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. 2022 Nov 11;52(4):733–742. doi: 10.1007/s13280-022-01797-x

Local stakeholder perceptions of forest degradation: Keys to sustainable tropical forest management

Dolors Armenteras 1,✉, Tania Marisol González-Delgado 1, Juan David González-Trujillo 1,2, María Constanza Meza-Elizalde 1
PMCID: PMC9989062  PMID: 36369604

Abstract

Land use policies and planning in Latin America have been partially successful in halting deforestation yet have not stopped forest degradation. Here, we study the different stakeholders’ perspectives of the drivers of forest degradation. We use Colombia as a case study for understanding synergies and trade-offs of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and analyzed what the most important causes are, to whom it matters, and their regional contribution. We identified a common perception, but miscommunication and misunderstandings occur between local- and national-level actors in terms of their views on responsibilities and rates of change. The results are a call for action. Cross-scale governance is necessary to improve the design and implementation of policies for forest management at the subnational and local levels and to ensure that we move toward sustainable development without worsening existing inequalities. It is essential that countries provide the enabling conditions to develop a coherent governing framework.

Graphical abstract

graphic file with name 13280_2022_1797_Figa_HTML.jpg

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-022-01797-x.

Keywords: Colombia, Forest fire, Forest loss, Grazing, Logging, Trade-offs

Introduction

Forests and their rich biodiversity are essential for sustainable development. The conservation of terrestrial life was recognized as Goal 15 among the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) promoted by the United Nations. Efforts to halt deforestation within SDG 15 included Target 15.2 (under Goal 15)—“By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests, and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally” [Department of Economic and Social Affaris of United Nations (DESA) 2021]; Target 15.5 on “reducing the degradation of natural habitats and halting the loss of biodiversity”; and Target 15.9 on integration of biodiversity values into national and local planning development. Progress toward SDG15 has fallen short for achieving the protection, restoration, and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems along with the sustainable management of forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss [Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (DESA) 2021]. Several SDGs interact inevitably with SDG 15, which can be linked to deforestation and forest degradation. For instance, property rights and market access are associated with poverty reduction (SDG 1), which strongly supports forest conservation. The continued demand for forest products and food drives agricultural productivity, a sector that often competes with forests for space and resources (SDG 2, SDG8). While the annual rate of deforestation decreased globally, forest area loss in some regions is still very high (Seymour and Harris 2019), with the largest forest loss between 2010 and 2020 in Africa (3.9 million ha), followed by South America (2.6 million ha) (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 2020).

Deforestation and forest degradation are still some of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and an increase in global carbon emissions (Simula 2009; Sasaki et al. 2011; Budiharta et al. 2014). The two terms deforestation and degradation represent different states, processes, and concepts (Sasaki and Putz 2009). The scientific literature defines degradation as a process that reduces the quality of forests (Lund, 2009), negatively affecting their characteristics (Simula 2009) and thus reducing their capacity to provide key ecosystem services (FAO 2010; Thompson et al. 2013; Bustamante et al. 2015). In the context of international climate change policies (i.e., REDD +), degradation is defined as a loss of carbon stocks within forested areas that nevertheless remain wooded after the disturbance that caused the degradation (GOFC-GOLD, 2009). Regardless of the lack of consensus on the definition of forest degradation (Ghazoul et al. 2015) and the complexity of a concept that is highly dependent on the environmental and socioeconomic context of each country (Armenteras et al., 2016), forests confront huge threats. Understanding the positive and negative impacts of the implementation of SDGs on forests and people is desirable.

There is a recognition that degradation has an anthropic origin that is tightly linked to local conditions (Simula 2009), but other drivers such as climate change can also have some impact. Overall, causes of forest degradation can be classified as direct or proximate and indirect or underlying threats (Kissinger et al. 2012). Selective logging, forest fires of anthropic origin, and grazing are the direct causes most commonly reported in the literature as sources of forest degradation (Lund 2009; Simula 2009; Bustamante et al. 2015). Extraction of fuelwood and coal has also been reported to cause biomass loss in tropical forests (Kissinger et al. 2012). On the other hand, climate change, fragmentation, and the spread of invasive species are the most commonly reported indirect causes of tropical forest degradation (Lund 2009; Simula 2009; Bustamante et al. 2015). Besides, more recently, defaunation has been proposed as another indirect cause of degradation in the mid and long term (Barlow et al. 2016; Osuri et al. 2016; Peres et al. 2016). Among the indirect factors that influence forest degradation, the economic development model based on natural resource extraction and ecosystem transformation has been widely considered to be a driver and a threat to the conservation of biodiversity (Reid and De Sousa 2005).

