ARTICLE

pubs.acs.org/est

Forests and Drugs: Coca-Driven Deforestation in Tropical

Biodiversity Hotspots
Liliana M. D
avalos*
Department of Ecology and Evolution and Consortium for Inter-Disciplinary Environmental Research, SUNY Stony Brook,
650 Life Sciences Building, Stony Brook, New York 11794-5245, United States

Adriana C. Bejarano
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Public Health Research Center 401, University of South Carolina, 921 Assembly Street,
Columbia, South Carolina 29208, United States

Mark A. Hall
Department of Ecology and Evolution, SUNY Stony Brook, 650 Life Sciences Building, Stony Brook, New York 11794-5245,
United States

H. Leonardo Correa
Sistema Integrado de Monitoreo de Cultivos Ilícitos, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Calle 102 no. 17A-61,
Bogot
a, Colombia

Angelique Corthals
Department of Sciences, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), 899 Tenth Avenue, New York, New York 10019,
United States

Oscar J. Espejo
Sistema Integrado de Monitoreo de Cultivos Ilícitos, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Calle 102 no. 17A-61,
Bogot
a, Colombia

bS Supporting Information
ABSTRACT: Identifying drivers of deforestation in tropical biodiversity hotspots is critical to assess threats to particular ecosystems
and species and proactively plan for conservation. We analyzed land cover change between 2002 and 2007 in the northern Andes,
Choc
o, and Amazon forests of Colombia, the largest producer of coca leaf for the global cocaine market, to quantify the impact of
this illicit crop on forest dynamics, evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas in this context, and determine the effects of
eradication on deforestation. Landscape-level analyses of forest conversion revealed that proximity to new coca plots and a greater
proportion of an area planted with coca increased the probability of forest loss in southern Colombia, even after accounting for other
covariates and spatial autocorrelation. We also showed that protected areas successfully reduced forest conversion in coca-growing
regions. Neither eradication nor coca cultivation predicted deforestation rates across municipalities. Instead, the presence of new
coca cultivation was an indicator of municipalities, where increasing population led to higher deforestation rates. We hypothesize
that poor rural development underlies the relationship between population density and deforestation in coca-growing areas.
Conservation in Colombia’s vast forest frontier, which overlaps with its coca frontier, requires a mix of protected areas and strategic
rural development to succeed.

’ INTRODUCTION global extinctions. Quantifying forest loss in the hotspots is

A substantial portion of the world’s biodiversity is located in therefore critical to plan for conservation at all spatial scales.3
hotspots, regions harboring a disproportionate number of ende-
mic species.1 These hotspots predominantly encompass extremely Received: July 13, 2010
biodiverse and increasingly threatened tropical forest ecosystems.2 Accepted: December 20, 2010
The high concentration of unique species in tropical forest hot- Revised: December 15, 2010
spots increases the odds that local disturbances translate into Published: January 11, 2011

