Deforestation in conflict-affected areas: A quantitative approach for integrating local perspectives during peacebuilding

This paper examines deforestation-related factors in Colombia’s peacebuilding context. The study aims to understand local land use change by incorporating human perceptions as proxies for factors associated with underlying socioeconomic drivers of deforestation in post-conflict priority areas. Community perceptions of socioeconomic dimensions such as education, health, infrastructure, and peacebuilding, among others, were gathered from 98 groups of villages in the Antioquia region of Colombia. This information was categorized and weighted to create three perception-based outlooks: Optimistic (primarily marked by opportunities); Pessimistic (primarily marked by problems); and Neutral. Annual deforestation rate (ADR) data was generated from Landsat imagery, while biophysical and accessibility data came from official sources. Generalized additive models were used to assess the relationship between deforestation and biophysical and socioeconomic factors. The findings indicate that Optimistic outlooks on infrastructure and land adaptation were associated with a 22.59 % lower ADR compared to Neutral ones. Conversely, Optimistic outlooks of housing and sanitation topics were associated to a 19.65 % higher ADR compared to Pessimistic outlooks. Meanwhile, Pessimistic outlooks on reconciliation and peacebuilding topics were associated with a 22.09 % lower ADR than the Neutral. For biophysical factors, temperature differences above 1.4 °C and precipitation differences between 60 and 100 mm were associated with ADR of 1.8 % or higher. Regarding accessibility, the greater the distance to tertiary roads, the lower the ADR, which was below 0.6 % from 5 km onwards. Our approach of combining perceptions with biophysical data provides new insights into the factors associated with the underlying drivers of deforestation at a local level. This provides guidance on which to base land-use policies to protect the region's forests, such raising awareness of the value of forests and fostering community links with them. This approach can be adapted to similar contexts to provide new insights on how human perceptions of socioeconomic dimensions relate to deforestation at scales where data is not yet available. • Novel approach integrating multidimensional human perceptions into deforestation studies. • Community recognition of their natural capital could be an entry point to advance forest conservation during peacebuilding. • There is a potential use for the inputs from participatory exercises for other purposes in the study of land-use change.