Previous research has focused on the listing, description, and in some cases quantification of deforestation and degradation (Kissinger et al. 2012), but the view of stakeholders has largely been ignored. Neither is addressed whether activities associated with the identified drivers are perceived differently according to the scale at which a stakeholder operates (local, subnational, national, regional, global). Indeed, individual actions, decisions, and responsibility are strongly influenced by everyday experiences and by the different environmental, social, economic, and political dimensions of a particular locality. Any political change must rely on some sort of government. However, both collective action and individual choice are invaluable insights essential to achieving sustainable development. SDG 10 calls for reducing inequalities and the representation and recognition of different actors, including forest-dependent populations. Climate change negatively influences forests, and SDG 13 calls on a stronger commitment to local actions of climate finance to support the much-needed local implementation of climate action. SDG16 also addresses the conflict and inclusiveness of nonstate actors and institutions at multiple scales. To support SDGs and consider international and national policies for tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, it is important to obtain a sense of the importance and urgency associated with degradation as an environmental issue that can be highlighted at all levels of society and linked to the type of actor involved. As such, it is important to know how a wide range of state and nonstate actors at multiple scales feel about forest degradation, particularly when potentially conflicting visions that correspond to distinct values and interests arise. Addressing these types of knowledge gaps is useful for policy interventions at different scales in space and time and contributes to the needed recognition of trade-offs that will help set priorities when implementing SDGs and associated goals and targets. This paper reports an analysis of a case study in Colombia of the interested parties’ perspectives on the concept of forest degradation, drivers or causes, and trends. This work also investigates how stakeholders’ views vary at multiple scales by assessing the differences in perceptions when actors are in different natural regions and with the scale at which the stakeholder operates (local, national).

Methods

Study area

Colombia is the fourth largest country (1,141,748 km2) in South America. The country has 59 million ha of forests, representing 52% of the continental and insular surface of the country (IDEAM et al. 2018). The main ecosystems are tropical rainforests (52.2%), followed by savannah (13.9%), cropland, grassland, and shrublands (9%) (Olson et al. 1983). The mainland territories can be divided into natural regions based on topographic, climatic, and soil characteristics: the Andes, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Orinoco, and the Amazonian region. These five regions have clear differences in terms of socioeconomic and demographic conditions, biodiversity, and land use (IDEAM, IGAC, IAvH, INVEMAR, SINCHI, IIAP 2007) and have experienced different deforestation dynamics in the past (Etter et al. 2006a, b; Armenteras et al. 2011, 2013a, b; Rodríguez et al. 2013). The Amazonian region contains the largest extent of forest in Colombia, but at the same time, it experiences the fastest deforestation rates and has several of the most active colonization fronts in the country (Armenteras et al. 2006, 2013a). The Andean region, where most of the population lives, is heavily transformed by agriculture and cattle ranching, particularly in lowland areas (Armenteras et al. 2011; Rodríguez Eraso et al. 2013). Orinoco is a sparsely populated region experiencing recent and rapid land use changes (Romero-ruiz et al. 2011; Armenteras et al. 2013b). It is mostly dominated by savannah ecosystems holding an extensive network of riparian forests. The Caribbean region is heavily transformed and dominated by pastures with the key presence of tropical dry forest remnants. Finally, the wettest region is the Pacific, a sparsely populated area with tropical rainforests.

Survey

We conducted a structured electronic survey to understand the participants´ perception of the causes of degradation of natural forests in the country (details of the survey can be seen in Supplementary Material S1—written in Spanish). We disseminated the survey through social networks specifically to groups associated with forest and related sectors, as well as via direct contact by email with farmers´ organizations and public entities that were directly invited to participate in the survey. As such, we surveyed a wide range of interested parties, including representatives of community-based organizations (farmers and indigenous and Afro-descendants), foresters, public entities, natural resource management authorities, municipalities, and regional governments. We also invited both academics and professionals from non-profit organizations (NGOs) to participate. The survey was available for approximately ten months (from May 5, 2016, to February 1, 2017) and restricted to individuals over 18 years old.

