A report by an environmental NGO, presented Thursday, has stated Colombia’s Amazon region contributes 1% of GDP and covers nearly half of the national territory, Colombian newspaper El Espectador reported.
The most important forest on the planet covers 47% of Colombia’s national territory but contributes only 1% of GDP according to the report by Alisos – Alliances for Sustainability. The report titled Challenges for sustainable developemet: Transformations in the Colombian Amazon, was presented in Bogota Thursday.
The report investigates the social, environmental, and economic impacts of the development of infrastructure projects in the region. The aim of the report was to understand how the economic dynamics of various industries such as mining, hydrocarbon, transport, ranching, and agriculture, as well as illicit cultivation, put pressure on the survival of the region.
It warns of the consequences of deforestation saying that “if the current trend of deforestation continues, in 2030 more than one fifth of the Colombian Amazon rain forest will have disappeared with the resulting consequences for the sustainability of the planet.”
The report conveys the urgency of “recognizing that the exploitation of natural resources through the agro-industrial activities and mining and energy must concentrate in the western part [of the Amazaon].”
The study states that the biggest activities in the Colombian Amazon “should join others pressures such as the illegal felling of trees, illicit cultivation, migratory agriculture, illegal mining, as well as global climate change, all of which compromise the sustainability of the Amazon ecosystem.”