Corredor de Conservación Chocó- Darién

Tropical deforestation accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the world’s cars, trucks, trains, and planes combined. Unlike technological solutions to preventing climate change, this project follows a unique approach rooted in strengthening indigenous peoples’ capacity to collectively manage their traditional lands. Communities in the project area lead subsistence lifestyles in which basic services like health and education are deficient or absent. Mortality among male infants in the Chocó was estimated at 86 deaths per 1,000 live births in the year 2005, comparable to levels observed in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to having the second highest departmental rates of poverty (79%) and extreme poverty (40%) in Colombia in 2005, the Chocó has suffered rates of forced displacement by armed actors as high as 3,440 per 100,000 inhabitants in the year 2000, the highest of any Colombian department that year.

With clear land titles and improving security conditions, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities have returned to the project area to pursue their own visions of territorial development. In some cases, however, armed conflict has disrupted traditional patterns of agriculture and trade while spurring the disorderly exploitation of natural resources for immediate basic needs. In other cases, weakly-governed communities have come under the influence of outside ranching and agricultural interests. Time preference exercises carried out among project participants revealed very high individual discount rates (a mean of 0.38), where the average respondent preferred to receive a lump sum payment of $800 USD versus a payment of $25 USD each month for the next 30 years. To effectively reduce carbon emissions, this project must understand these near-term opportunity costs while reinforcing the dignity and territorial autonomy of indigenous communities, so that neither the forests nor residents’ traditional ways of life are lost.