r 2011 American Chemical Society 1219 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227
Environmental Science & Technology
But documenting deforestation patterns is not enough: identify-
ing local and regional drivers of forest loss is indispensable to
address the causes of biodiversity loss, and plan for conservation
in a proactive manner.4
Although it is hard to synthesize global deforestation patterns
and uncover what drives these processes,5 agricultural markets,
resource booms, and roads have been closely linked to increases
in deforestation.6 These markets and the roads built to supply
them are, in turn, linked to changes in policy regimes and
demand for agricultural products, fossil fuels, or other natural
resources.7,8 At the same time, a critical question for implement-
ing biodiversity conservation in the tropics is whether and how
conservation policy affects deforestation.9 Because the effects of
markets, as well as development and conservation policies are
specific to the environmental and socioeconomic context of each
country, region, and location,10,11 analyses of their impact on
biodiversity hotspots can provide the level of detail necessary to
take action and reduce immediate drivers of deforestation.
In this paper, we analyze forest cover over the past decade to
elucidate local and regional drivers of forest loss in Colombia. We
focus on Colombia because it encompasses two of the most
distinctive global biodiversity hotspots, the tropical Andes and
the Choc
o,1 and ∼12% of the Amazon forest.12 Over the last 20
years the pace of deforestation in Colombia has accelerated,8,13,14
particularly in lowland forests,15,16 even as demographic pres-
sures have eased and the proportion of the population dependent
on agriculture has declined.17 Because this period largely overlaps
with the explosion of coca cultivation for the cocaine market,
when Colombia went from growing 10% of the global coca
production in 1987 (220 km2) to 74% in 2000 (1633 km2),18
several analyses have suggested coca cultivation directly and
indirectly drives deforestation in Colombia’s forested
frontier.15,19,20 Eradication by aerial spraying of herbicide is the
main and most widespread institutional response to the expan-
sion of coca cultivation.21 The eradication program itself could
contribute to deforestation by facilitating the degradation of
forest remnants,22 pushing growers out of targeted areas to new
lands making colonization and deforestation more dynamic.18,23
The ultimate driver of coca cultivation and the government
programs that attempt to suppress it is the global demand for
cocaine.18 However, reliable data on temporal variation of global
demand are lacking24 and even order of magnitude estimates of
the cash flow in this market are unreliable.25 Therefore, our
analyses focus on the supply for this global commodity market, a
likely proximate driver of deforestation.
Even as the pace of forest loss in Colombia has accelerated, the
country has consolidated its biodiversity conservation policy
around a large network of protected areas.26 The effectiveness
of Colombian protected areas against deforestation has been
established,27 particularly in lowland Amazonian forests,19,28 but
their ability to prevent or mitigate deforestation spurred by illicit
crops remains to be demonstrated. We analyzed forest cover
data for the 2002-2007 period in Colombia with three
objectives: (1) to determine the indirect effects of coca cultiva-
tion on deforestation, (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of
protected areas in avoiding deforestation in coca-growing
regions, and (3) to examine the role of coca eradication in
deforestation. We used landscape analyses to investigate the
first two objectives, and analyzed municipality deforestation
rates to examine the third objective. Our ultimate goal was to
help guide biodiversity policy and management by uncovering
the impact of illicit crops and their eradication on deforestation
1220
ARTICLE
and measuring the effect of current conservation policies in this
context.
’ EXPERIMENTAL SECTION
Remote Sensing and Land Cover. We used land cover maps
generated to detect coca cultivation in 2002 and 2007 to quantify
forest cover dynamics in Colombia. The illicit crop monitoring
system of Colombia (SIMCI), used Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic
Mapper Plus (ETMþ), supplemented with Aster, SPOT, and
IRS-LISS III images to assemble the 2002 and 2007 land cover
maps. The images were preprocessed over SIMCI’s planimetric
georeferencing layers for Colombia, and modified to remove
topographic and terrain distortions.29 To standardize the digital
and visual interpretation, the visual images were corrected for
topography using ERS radar images at 20-m resolution. Land
cover data were extracted from the images through visual inter-
pretation and supervised multispectral classification using PCI
Geomatics software.
To validate the classification of these land cover maps,
particularly as it applied to coca cultivation, SIMCI conducted
helicopter or small aircraft reconnaissance flights approximately
every 10 km in 4 types of areas: (1) ∼75% of the areas where coca
has been grown historically, (2) sites where authorities have
reported new coca cultivation, (3) areas where eradication by
aerial fumigation has been reported, and (4) areas with dense
cloud cover in remote sensing images. Georeferenced photo-
graphs collected from these surveillance flights were then used
to calibrate and validate land cover classification, and in particular
to verify the presence of coca in a given area (as opposed to other
shrubby crops). Coca grown in the shade cannot be detected
using these surveys.
On-the-ground truthing of remote sensing data was also
conducted, but was more limited in scope, targeting only areas
of new cultivation or specific survey sites of particular social30 or
ecosystem importance.31 The aerial and on-the ground observa-
tions were then used to improve classification of remotely sensed
data. Clouds, shadows and gaps in the remote sensing images
were classified as missing data and excluded from all analyses for
both years.
Land cover maps generated this way divided the country
into three regions: North, Central, and South, encompassing
>450,000 km2, and the entire range of natural forests in the
northern Andes and Choc
o biodiversity hotspots 1 and 34 pro-
tected areas (Figure 2a). On the basis of these maps, we com-
pared land cover in this time step using IDRISI Andes software.32
Complete forest regeneration is not expected to occur during the
5-year span of our analysis, can only occur from fallows to
secondary forest. To test the accuracy of the land cover classifica-
tion, we checked the transitions for regeneration from cleared
areas to primary forest (<0.03% of pixels in each region), and
these were excluded from subsequent analyses. No transitions
from water to forest were recorded, corroborating the accuracy of
most of the classification.
Modeling Forest Cover Change and Deforestation Rates.
To measure the effect of coca cultivation and conservation policy
on forest cover, we modeled change in forest cover as a function
of a series of environmental and policy variables, including
distance to the closest coca field and the area of coca cultiva-
tion in a 1-km2 cell, protection status of the landscape cell, relief,
accessibility, climate, and remaining forest cover (Table 1,
Figure 1). To summarize 19 biologically important climate
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d |Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227
Environmental Science & Technology ARTICLE

