Advancing Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability in the Amazonian Regions in Colombia
This project aims to generate new economic prosperity in the Colombian Amazon that does not sacrifice the forest.
Does economic prosperity in the Colombian Amazon require sacrificing the forest? The project presents findings that break from the prevailing dialogue of a perceived trade-off between conservationism and development to identify pathways that promote economic development and environmental sustainability. By matching the pioneering methods of the Growth Lab with the local expertise of Moore Foundation partners, local stakeholders, and national decision-makers, the engagement works to produce data-driven research inputs and actionable policy options to foster economic prosperity without harming the forest in the Colombian Amazon. The Colombian Amazon finds itself in the lose-lose scenario of high deforestation and low economic growth. The recent, alarming rise in deforestation has not been accompanied by greater economic growth. The existing economic model in the Amazon – centered on resource extraction and agrarian colonization – has not generated prosperity for the people, all while failing the forest.
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Perhaps the most underappreciated facet of life in each of the three Amazonian regions studied, Caquetá, Guaviare, and Putumayo, is that the majority of people live in urban areas. This is a telling fact of economic geography: that even in the remote parts of the Amazon, people want to come together to live in densely populated areas. This corroborates the findings of our global research over the past two decades that prosperity results from expanding the productive capabilities available locally to diversify production to do more, and more complex, activities. The engagement aims to provide rigorous, data-driven research on the economic sectors with high potential to drive economic growth and the binding constraints that are preventing these opportunities from realizing.
The drivers of deforestation and prosperity are distinct – as they happen in different places. Deforestation occurs at the agricultural frontier, in destroying some of the world’s most complex biodiversity by some of the least economically complex activities, particularly cattleranching. The economic drivers in the Amazon are its urban areas often located far from the forest edge. These cities offer greater economic complexity by accessing a wider range of productive capabilities in higher-income activities with little presence of those activities driving deforestation.
This project aims to provide inputs and policy options to accelerate the development of the Amazonian region and generate prosperity in a sustainable way. It comprises three essential inputs for the design of productive development policies in Caquetá, Guaviare, and Putumayo:
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Economic Complexity Report of the Colombian Amazon: A report on the existing productive knowhow and the opportunities to diversify the economy to drive growth consistent with the environmental services these regions render.
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Growth Diagnostic for the Colombian Amazon: A report on the binding constraints that inhibit growth and the realization of opportunities for productive diversification in Caquetá, Guaviare, and Putumayo.
- Policy Options Report for the Colombian Amazon: A report aimed at addressing the binding constraints and promoting the distinct productive opportunities in Caquetá, Guaviare, and Putumayo to achieve greater prosperity without sacrificing the forest.
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Key Diagnosis
The central conclusion of the work is that achieving economic prosperity in the Colombian Amazon does not require sacrificing the forest. Deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is driven by two factors: proximity to tertiary roads and the “moral hazard” of land regimes with provisions that exempt deforestation today with potential future land formalization.
Shared prosperity is easier to achieve in urban areas than in the forest. The solution to deforestation, as with that of creating shared prosperity, relies on generating better opportunities in cities to pull more people in from rural areas to reduce the pressure on expanding the agricultural frontier into the forest.
The low prosperity in the Colombian Amazon is driven by the lack of prosperous cities. Creating opportunities in Amazonian cities is constrained by a "connectivity trap": the lack of primary road connections with the rest of Colombia restricts the economic complexity of the Amazon and, in turn, the low complexity of the cities limits the returns to new investments.
Achieving shared prosperity in the Amazon depends on the connectivity and opportunity in its urban areas. The strategy should be territorial across three geographies of opportunity: (i) in cities, through tourism services, transport services, professional services, and agro-processing industry; (ii) in rural non-forested areas, in more intensive crops and sustainable agroforestry; and (iii) in forest areas, based on ecotourism, carbon markets for reforestation, and forest protection services. In addition, the Colombian Amazon needs a new forest protection law based on a simple premise: define the forest you wish to protect and put it under a legal regime that eliminates the moral hazard by forbidding future land formalization.
Publications
Video
On the Ground in Colombia | 2022
