider-driven deforestation activities are still commonplace within the territory.
“The area that the locality requested as an extension of its territory is now subdivided into individual parcels of land,” Tipula said. “It is these areas that are now deforested.”
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