Table 1. Geoferenced Data, Spatial Resolution of Variables, and Data Sources Used in Modeling Land Cover Change and
Deforestation Rates
variable type variable description spatial resolution data source

illicit crop and eradication Euclidean distance to new coca fields found 90-m grid SIMCI
between 2002 and 2006
coca cultivation (ha/km2) downscaled to 1-km grid from SIMCI
30-m grid of coca cultivation
area eradicated by aerial spraying during time step (ha) municipality SIMCI, based on reports filed
by anti narcotics agency
conservation policy IUCN-ranked protected areas (categorical 0/1) 90-m grid ref 65
population population growth (inhabitants/km2) municipality DANE66
accessibility Euclidean distance to nearest primary or secondary road 90-m grid SIMCI
(including unpaved roads) in km
Euclidean distance to nearest navigable river in km 90-m grid SIMCI
climate principal component 1 of pca of 19 climate variables 1-km grid Worldclim 33
(precipitation-derived)
principal component 2 of pca of 19 climate variables 1-km grid Worldclim
(temperature-derived)
principal component 3 of pca of 19 climate variables 1-km grid Worldclim
(remaining orthogonal climate variation)
topography elevation 90-m grid ref 67
aspect 90-m grid processed from ref 67
slope 90-m grid processed from ref 67
remaining natural habitat percent remaining forest cover in 2002 1-km grid current study

