Colombia’s peace treaty accidentally sparks increase in deforestation

By Joshua Rapp Learn

It turns out that decades of civil war in Colombia was better for the preservation of wild lands than the country’s more recent years of peace.

Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries, with more bird, amphibian and butterfly species than anywhere else in the world, according to the World Wildlife Fund. This is partly due to the country’s high variety of ecosystems, from the central Andean mountains to the Amazon rainforest in the east.

The country has also spent much of …