The Logic of “War on Deforestation”: A Military Response to Climate Change in the Colombian Amazon

Abstract

The renewed global efforts to contain climate change have meant a gateway for some Latin American countries to declare new military actions. The “war on deforestation,” announced in 2021 by Iván Duque, the former president of Colombia, is a paradigmatic example. Through Operation Artemis ( Operación Artemisa), the Colombian armed forces were assigned to protect the forests against threats from armed non-state actors (ANSAs) predominantly located in the country’s Amazon rainforests. We argue that this war was a rhetorical and political model of the Duque government that sought, based on the re-elaboration of the counterinsurgent categories shared with the United States for half a century, to implement in the Amazon the first state military strategy to reach global agreements against climate change. Why does a state wage war in the name of protecting forests? We argue that in this novel rhetorical, military, and criminal framework, the war on deforestation encouraged the renewal of the war on drugs and the transformation of the internal enemy. Drawing on analyses of presidential policies passed since 1970 and, more recently, green crime law, this article showcases a new chapter on the state’s goal of achieving territorial control through green militarization.