variables comprising temperature and precipitation means,
extremes, and seasonality, 33 we obtained principal components
(PC) by eigenvalue decomposition of the climate rasters in
ArcGIS v. 9.2.34 We used these PCs rather than the climate data
as predictors in subsequent analyses to minimize collinearity
among variables. PC1 comprised mostly precipitation and its
seasonality, PC2 reflected mostly temperature and its varia-
tion, and PC3 comprised the remainder of the variation in the
variables.
We used the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) to select
the best combination of predictors of forest cover change for
each region.35 Logistic regressions of change in forest cover as a
function of the predictors were fitted using both a generalized
linear model (GLM) approach assuming independence in errors,
and a generalized estimating equation approach (GEE), which
included an autocorrelation structure for the errors of observa-
tions within a 5  5 km box.36 The last approach was used to
account for spatial autocorrelation in model fitting so that
hypothesis testing was not biased toward rejection of the null
hypothesis by virtue of the similarity of errors among observa-
tions close to one another.
All models were calibrated using a small subset of the observed
changes, and validated using all the data 37 (Table S1). The
accuracy of the models was assessed using the area under the
receiver operator characteristic curve or AUC, which ranges from
0 to 1, with 0.5 indicating a completely random model, and 1
indicating a perfect model.38
To measure the effect of eradication by aerial spraying
(Figure 1F) we calculated annual municipal deforestation rates
using eq 7 from ref 39. Deforestation rates were modeled as a
function of changes in the density of human population, coca
cultivation, and eradication using multilevel linear models with
distance-based autocorrelation structures.40 Again, autocorrela-
tion structures were included to remove bias in hypothesis testing
1221
arising from spatial autocorrelation. Fitting separate intercepts or
slopes for different groups of municipalities would have a similar
effect by accounting for unobserved variation through a random
effect of group assignments. Models were compared using the
AIC.35
All modeling steps were conducted in the R statistical language 41
using the MASS library,42 and the ncf,43 geepack,44 ROCR,45 and
nlme 46 packages. Details on the Experimental Section are presented
in the Supporting Information.
’ RESULTS
Land Cover Change between 2002 and 2007. The propor-
tion of land cover classes and relative change are summarized in
Table 2. Natural vegetation, forest and scrub, was the most
prevalent land cover class, and most of it remained unchanged
through 2007. Despite the general stability in land cover classes,
the Central region experienced dramatic losses in forest cover
from 56% to 46% of its surface, and the South went from 82 to
78% forested. Substantial forest regeneration was only observed
in the South, with 13% of crops and 10% of anthropogenic cover
reverting to forest.
The highest annual deforestation rate was recorded in the
North (4.70%) followed by the Central region (3.79%), and a
much lower rate of forest loss in the South (0.81%). These annual
rates mask large forest losses over the 5-year period: 14,322 km2
lost in the South, a similar area of mostly Andean forests lost in
the Central region (13,630 km2, Figure 2a), and 1,160 km2 lost in
the North. The deforestation rate in the southern Choc
o was
0.98%, or 291 km2 of forest lost out of 6100 km2.
Modeling Land Cover Change. The samples taken to cali-
brate models were very sparse relative to the data available, <1%
of the data in every case (Supporting Information, Table S1),
resulting in some variation in the predictors that could be eliminated,
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d |Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227
Environmental Science & Technology ARTICLE

Figure 1. Independent variables included as predictors in analyses of land cover change and deforestation rates. (A) New coca cultivation detected
between 2002 and 2007. (B) Relief map and permanently navigable rivers. The rivers layer was used to generate a distance surface and thus estimate
accessibility by river. (C) Primary and secondary road network, including nonseasonal unpaved roads. This network was used to generate a distance
surface and estimate accessibility by road. (D) First principal component (PC) derived from principal component analysis of 19 ecologically important
climate variables.33 (E) Proportion of remaining forest in 2002 at 1-km2 resolution. (F) Amount of aerial spraying conducted in each municipality
calculated as the mean annual number of ha sprayed per km2.

as well as the coefficients estimated across series of models
(Supporting Information, Tables S2-S8). There was no signifi-
cant improvement in model fit from including the coca-related
variables in the Central region, or from including the protected
area variable in the North (Supporting Information, Table S2).
Distance to roads and remaining forest cover were important
predictors in every model, while elevation and aspect were elimi-
nated from most models (Supporting Information, Table S2).
There was significant spatial autocorrelation in the residuals of
logistic regressions assuming independent observations, indicat-
ing that this approach was inadequate for determining the
significance of predictors. Analyses using GEE reduced, but did
not completely eliminate autocorrelation in the residuals (Figure S3).
Increasing the clustering distance up to 100 km did not minimize
1222
the number of significantly autocorrelated residuals, and was not
pursued further. Figure 2 and Table 3 show the results from the
model in a series that minimized the proportion of significantly
autocorrelated residuals and was most appropriate for hypothesis
testing.
Despite variability across samples some predictors were signifi-
cant in every model of a series (Table 3). The probability of
transition from forest to nonforest increased significantly with
shorter distance to new coca plots, as well as with the amount of
new coca per km2 in the South region. Protected areas signifi-
cantly decreased the probability of forest loss in the Central and
South regions, but this effect was not consistent for all models in
the series (Table 3 and Supporting Information Tables S4 and S5).
Many of the predictors of forest loss were also predictors of forest
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d |Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227
Environmental Science & Technology ARTICLE