The survey had three components summarized in a route diagram (Fig. 1): the first one aimed at capturing the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, such as their name, ethnicity, region of origin, and main economic activity. We also asked in this component for specific information according to the type of participants. For instance, we asked for the type of products and production (e.g., agricultural, forestry, ranching) as well as the scale of activity (small, medium, or large scale). In addition, when respondents were academic, we recorded their professional profile and line of research, and for organizations, we identified the professional profile and field of work.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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Survey Diagram. Closed-choice questions are shown in blue, and open-response questions are shown in yellow. The first section shows the characteristics of the interviewees, referring to personal information and characterization of focal groups. The second section shows the structure of the survey regarding degradation drivers (direct, indirect, others) and trends in the last five years. In the case of forest extraction, questions regarding the type of product, its extraction frequency, and the type of use were included. Respondents were asked to give a rating from 1 to 10 on the incidence of each driver in forest degradation and its tendency (reduction or increase). As an illustration, we provide examples of two drivers, "selective extraction of wood for domestic use," which had a rating of 8 in importance as a degradation driver, but this activity has diminished in the last 5 years, or “livestock,” with a rating of 10 and a strong increasing trend

The second component of the survey aimed to capture trends and causes of forest degradation. To ensure that participants had a collective understanding of forest degradation, we provided the following definition:

“Forest degradation is a process of human-generated change that negatively affects the characteristics of the forest such as a significant reduction in the number of trees per hectare.”

After this definition, we asked the participants to identify the direct (forest extraction, livestock, and fire) and indirect (invasive species) causes of degradation in their regions. To do so, they had to assign a value between 0 and 10 for each factor of change where 1 was not important and 10 was very important. The participants were also asked to evaluate a graphical representation of positive (+) and negative (–) signs of change and to indicate according to their own perceptions what had been the trajectory of the last 5 years for each of the degradation drivers, such as a) considerable reduction (–), (b) constant but with some signs of reduction (–), (c) constant but a tendency to increase (+), and (d) considerably increased (+). We left a space for the participants to include other activities that from their perception could contribute to forest degradation. Activities that were finally considered by the respondents to be direct causes of forest degradation were classified as a) extraction of forest products according to type (wood, firewood, charcoal, and nontimber forest products), use (domestic or commercial), and frequency of production (selective or persistent), (b) livestock activities related to mostly forest grazing, and (c) uncontrolled fires.

Finally, in the third section of the survey, we listed seven negative impacts that have been previously reported in the literature. We asked participants to select the impact and match it to a cause of degradation in their territory.

Analysis of data

We evaluate the concordance of responses to key questions to determine if stakeholders envision forest degradation as a process regulated by the same drivers. Specifically, we assessed the concordance between the results of two questions from the survey (Page 9 of the Survey: or “Assessment and Trends for Natural Forest Degradation,” Supplementary Information S1): A first question asking to rate the relative importance of degradation drivers from 1 to 10, where ten corresponds to a perception that the X driver had the strongest influence on forest degradation; and a second one asking to rate the relative importance of degradation drivers in the last five years (2012–2017). In the latter, perception scores range from 0 to 3, where zero is no change of importance and three means that the interested person thought that a driver X had increased in importance in the past five years. The results of the valuation of the degradation drivers per administrative unit is summarised in Table S1 Supplementary Information.

There are different analyses to assess concordance between questionnaire (ordinal) responses. However, we decided to use a correspondence analysis ("CA," Hirshfeld 1935), as it helps identify groups of responders who answered similarly to each question and therefore evaluates whether perceptions vary depending on the region (Amazonia, Andean, Orinoco, Pacific, Caribbean) and level (local and national) where stakeholders act. The CA explores the structure of relations between the variables (questions) and between the objects (responders) based on categorical or ordinal data (answer scores). The method leads to visualization in the form of a two-dimensional map, in which proximity between points (responders) is interpreted as strong similarity (or correspondence) between responses (i.e., a distance closer to zero indicates that two stakeholders have the same perception of the causes of forest fragmentation). In turn, we expected stakeholders acting at the same level and region to be closer in the two-dimensional map, as they envision similar drivers underlying forest degradation. Prior to the analysis, we rescaled the scores of the first question (1–10 to 1–5) since intermediate values (1, 5, or 7) were uncommon in the answers.

All analyses and figures were performed using R v. 4.0.3 (R Core Team 2020).

