Figure 1
From: The post-conflict expansion of coca farming and illicit cattle ranching in Colombia
A conceptual framework describing hypothetical and empirical land change patterns arising from different drivers of illicit land use activities. (1) Hypothetical patterns depend on historical institutional processes: (A) The War on Drugs and perverse incentives for coca substitution promote coca stabilization within PAs; (B) agrarian policies, such as the Integrated National Program for the Substitution of Illicitly Used Crops (PNIS), that promote cattle as a strategy less "illicit" than coca farming promote conversion from coca to cattle; (C) peace accord policies that enhanced land speculation for cattle ranching. (2) While drivers are not mutually exclusive, places outside the agricultural frontier (PAs and deeper regions of the Amazon) provide incentives for illicit activities that lead to consolidating coca and cattle to obtain rent and guaranteed economic returns for small farmers. (3) Coca and cattle lands produce diverse land-use patterns in the observed Landsat time-series (NIR, SWIR1, Red—false color combination). The areas reported refer to the mean and standard deviation area of change during the 34-year study period in the Amazon.