Figure 2. Change in forest cover from 2002 to 2007. (A) Observed change, outline of IUCN-protected areas (national parks, sanctuaries, and biosphere
reserves), and forested areas discussed in the text: (1) Serranía del Perij
a, (2) Serranía de San Lucas, and (3) Pacific versant of Cordillera Occidental
(Choc
o forests). Observed changes were derived from direct comparison of land cover maps. (B) Modeled probability of deforestation based on region-
specific landscape models of forest change. (C) Modeled probability of reforestation, note overprediction for this change in the South. The probabilities
of change as a function of the observations in 2002 were obtained by applying the functions summarized in Table 3 to the predictors in 2002 (Table 1).

Table 2. Transition of Land Cover Classes for the 2002-2007 Perioda

region 2002V/2007f forest crops other natural vegetation anthropogenic % of total area

North forest 0.68 0.23 0.08 0.00 30

crops 0.20 0.68 0.11 0.01 10
other natural vegetation 0.02 0.03 0.94 0.00 58
anthropogenic 0.00 0.07 0.02 0.91 1
% of total area 24 16 59 1
Central forest 0.67 0.26 0.08 0.00 56
crops 0.24 0.68 0.08 0.00 34
other natural vegetation 0.08 0.16 0.75 0.01 10
anthropogenic 0.04 0.17 0.04 0.75 <1
% of total area 46 39 14 <1
South forest 0.93 0.05 0.02 0.00 82
crops 0.13 0.75 0.11 0.00 15
other natural vegetation 0.16 0.13 0.71 0.00 3
anthropogenic 0.10 0.36 0.06 0.49 <1
% of total area 78 16 6 <1
a
The anthropogenic category included buildings, roads (paved and unpaved), airstrips, (paved and unpaved), and any other anthropogenic land cover
classes excluding cultivation and pastures.

Table 3. Coefficients from GEE regression and performance of models with the fewest instances of significant spatial
autocorrelation in residuals.a

distance to climate
remaining coca protected
region coca road river forest (%) (ha/km2) PC1 PC2 PC3 aspect elevation slope area (binary) AUC

deforestation
North 0.05 -4.45* -0.27* -0.40*** -0.17 -1.09* -0.45* -0.08 -0.03*** 0.83
Central -3.03*** -0.19** -0.24*** -0.43*** 0.54*** -0.08 -0.02*** -0.80** 0.76
South -0.82*** -2.32*** -0.34** -0.60*** 0.16** -0.67*** 0.32** -0.90*** -0.16* -0.26* -0.03*** -0.78** 0.93
reforestation
North -1.98 -1.11*** -0.27 0.92
Central -2.52** -0.62*** -0.23*** -0.11 -0.25*** -0.15** -0.63 0.85
South -0.32 -2.54*** -0.33** -0.71*** 0.13 -0.09 -0.36*** -0.43*** -0.33** -17.36*** 0.96
a
* Significant at p < 0.05, ** significant at p < 0.01, *** significant at p < 0.001. Coefficients in bold were significant in every model of the series of 10 for
each data set.

