Pablo Peña first laid eyes on Guaviare during his military service, but it wasn’t until 1994 that he planted roots in Calamar, deep in Colombia’s Amazon frontier. Now, after decades of shifting from coca farming to cattle ranching and finally to conservation, Peña is fighting not just for his land, but for a model of rural life that could shape the Amazon’s future. In 2025, after years of advocacy, he and his fellow campesinos secured official recognition for the Guardian of Chiribiquete, a peasant reserve zone (ZRC) spanning 183,200 hectares and home to 4,430 people. This is more than a farming collective—it’s a frontline defense against deforestation, built on the fragile hope that Colombia’s next president will continue to back small farmers instead of militarised control.
Since 2022, Colombia has established 20 of its 27 existing ZRCs, largely under President Gustavo Petro’s administration, which has linked rural development to environmental survival. These zones are designed to formalise land rights, pull farmers out of armed groups’ influence, and promote sustainable economies. For Peña, who once traded a kilo of coca paste for his first plot, the shift has been profound. “While you could survive with five hectares of coca, cattle needed larger extensions of land,” he says—land that came at the cost of forest. Between 2002 and 2025, Guaviare lost 350,000 hectares of tree cover, an area nearly five times the size of Singapore.
But the ZRC model is reversing that trend in places. In the Guardian of Chiribiquete, nearly half the native forest remains intact, and farmers like Antonio Riveros maintain 10-hectare conservation plots, growing cacao and copoazú instead of clearing for pasture. Supported by WWF and Visión Amazonía, communities have launched nurseries, reforestation drives, and agroforestry systems—all part of a government-mandated sustainable development plan. “These zones bring farmers into the institutional framework and away from armed control,” says Camilo González Posso, former peace negotiator and founder of Indepaz. “When backed by investment, they work—for peace, and for the planet.”
Yet everything hangs in the balance. The 21 June 2026 runoff pits leftwing Iván Cepeda against far-right Abelardo de la Espriella, who won the first round by a narrow margin. De la Espriella has pledged to dismantle Petro’s rural reforms in favour of a hardline security approach. For farmers like Peña, that threatens not just their livelihoods, but years of progress. The ZRCs have become more than agricultural projects—they are experiments in peace, rooted in soil and trees. As the election looms, so does the question: will Colombia double down on dialogue, or retreat into force? The fate of the Amazon may depend on the answer.