In the five years following its historic 2016 peace accord, Colombia has seen a surge of forest razing and land clearance amid continuing unrest in the countryside. The rate of tree loss, which greatly lowers the country’s chances of meeting its zerodeforestation goal by 2030, is tied to conflict and violence. These ties are complex.

Deforestation began to rise soon after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which had operated mostly from rural areas, declared a ceasefire in December 2014. It then gathered steam after the 2016 accord was signed. The rebels’ departure from their strongholds provided an opportunity for other insurgencies and organised crime to assert control. With state authority in the countryside still feeble, those groups pushed back the forest to expand enterprises like coca growing, cattle ranching, illegal gold mining and logging, sometimes working with legal businesses. To arrest the damage, Bogotá should fix its approach to prosecuting environmental crime, implement peace accord commitments relating to the environment and urgently bolster its natural resource management systems.

In many ways, the FARC ran roughshod over the environment during its fivedecade insurgency. But there was a clear difference between them and the current crop of violent outfits operating in rural Colombia. In areas where FARC rebels operated, they tended to restrict deforestation. One reason was that thick tree canopies helped prevent the state from spotting their encampments from the air, allowing them to move more freely. But as they implemented a late 2014 ceasefire and prepared to sign the 2016 accord, the guerrillas also for the most part stopped limiting land clearance. Deforestation rose sharply, spearheaded or abetted by new and old armed actors, often in bruising competition with one another. These actors included the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s last remaining insurgents; FARC dissidents (ie, former fighters who have reneged on the peace process and returned to arms); and criminal groups that inherited many of the structures once belonging to right-wing paramilitaries.