1223 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d |Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227

Environmental Science & Technology
gain, reflecting more dynamic landscapes. The performance of
the models, summarized in Table 3 and Figure 2 ranged from fair
(>0.7 AUC) in the Central region to excellent (>0.9 AUC) in the
South.
Modeling Deforestation Rates. Rates of forest loss/gain
varied widely, from -1.13;or 113% annual deforestation in a
municipality in the Central region where ∼0.3% of the original
forest remained after the 5-year period, to >48% annual regen-
eration;where the forest grew to 11 times its original size;in a
municipality on the Amazonian versant of the Andes in the South
(Supporting Information, Figure S3a). The median municipal
deforestation rate was -0.025 (2.5% annual loss; std. dev. =
16.29%). Supporting Information, Figure S3 summarizes defor-
estation/reforestation rates by municipality and by 1-km2 pixel.
Eradication and coca cultivation were not significant predictors
of deforestation/reforestation rates in any analyses (Supporting
Information, Table S9). Change in population density was a
significant covariate of deforestation rates when assuming an
independent sampling structure, but this effect was lost in the
best models, which included a distance-based error correlation
structure (Supporting Information, Table S9). These nonsigni-
ficant relationships between changes in population density and
deforestation rates are summarized in Supporting Information,
Figure S4. Assuming independent sampling in municipal analyses
resulted in highly autocorrelated residuals, and neither applying
distance-based correlation structures nor fitting intercepts for
each region reduced residual autocorrelation (Supporting Informa-
tion, Figure S5).
Separate single-level models with a Gaussian autocorrelation
structure for each region found no significant effect of either
eradication or coca cultivation in any region (P > 0.2793), and
a significant effect of change in population density in the South
(P = 0.0001), but not in the North or Central region (P > 0.13).
The South regional model had minimal residual autocorrelation
relative to both whole-country models and other regional models
(Supporting Information, Figure S5). Deforestation rates for the
South based on the regional model are shown in Supporting
Information, Figure S5b.
’ DISCUSSION
In this study we have shown that (1) coca cultivation increases
the probability of forest conversion in the northern Andes and
Choc
o of southern Colombia, (2) changes in population density
predict deforestation rates in this same region, and (3) protected
areas decrease the probability of forest loss, even after controlling
for accessibility by factoring distances to roads and rivers.
How Does Coca Cultivation Promote Deforestation? The
forces driving deforestation result from complex interactions
between policy decisions and socioeconomic processes as they
unfold in an environmental space more or less propitious to
agriculture and other human activities. Considering the illegality
of coca and local socioeconomic conditions, four nonexclusive
mechanisms have been proposed to explain coca as a driver of
deforestation: (1) armed conflict associated with coca produc-
tion and trafficking may drive growers away from existing crops
promoting further deforestation,20 (2) higher income from coca
cultivation attracts new growers and drives existing growers to
expand their production,47,48 (3) eradication and law enforcement
force growers to relocate promoting further deforestation,20,49
and (4) eradication may drive deforestation directly.22 Analyses
of the role of armed conflict are beyond the scope of this study,
1224
ARTICLE
Figure 3. Deforestation rate as a function of change in population
density in the South, fitted line shows relationship (P = 0.0001).
but the demographic and eradication data can help assess the role
of immigration and aerial fumigation in deforestation.
Coca cultivation had no effect on municipal deforestation rates
(Supporting Information, Table S9), despite the landscape-level
effects of coca on the probability of conversion (Table 3). It
could be that the relationship between coca cultivation and
probability of deforestation is captured across the landscape,
whereas on the aggregate, migration and many forms of exploita-
tion (not measured here) mediate the relationship between coca
cultivation and deforestation rates (e.g., ref 48). This explanation
implies that even if coca cultivation attracts immigration, defor-
estation rates arise from many other activities and are therefore
only weakly associated with coca cultivation.
If coca attracts new growers who then convert the forest,
population change should be positively linked to coca cultivation,
and deforestation rates should be positively related to population
change in coca-growing areas. We modeled population change as
a function of new coca cultivation across municipalities and
found a nonsignificant relationship (P = 0.3222 with all data, P =
