The Norway–Colombia Agreement to Protect Rainforest and Reduce Global Warming: Success or Failure?
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University of Oslo
Norway -
Fundación Entropika Colombia
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National University of Colombia Colombia
Abstract
The Norwegian government has made an agreement with Juan Manuel Santos, former Colombian president, to give Colombia US$48 million yearly to reduce deforestation. This forms part of a greater effort by Norway to aid countries in the South to halt climate change, through the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative, instituted after the Paris Agreement in 2015. The ways efforts to reduce deforestation have been implemented have been criticised. While Norway, through this investment, appears to be a climate-concerned country, it continues with oil extraction activities. Thus, Norway exhibits double standards and shifts the problem of climate change to the countries in the South. This article examines the successes and failures of the Norwegian rainforest protection efforts in the case of Colombia, assessing the governance of the deforestation policies from the perspective of green Southern criminology and incorporating a critique of the neo-colonialist means of environmental protection established by the North.
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Author Biographies
Ragnhild Sollund is a professor of criminology at the University of Oslo, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law. She has written extensively on topics such as migration and police racial profiling. The past decade she has specialised in green criminology, particularly issues concerning wildlife management and exploitation, animal abuse and animal rights. She is the author and editor of many articles and books, such as The crimes of wildlife trafficking. Issues of justice, legality and morality (Routledge 2019), Green harms and crimes. Critical Criminology in a changing world. (Palgrave 2015) and Global Harms. Ecological crime and speciesism (Nova science publishers 2008). She is currently conducting a research project funded by the Research Council, Norway, CRIMEANTHROP where the research team explores the implementation of the CITES and Berne convention and wildlife use and management in four countries; Norway, UK, Germany and Spain.
Angela Maldonado is the director of Fundación Entropika, an organization that carries out participatory conservation work with indigenous people in the Amazon. She has a MSc and a PhD from Oxford Brookes University (UK), and received the prestigious Whitley Gold Award for her research and efforts in tackling the illegal trade of night monkeys used for malaria research. Her conservation work focuses on finding ways to improve environmental law enforcement and implementing sustainable livelihoods such as nature tourism for Amazonian communities involved in illegal extraction of natural resources. With the collaboration of several institutions, she is conducting international research on night monkeys, including genetic identification and health screening to create a binational conservation strategy for protecting this unique nocturnal species traded for over 35 years, whose habitat is severely fragmented by deforestation for timber extraction and coca plantations at the Colombian-Peruvian border.
Claudia Brieva is a veterinarian graduated at the National University of Colombia. She completed a Master's Degree in Wild Animal Health at the Royal Veterinary College (University of London). She is a professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics of the National University of Colombia, in the area of bioethics and animal welfare, and in the field of wild animal medicine, and is currently pursuing Doctorate studies in Psychology/Animal Behavior. She is linked as a teacher to the Unit of Rescue and Rehabilitation of Wild Animals of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics of the National University of Colombia (URRAS).