Results

Profile of the respondents

Two hundred stakeholders responded to the survey. Twenty-one percent of the participants belong to the academic sector, 29% to the general community (farmers and citizens), 29% to public entities, 12% to professional associations, and 9% were individuals linked to NGOs. Of the participants in the academic sector, 4.76% had a level of technological training, 57.14% were professional, 28.57% had a postgraduate degree (specialization or master's degree), and 9.52% had a doctoral degree. For participants of the local community, 34.62% recognized themselves as small or medium producers, and of these, 72.2% were agricultural producers, 16.67% agroforestry, and 11.11% had livestock as their main means for living. Related to the participants of the public entities, 52.83% represented an environmental authority, 26.41% belonged to a national research entity, 11.32% to a popularly elected body, 5.66% to institutes in sectors other than the environment, and 3.78% to a public service provider.

In general terms, the main drivers perceived as factors of forest degradation were selective logging (mean 6.71 ± STD 2.85), persistent logging (mean 6.70 ± STD 2.71), grazing (mean 6.66 ± STD 3.06), and uncontrolled fires (mean 6.36 ± STD 3.02). The least important driver was selective extraction for domestic use (mean 4.52 ± STD 2.49) (Fig. 2). Lumber was the main extractive product of timber, followed by firewood and charcoal. For other causes of forest degradation, 145 of the survey participants indicated alternate causes in addition to those previously mentioned, while 84.82% associated degradation with direct drivers and 15.17% with indirect drivers (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

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Mean values of stakeholders’ perceptions of the importance of forest degradation. The purple dots correspond to the means. The central horizontal bars are the medians. The lower and upper limits of the box are the first and third quartiles. C-coal; F-fire; G-grazing; IS-invasive species; P_NTFP-persistent extraction for domestic use of NTFP, PC-persistent cutting, S_NTFP-selective extraction for domestic use of NTFP, SC-selective cutting, WC-wood for commercial use, WD-wood. for domestic use

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

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Degradation drivers identified by participants. A represents the direct (black) and indirect (blue) drivers identified by survey participants, and B represents the grouping of these drivers into degradation categories

Figure 4a shows a two-dimensional map of the correspondence analysis performed on the first question (CA: 55% of variation explained by the first two axes, total inertia = 0.52). This map reveals that stakeholders working at distinct regions and levels (local and national) perceived distinct drivers as factors of forest degradation (e.g., if perceptions are similar, labels will concentrate in a single part of the map). Based on the distances between labels, we identify stakeholders from the Pacific and Andean regions working at local and national levels as the only ones with similar perceptions. All of them agreed that selective and persistent cutting (SC and PC) of wood for commercial and domestic uses (WC and WD) are important causes of forest degradation, assigning scores of four to them. However, this was not the case for other Colombian regions. We discover a discrepancy between the perceptions of local- and national-level stakeholders from the Caribbean, Amazon, and Orinoquia regions. Caribbean and Amazon stakeholders, for instance, perceived selective extraction (SE) and the constant extraction of wood for domestic purposes (WD) as significant major causes. In contrast, Orinocan workers did not perceive any cause relevant to forest degradation. In this region, the scores of every driver were low (< 2).

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

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Correspondence analysis representing stakeholder perceptions at two levels (local and national) in the five regions of Colombia. The centroid of every group of stakeholders is labeled according to the scale and region (i.e., Amazon local). The position of such labels indicates the similarity between group perceptions (when proximity between labels is assessed) or the most common response given by group members (when proximity between labels and yellow abbreviations is assessed). Abbreviations represent the score (1–5 in Q1 and 0–3 in Q2) given by stakeholders to the importance of each driver in forest degradation (C-Coal; F-Fire; G-Grazing; IS-Invasive Species; PC-Persistent Cutting, SC-Selective Cutting, WC-Wood for Commercial Use, WD-Wood for domestic use)

As evidenced in Fig. 4a, b reveals that stakeholders working in distinct regions and levels (local and national) perceived distinct drivers as factors of forest degradation in the last five years (CA: 59% of variation explained by the first two axes, total inertia = 0.38). However, in contrast to Q1, perceptions from Q2 indicated a greater discrepancy between scales in the Andean and Amazon regions. Interested parties working at the local and national levels in both regions perceived distinct changes in the importance of forest destruction. Local workers from the Andean or Amazon regions perceived no temporal change in the importance of changes, while national workers perceived that the pressure of one or more drivers had increased in the last five years. In the Andean region, national-level observers of change perceived an increased impact of selective extraction (SE3) and wood for domestic and commercial purposes (WD3 and WC3). On the other hand, in the Amazon region, national-level stakeholders perceived an increased impact of selective and persistent cutting (SC3 and PC3), grazing (G3), fire (F3), and invasive species (IS3). Moreover, stakeholders from other regions perceived an increased pressure of the same drivers as well.