0.2330 with data from municipalities that recorded new coca).
There was some evidence of the link between deforestation rates
and population gains in coca-growing areas, since the only
significant relationship was found in the South where most coca
is grown (P = 0.0001; Figure 3). To evaluate this relationship
more broadly we reanalyzed data from municipalities where new
coca was detected (not restricted to the South, N = 227), and
found that deforestation rates increased with growing population
density (P = 0.0005). In contrast, municipalities where no new
coca was found (N = 267) showed no significant relation-
ship between change in population density and deforestation
rate (P = 0.3689). Although we found no evidence that coca
cultivation attracts immigrants, our analyses indicate that popu-
lation density and deforestation rates are linked in coca-growing
municipalities. This relationship is not explained by coca cultivation
because coca was not associated with population density.
As with coca cultivation, eradication in coca-growing munici-
palities could translate into higher deforestation rates because
eradication and law enforcement may result in relocation of coca
growers and new clearings.18,20,22,49 As law enforcement pressure
increases, eradication would displace people,21 thus explaining
deforestation rates better than coca cultivation.49 However,
eradication had no effect on population density in coca-growing
municipalities (P = 0.7004), or on deforestation rates (Supporting
Information, Table S9).
Neither the amount of coca cultivation nor eradication is a
satisfactory explanation for the relationship between population
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d |Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227
Environmental Science & Technology
density and deforestation rates in municipalities where coca is
expanding. Previous analyses to establish the characteristics of
regions where coca expands have revealed that (1) the potential
for expansion based on climate alone coca encompasses virtually
all lowland forests and some of the subtropical forest remnants in
the country and (2) the prevalence of abject poverty and low
accessibility sets apart coca growing districts from other agricul-
tural areas.50 Both household surveys and analyses above the level of
municipalities have shown that socioeconomic conditions are poor
and living standards low for most coca growers 18,21,30
In light of previous research, we hypothesize that what sets
coca-growing municipalities apart is poor rural development.
Gains in rural population density relate to higher deforesta-
tion rates because most or all economic activities that absorb
immigrants, or used to occupy emigrants, require forest clearing.
Municipalities without new coca would have a diverse suite of
economic activities to accommodate population growth, so that
the relationship between population and deforestation breaks
down. In our data, new coca cultivation and the existing road
network are complementary, suggesting that coca does not
expand in areas with substantial development (cf., Figure 1a
and c). The fact that coca, a crop that cannot be grown where
government and law enforcement are active, is expanding in
these municipalities further points to their lack of socio-political
and economic development. The expansion of coca itself is an
indication that these municipalities constitute the agricultural
frontier, where settled land ends and new inroads begin. If so,
these municipalities should have a greater proportion of their
surface in forest because socio-political integration and economic
development have produced massive forest loss in Colombian
history.16 We investigated this prediction by modeling both
the presence of new coca and its quantity as functions of the
proportion of the municipality that remained in forest in 2002.
Both models were highly significant (N = 594, P < 2  10-16 for
the logistic regression, and P = 0.0011 for the linear model),
confirming the expectation that these municipalities are the
hitherto undeveloped forested frontier.
Our municipal-level analyses suggest that the relationship
between coca cultivation and deforestation is more complex,
and the policy context in which landscape-level processes unfold
has more influence on eventual outcomes 48,49 than previously
proposed.18,20,22 We propose poor rural economic development
signaled by the expansion of coca as the context underlying the
relationship between population density and deforestation rates,
even in the North and Central region, where coca cultivation was
not a covariate of the probability of deforestation at the landscape
level. Analyses of the economic covariates of coca have shown
that proportionally larger rural populations and poverty predomi-
nate in coca-growing regions,51 bolstering this interpretation.
Coca is expanding in these municipalities because they are
underdeveloped, rather than the converse. Coca is therefore a
