Bogotá (EFE).- A total of 20,727 hectares of indigenous territories were deforested in Colombia in 2021, according to a report by the National Commission for Indigenous Territories (CNTI) and the Observatory of Territorial Rights of Indigenous Peoples (ODTPI).
The report “Territory at risk: effects of deforestation in indigenous territories” compared the behavior of deforestation in indigenous territories four years before and four years after the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC in 2016.
In 2021, the greatest loss of natural forest in the country occurred in the “arc of deforestation”. It includes the departments of Meta, Caquetá, Guaviare and Putumayo, which are the gateway to the Amazon, as well as Norte de Santander and Antioquia.
The figure deforested in 2021 alone represents more than 40% of all that was deforested between 2013 and 2016. Since in those years prior to the peace agreement, 49,132 hectares of forests of indigenous territory were lost.
The most affected
They were the indigenous reservations of Tinigua, in the department of Meta; Motilón Barí (North of Santander); Vaupes (Vaupes); Putumayo property (Amazon). And Selva Matavén (Vichada) the most affected in those four years, with 36,201 hectares that represent about 74% of that total.
As of 2017, the report states, “there has been a sharp increase in deforested hectares in indigenous territories and most of the affected reservations are located in the deforestation arc of the northwestern Amazon.”
Thus, between 2017 and 2020, the Tinigua indigenous territory continues to be the place where the most hectares of forest were lost with 36,016. This is followed by Nukak Maku (10,184), Llanos del Yarí – Yaguará II (9,380), La Esperanza (7,550) and Motilón Barí (7,357).
“The territories and indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon are (…) among the most affected by deforestation,” the report said. He denounced that these territories “have faced the arrival of people and interests alien to the ancestral cultures that have conceived the land and nature as market objects.”
Threats in indigenous territories
According to research from the Forest and Carbon Monitoring System (SMByC), belonging to the state Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), the main causes of deforestation in Colombia are “legal or illegal land grabbing, the expansion of the agricultural frontier (agriculture and livestock), mining, timber extraction and infrastructure expansion.
The signing of peace agreements in territories historically affected by armed conflicts, the connectivity of the territories through highways, the population density, the movements for the control of illegal income, the incentives for the productive development of certain areas of the country through industries such as palm, eucalyptus and soybean agribusiness increase deforestation.
“The jungle and indigenous territories today face great threats, including their disappearance due to economic, political and territorial control interests that hover over them,” the report says.
Respect indigenous land
According to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), 64 of the 115 indigenous peoples are found in the Colombian Amazon. And other towns in voluntary isolation, who “keep the forest preserved in the midst of the growing problems associated with deforestation.”
“Protected areas and indigenous territories are important bulwarks for safeguarding the remaining Amazon rainforest and meeting climate goals,” the report states. It highlights “the importance of granting and respecting indigenous land tenure and protection status.”
It also adds that “indigenous peoples have ancestrally occupied lands with great biocultural wealth and maintained a spiritual relationship and respect for nature that allows them to preserve it until today. The territory and nature represent life and are essential for their physical, cultural and spiritual well-being”.