Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Cows graze in a deforested pasture on the Yari plains, in Caqueta, Colombia March 3, 2021. Picture taken March 3, 2021.
Deforestation surges in Colombia – and you’ll never guess why
For years, Colombian rebels and narcos perfected the art of kidnapping people for ransom – now they are holding the rainforest hostage.
New figures show that after declining for many years, deforestation in the Andean country has shot up 40% in each of the last two quarters.
The culprit? A major armed group that controls vast swathes of the jungle rescinded an earlier order to protect the vital forest resource. The “Estado Mayor Central,” as the guerilla command is known, is now using the rainforest as a bargaining chip in peace talks with the government, by allowing, or forcing, local farmers to clear trees for cattle or coca farms.
By way of background: In 2016, the government signed a peace accord that ended decades of war with the FARC, the largest of various Marxist and narcotrafficking groups active in the country. But as those rebels demobilized, other violent groups filled the vacuum.
President Gustavo Petro, the country’s first leftist president (himself a former guerrilla), pledged during his 2022 campaign to reduce chronic violence by negotiating a “Total Peace” with all armed groups. He also committed himself to a pro-environment agenda. Suddenly, those are two branches of a common problem.
Commercial vessels wait to pass the Bosphorus strait during a misty morning in Istanbul, Turkey, October 31, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Grain deal extension woes, FRB rescued, loose Libyan uranium, global coke binge
120 or 60: Although the Black Sea grain deal will almost certainly get extended before it expires Saturday, Russia and Turkey are tussling over how long that extension should be. Ankara — backed by Ukraine and the UN — wants to prolong the agreement for another 120 days, while Moscow is insisting on 60 days, presumably to pressure the West to lift sanctions against certain Russian payment systems.
30 billion: Asian and European stock markets on Friday saw gains hours after a group of 11 big US banks swooped in to rescue First Republic Bank, an embattled regional lender. The banks injected $30 billion into FRB to shore up confidence in the US banking system following the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
2.3: A warlord has recovered an estimated 2.3 metric tons of uranium ore that had gone missing in eastern Libya. The uranium was probably left over from the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s defunct nuclear weapons program.
35: Global cocaine production surged by a whopping 35% in 2020-2021, according to a new UN report. One of the main reasons is that drug cartels have taken over coca-cultivating areas of Colombia previously run by the FARC and are competing to churn out more powder for Americans and Europeans to snort.What We’re Watching: China bans crypto, commandos kill Jesús, EU opens anew
China bans cryptocurrency: China has banned financial institutions and payment companies from processing online transactions in cryptocurrencies. The move, which follows an earlier ban on cryptocurrency trading by Chinese firms, is a clear sign of China's suspicion of any digital currencies that it cannot control. In fact, what China really wants is to promote its own digital yuan that would track every single transaction. Other governments would love to do the same, of course, but they don't have nearly as much financial firepower as China. Meanwhile, the news from Beijing made the price of Bitcoin — the world's most prominent cryptocurrency — plunge to its lowest in three months. Who would have guessed just a couple of weeks ago, when everyone was still frantically buying Bitcoin, Etherium or Dogecoin on RobinHood, that all it would take to burst the digital currency bubble would be an Elon Musk tweet and China.
Is Jesús dead? One of Colombia's most famous rebel commanders was reportedly killed in Venezuela earlier this week in an incident that could inflame tensions between the two countries. Seuxis Hernández Solarte — better known by his nombre de guerra Jesús Santrich — was a top leader of the FARC rebel group for decades, and helped negotiate the historic 2016 peace accord that ended a half century of conflict that had killed more than 200,000 people. But the ink was barely dry on the document before Santrich was jailed for returning to the drug trade, and after his release he joined a fresh call to arms among disaffected former FARC fighters. Santrich's own criminal gang says he was ambushed by Colombian commandos who stole across the border, killed him, and cut off one of his fingers before flying off in a helicopter. Colombian officials have not confirmed any of that story yet, but Bogotá has long claimed that Santrich was active in Venezuela, which for years harbored various FARC-affiliated groups.
EU to welcome (vaccinated) tourists: The European Union will allow tourists from non-EU member states that have been vaccinated with EU-approved jabs or considered safe from COVID to visit the bloc this summer. That's great news for tourism-reliant economies such as Greece or Spain which are eager to welcome visitors again from countries like the UK and the US. But other EU member states that depend less on tourists are skeptical — they want to be more cautious, for instance, about mixing vaccinated and unvaccinated groups of people. Either way, Brussels will let each member state decide its own policy, while working to ensure enough jabs are doled out by the fall to avoid getting crushed by another COVID wave. What still needs to be ironed out, however, is the EU-wide vaccination certificate, and whether the UK and the US will reciprocate by allowing EU visitors to go there without restrictions as the bloc (slowly) ramps up vaccinations. Expect a lot of back-and-forth on both issues in the coming weeks.
What We're Watching: Pakistan PM on the ropes, China's green plans, Colombia's post-peace problems, Thai cat rescue
A body blow for Pakistan's Prime Minister: Imran Khan suffered an embarrassing defeat this week when members of the National Assembly, the country's lower house, voted to give the opposition bloc a majority in the Senate. (In Pakistan, lower house legislators and provincial assemblies elect senators in a secret ballot.) The big drama of it all is that Khan's own Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party holds a lower house majority, which means that lawmakers supposedly loyal to his party voted in secret for opposition candidates. Khan's allies claim that PTI members were bribed to support the opposition, and the prime minister says he will ask for a lower house vote of confidence in his leadership. That vote will not be secret, but even if he survives, the political damage is done. Without a Senate majority, he has no chance of passing key reform plans, including constitutional amendments meant to centralize financial and administrative control in the federal government. Khan has, however, refused to resign.
Will China follow through on its climate pledges? On Friday, China is set to unveil its next five-year plan for economic growth. Analysts are keenly awaiting the targets for several reasons, but one of them is that it's China's first big economic roadmap since President Xi Jinping surprisingly announced that the country would reach net zero emissions by 2060. As a result, many are eager to see precisely how China — which has pegged its massive economic expansion in recent years to investment in coal-dependent technologies — plans to balance economic growth with emissions reduction. Skeptics abound, and China's pandemic recovery hasn't inspired confidence: after a surge in carbon output in the second half of last year, Beijing actually finished 2020 with a bigger carbon footprint than in 2019.
Colombia kills former FARC holdouts: The Colombian government killed at least 10 fighters at a jungle base used by dissident members of the former FARC guerrilla movement. While the FARC gave up its weapons and joined legitimate politics as part of a historic peace deal in 2016, there are still hundreds of dissident former members who rejected the agreement and remain under arms. Last week, the government launched a special 7,000-member elite military force to tackle the triple problem of former-FARC holdouts, drug cartels, and right-wing paramilitaries who are all scrambling for control over territory vacated by the FARC when it disbanded its military wing.
Thai sailor swims stray cats to safety: Thailand's navy has rescued four cats that were abandoned on a burning ship in the Andaman Sea. Click here for dramatic rescue photos and video of the lucky cats drinking milk.