Discussion

Forests essentially provide the ecosystem services needed for human well-being, despite being only explicitly mentioned in SDG 15 (and SDG 6). Among the goals of SDG 15 is to sustainably manage forests by halting deforestation and recovering degraded forests. This has prompted governments to make ambitious pledges, most of them framed under the REDD + mechanism. These promises have led to a number of zero-deforestation policies (Furumo and Lambin 2020), but efforts to prevent degradation have been minor, possibly due to the challenges of identifying the reasons for degradation by maintaining forest cover. Our results identify direct and indirect drivers of forest degradation that show that the implementation of many of the other SGDs inevitably influences forests and forest-related livelihoods due to the synergistic effect and trade-offs that are often found in the land, such as competing land uses driven by the implementation of SDG 2.

The extraction of forest products, mostly wood, was identified by respondents as a key driver of forest degradation. People extract timber and other forest commodities from natural forests outside sustainable management areas. There is a need to strengthen local conditions by advancing a more responsible and sustainable supply of forest products. Although the complexity of some supply chains makes it exceedingly difficult to develop a supply chain for all solutions, governance in the logging sector at multiple scales needs to be resolved in Colombia. Part of the problem is associated with the forest management regulatory framework since it is typically asymmetrical in relation to the dynamics of local communities (Franco and Moreno 2019). Forest legislation must consider the wide variety of forest types that meet different social needs and therefore require different management practices (Rodríguez-Piñeros et al. 2018). For the promotion of forest governance, it is necessary to also address SDG 16 for peace, justice, and solid institutions that as one of its goals ensures that institutions adopt inclusive, participatory, and representative decisions at all levels, responding to the needs of society, the lack of norms, control, and governance in Colombian logging.

Pasture conversion for grazing and the use of fire are major concerns for forest degradation, and have previously been linked to forest loss and forest degradation due to institutional absence and weak forest governance (Armenteras et al. 2018a, b). There is an urgent need to address the goal associated with equal rights over ownership and control of land in SDG 1, as well as the goals of SDG 12 that seek to guarantee sustainable production modalities based on efficient management and natural resource use. For this, many countries should complete their national land registry to definitely halt land grabbing and speculation, but this needs to be accompanied by a land tenure taxing system so that low-investment ranching is no longer profitable (Armenteras et al. 2019) and incentives for the adoption of best forestry practices and for sustainable use are in place and focus particularly for smallholders with greater proportions of natural forests.

There is a trend of increasing forest fires in tropical forests (Andela et al. 2017), and forest fires represent one of the greatest challenges since. Uncontrolled fires not only negatively impact the means of subsistence but also lead to high costs for biodiversity and local economies. (Robinne et al. 2018). They are a challenge not only for the conservation of forests (SDG15) but also for the fulfillment of the goal of SDG1 associated with increasing the resilience of people in situations of vulnerability to extreme phenomena related to climate and other disturbances. Approximately 40% of people living in conditions of extreme poverty inhabit areas with the greatest forest areas (FAO, 2020), and more forest fires lead to increased difficulties in achieving SDG 11, which seeks to protect the natural and cultural heritage so that communities are safe, resilient, and sustainable. SDG13 has as one of its goals that urgent measures be adopted in the countries to strengthen resilience and capacity to adapt to risks. Colombia needs a policy to ensure that communities are allowed to use fire for land management but under controlled and heavily monitored conditions. Empowering communities as forest fire rangers will also reduce the risk of uncontrolled fires whether on purpose or unintentionally still occur. The bad use of fire for non-permitted deforestation and land use changes should be addressed. In this sense, Colombia is debating in the congress a Law proposal for Integral Fire Management (PL 338/20211) based on the prevention, control of fires, and management of affected areas, which recognizes territorial and cultural practices and ensures the safety of populations, the conservation of forest heritage, biodiversity, and associated ecosystem services.