symptom rather than the ultimate cause of deforestation, and
structural features such as socioeconomic inequality, failed agri-
cultural development policies, and armed conflict are the large-
scale drivers of deforestation.51-54 More data at levels ranging
from the household to the municipality are needed to test the
hypothesis that the drivers of deforestation in coca growing areas
are socioeconomic and linked to underdevelopment and possibly
conflict.
Aside from eradication, development, broadly construed to
encompass projects to replace coca with alternative crops,
strengthen local institutions, and integrate coca-growing regions
1225
ARTICLE
to the national economy through road construction, has been
proposed as a way to curb coca cultivation (see Foreign Opera-
tions Congressional Budget requests at ref 55). Our landscape-
level analyses, along with several recent studies,8,14,19,28 have
shown that access, particularly by road, is a strong covariate of
deforestation. Development of coca-growing areas that improves
access to the frontier without alleviating the conditions that make
forest conversion the main source of income has the potential to
greatly accelerate forest loss in the Central and South regions.
The patterns of forest conversion along the Colombia-Ecuador
border suggest that orderly, development-driven colonization
can lead to the stabilization of the frontier with a much greater
proportion of remnant forest,14 and that the spontaneous
waves of colonization experienced in southern Colombia
stabilize at a much lower proportion of forest.15,56 An alter-
native development scenario would be a more orderly coloni-
zation process, with roads catalyzing deforestation along their
immediate vicinity, but larger tracts of forest remaining as
economic opportunities that do not convert the forest become
available.57
Prospects for Biodiversity Conservation. Our results show
that protected areas reduce the probability of forest conver-
sion,19,27,28 not just by virtue of being in remote areas, and even in
coca-growing regions. An additional, even larger, effect would
follow from conserving a larger proportion of forest (Table 2).
Larger forest remnants would, in turn, enhance the prospects for
conserving more endemic species than a mosaic where forest
remnants are too small and isolated to support many species.58
Expanding the protected area network to conserve large tracts of
the most biodiverse forest remnants in the three study regions is
warranted considering the high rates of deforestation observed
over the past decade in the North and Central region, and
southern Choc
o, and the historical trajectory toward stabilization
at very low forest cover in midelevations.59,60
Four of eight protected areas slated for official government
protection in the 2009/2010 period encompass biodiversity
hotspots in the Serranía del Perij
a, Serranía de San Lucas
(Figure 2a), dry forests in the easternmost extreme of the mid-
Central region, and the Serranía del Pinche in the Choc
o (see
http://www.parquesnacionales.gov.co/PNN/portel/libreria/php/
decide.php?patron=01.1103). On the basis of these immediate
expansion plans, lowland southern Choc
o forests would con-
tinue to be underrepresented in the protected area network.
Unlike some of the vast parks in Amazonian forests, these new
protected areas would have to be responsive to already-established
local populations and their current economy.61,62 Considering
that structural underdevelopment would underlie the relation-
ship between migration and deforestation rates in Colombia,
support for a diverse smallholder economy is crucial to break the
cycle of environmental degradation and poverty that traps small
farmers throughout the agricultural frontier53,63 and simultaneously
conserve biodiversity beyond strictly protected areas.64 To this end,
one of the primary goals of conservation should be to articulate its
priorities within a larger framework seeking to both promote and
regulate rural development throughout the forest frontier.
’ ASSOCIATED CONTENT
bS Supporting Information. Detailed experimental section,
nine tables and five figures of results, and supporting references.
This information is available free of charge via the Internet at
http://pubs.acs.org/.
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es102373d |Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 1219–1227
Environmental Science & Technology
’ AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail: ldavalos@life.bio.sunysb.edu; phone: þ1 631 632 1554;
fax: þ1 631 632 7626.
’ ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank Resit Akc- akaya for helpful discussion on drivers of
land cover change, Jessie Stanton, Maria Uriarte and Charles
Yackulic for guidance on analyses in R, Jim Rohlf for insights on
spatial autocorrelation, Elizabeth Simola for helping get the project
started, and Eleonora D
avalos and Leonardo Zurita for discussions
on economic and social drivers of coca cultivation and deforestation.
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