Session 1. 6.

Illicit economies—such as coca cultivation, gold mining, and cattle ranching—pose significant threats to traditional environmental commons, including forests and watersheds across Colombia’s frontier regions. In areas like Vistahermosa (Meta), Puerto Guzmán (Putumayo), and Tumaco (Nariño), economic transitions reflect shifts in the dynamics of armed conflict in the aftermath of the Peace Process. The shift from coca cultivation to cattle ranching and gold mining has resulted from the vertical integration of coca production into select areas, alongside state-led eradication and substitution campaigns. Organized armed groups (GAOs) exploit these dynamics by regulating and taxing economic activities, blurring the boundaries between informal, illicit, and criminal markets and transforming regional landscapes. GAOs often control coca production and mining operations, using cattle ranching to launder money and appropriate land, further embedding these activities within local economies. Securitization and eradication efforts have frequently aggravated environmental degradation, while alternative development programs have struggled to provide sustainable livelihoods, leaving vulnerable communities dependent on illicit activities. This paper discusses our findings from extensive fieldwork in these three municipalities in Colombia and explores the intersections of illicit and licit economies, environmental harm, and the management of the commons, focusing on the challenges of state interventions, community adaptation strategies, and the influence of armed groups across biodiverse environments.

Studies on illicit economies frequently emphasize violent threats to society. This study contends that illicit economies can also generate economic and social opportunities, thereby competing with the state but generate relevant environmental impacts. This research examines the socio environmental and economic impacts of a recent coca cultivation boom in Colombia, employing a difference-in-differences methodology alongside satellite-derived nighttime light data as a proxy for economic activity. The findings suggest that the coca boom extends beyond increased cultivation, reshaping territorial dynamics and acting as a catalyst for both economic and landscape transformations. A one standard deviation increase in coca cultivation is associated with a 2.5% to 3.1% rise in municipality-level GDP, and each additional dollar generated from coca leaf sales corresponds to an increase in GDP ranging from 1.17 to 2.30. Notably, this boom did not significantly affect levels of violence; on the contrary, it appears to have enhanced educational outcomes for individuals under 19 and increased labor force participation for those over the age of 20. Yet, despite these benefits, the boom had no significant effect on fiscal revenues or agricultural land use, and it increased deforestation by 104% and raised land conversion from coca to cattle pastures in the Amazon region by 302%. These findings underscore the complex and often contradictory role of illicit economies in providing short-term economic gains and social opportunities while imposing long-term environmental damage on local and global commons.

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) generates livelihoods for millions in the Global South. It is also the largest anthropogenic emitter of mercury to the atmosphere. In light of failures by public institutions to affect informal and illegal mining behaviors, various initiatives have promoted miner-level technologies to reduce mercury in ASGM. After reviewing the limited available evidence on these efforts – in sum, unimpactful – we conceptually, then parametrically, model reasons they often are not locally preferred. Next we consider the viability of a higher-capital technological processing alternative to mercury, ore selling, in which miners sell ores to processing plants that use technologies which are mercury-free and, in addition, raise the share of gold recovered from that ore. Some ore-selling has been adopted privately, without policy, since it can increase income. Yet its impacts on miners and plants remain unclear: who gains? when? how much? why? We take two approaches to these questions. First, we survey the artisanal, female jancheras selected as beneficiaries for one ore-selling pilot in Ecuador, adding a choice experiment in which miners liked some options yet declined offers most similar to the planned pilot. Second, we are documenting one leading private application of this processing approach, both looking back two decades in Peru and setting a baseline for new efforts in Ecuador (to measure mercury, livelihoods, and other impacts from past and ongoing initiatives). Contexts’ details reveal that understanding not only geology but also mining populations and economic dynamics is needed to design policy for heterogeneous ASGM landscapes.

Although legally protected since 1990, Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) has experienced an accelerated rate of land-use and land-cover (LULC) change. This illegal LULC change is particularly concerning because the MBR is part of the largest tropical rainforest in the Americas after the Amazon and is home to an estimated 35,000 Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Previous research suggests that deforestation patterns in the MBR are geographically uneven and reflect differences in conservation governance. There are three main conservation models in the MBR, with respective regulations on land tenure, land use, and extractive activities. These include a “nuclear zone” of national parks and biotopes with “fortress conservation” restrictions, a “multiple use zone” (MUZ) where MBR residents and neighbors organized into community forestry concessions sustainably extract resources, and a “buffer zone” with few conservation restrictions. This paper combines longitudinal analysis of LULC change (2000 – 2023) in the MBR with a comparative analysis of conservation governance to explore the relationship between conservation models and LULC change outcomes. We estimate LULC changes in the last two decades using a novel Multivariate Random Forest LULC detection algorithm (MuRaF-LULC). To understand temporal and spatial patterns of conservation efforts, we draw upon policy analysis, in-depth interviews, and over 15 years of qualitative research. Our findings illustrate that deforestation rates are lower in community managed forest concessions in the “multiple use zone” than in the western national parks where conservation and land use policies are the strictest. Furthermore, deforestation in the national parks is largely driven by illegal, narco-capitalized cattle ranching activities. Our research confirms that communally managed community forests in the MBR are more effective in achieving conservation goals than fortress conservation approaches. Furthermore, community-based resource management and forest governance more effectively deters land grabs by organized crime than state-led governance in national parks.