Participants also pointed out the high frequency with which intensive agricultural crops are a direct driver of forest degradation that could be associated with another indirect driver associated with economic incentives. Incentives for intensive agricultural production systems have been associated with forest loss and ecosystem degradation. (FAO 2020). We propose the adoption of best agricultural practices based on the main processes and management known by local communities accompanied by an improvement of supply chains where all actors, including final consumers, whether local, regional, or global, are responsible for costs associated with deforestation-free practices. In a way, this can include a strategy for the diversification of income to reduce vulnerability to drought or market price variations. On the other hand, to reach a transformative change toward deforestation-free agriculture, the traceability of large industrial agricultural products is a must. This requires corporate investment in some cases but also government, nongovernmental and multistakeholder agreements in place. Other direct drivers of degradation identified by the respondents were energy, infrastructure, and mining projects that are also related to institutional and political factors. Further respondents reported illegal mining that is associated with economic factors. The proliferation of illegal economies that degrade forests has been reported; in some cases, there is an association between legal and illegal mining (Armenteras et al. 2018a, b). Mining and energy projects have been the center of development for boosting Colombia's economy in the latest national development plans (1998–2018). For years in the implementation of these policies, not enough attention was paid to the interlinkages between goals, and this represents still a great challenge for SDG 8 and SDG 9 that seek economic growth and infrastructural development built around sustainability and resilience and reflects the trade-off between mining and energy activities and forest conservation. Communities should be able to prioritize on the ground with consensus-based decisions and win–win scenarios. However, the power dynamics of the energy sector require a strong state presence that can have a structural role and coherence in supporting local governance for the sustainability of rural areas. It is not a coincidence that participants associated forest degradation with institutional and political factors such as corruption, institutional disarticulation, the sometimes insufficient action of public institutions coupled with a lack of political will, as well as cultural factors associated with disinterest on the part of society. This reveals the need for governance around forest management, where the general principles of governance can be applied, involving collective and participatory consensus, the establishment of formal and/or informal transparent rules, democratization, and the vision of horizontality. (Querol 2002; Torres and Ramos 2008; Serrano 2011). Forest governance has already been proposed as a necessary approach to prevent deforestation and forest degradation (Garzón et al. 2020). Therefore, we believe that to meet SDG 16 "Peace, Justice and Solid Institutions," which would undoubtedly contribute to the correct governance of forests, countries need to implement responsive, inclusive, and representative participatory decision making.

Conclusion

There is a need to promote better practices both at the local and national scales and promote the reduction of pressures for expansion into forest areas, to reverse environmental degradation and to increase the quality of production and income that local stakeholders receive. The full extent of the effects of certain drivers at the local scale is still uncertain, but our work reflects the missed communication that is occurring between local- and national-level participants. Understanding different stakeholders’ perspectives and putting the degradation of forests on decision-makers’ agendas is key to ensuring that when moving toward sustainable development without worsening existing inequalities. Scale must be considered in developing further policies and mechanisms to halt drivers of forest degradation. If scale is not included, decisions at the national level could force people to continue to move into the forests, degrading additional frontier areas. We are aware that further work is needed to understand individual views and behavior, but in the meantime, we need to move the focus to the local communities and the socio–ecological systems where change is happening. We believe the transformation of decision-making to a truly inclusive and representative system is required for a harmonized approach to the SDGs.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (PDF 1650 kb) (1.6MB, pdf)

Acknowledgements

First of all we would like to thank all the participants from community-based organizations (farmers and indigenous and Afro-descendants), foresters, public entities, natural resource management authorities, municipalities, regional governments, academics and professionals from non-profit organizations (NGOs) that kindly answered the surveys. This work is a continuation of the information collected through the contract No. 2302831 2016 between UNAL and the United Nations for Food and Agriculture – FAO, and as such we would like to thank the Colombia UN-REDD programme and the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies of Colombia – IDEAM who initially supported part of this research. We are grateful to A. Yepes from FAO and E. Cabrera from IDEAM. We finally thank Sam Staddon for her comments on an early draft and Thomas Defler for the English revision of the manuscript.

Biographies

Dolors Armenteras

is a Full Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Her research interests include tropical forest degradation, fragmentation, deforestation, fire ecology, biodiversity conservation and forest policy.

Tania Marisol González-Delgado

is a researcher at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Her research interests include ecological processes at different scales: individual (animal movement); community (diversity, occupation, and occurrence patterns); landscape (effects of fire regimes and forest fragmentation).

Juan David González-Trujillo

is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Madrid’s National Museum of Natural Sciences. His research interests include biodiversity, macroecology, climate change, water and fire ecology, and machine learning.

María Constanza Meza-Elizalde

is a PhD. (c) Science - Biology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Her research interests include conservation and management of tropical forest, fire ecology, functional ecology, and forest governance.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Footnotes

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Dolors Armenteras, Email: darmenterasp@unal.edu.co.

Tania Marisol González-Delgado, Email: tmgonzalezd@unal.edu.co.

Juan David González-Trujillo, Email: jdgonzalezt@gmail.com.

María Constanza Meza-Elizalde, Email: mmezae@unal.edu.co.

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