Exploring the dynamics of migration, armed conflict, urbanization, and anthropogenic change in Colombia.

Guibor Camargo,Francisco J Escobedo,Andrés Peña Galindo,Fernando Carriazo,Andrés Miguel Sampayo,Alejandro Feged-Rivadeneira,Bing Xue

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242266

Guibor Camargo, Francisco J Escobedo + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242266

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Abstract

Anthropogenic change has been associated with population growth, land use change, and changing economies. However, internal migration patterns and armed conflicts are also key drivers of anthropogenic and demographic processes. To better understand the processes associated with this change, we explore the spatial relationship between forced migration due to armed conflict and changing socioeconomic factors in Colombia, a country which has a recent history of 7 million internal migrants. In addition, we use remote sensing, Google Earth Engine, as well as spatial statistical analyses of demographic data in order to measure anthropogenic change between 1984 and 2013—a socio-politically important period in Colombia’s armed conflict. We also analyze spatiotemporal relationships between socioeconomic and anthropogenic changes, which are caused by forced migration. We found that forced migration is significantly and positively related to an increasing rural-urban type of migration which results from armed conflict. Results also show that it is negatively related to interregional displacement. Indeed, anthropogenic change pertaining to different regions have had different correlations with forced migration, and across different time periods. Findings are used to discuss how socioeconomic and political phenomena such as armed conflict can have complex effects on the dynamics of anthropogenic and ecological change as well as movement of humans in countries like Colombia.

Highlights

Urban population growth across the world is one of the most influential phenomena affecting earth’s sustainability and overall global change as it affects societies, but the environment and climate as well [1,2,3]
We briefly describe the results obtained by our Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) analysis at a regional and local scale for seven main metropolitan areas in Colombia: Bogota, Aburra Valley, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bucaramanga, and Cucuta
We found that the percentage of Urban Population variable is positive and statistically significant in all estimated models at the national level

Summary

Introduction

Urban population growth across the world is one of the most influential phenomena affecting earth’s sustainability and overall global change as it affects societies, but the environment and climate as well [1,2,3]. There is no official definition of peri-urban areas, these are transitional areas between rural dominated land use and covers such as forests, shrublands, pastures, agricultural areas and the previously mentioned urban areas [6]. In this rural, peri-urban to urban gradient, one of the key factors behind anthropogenic change is urbanization which has been documented as being one of the most influential forces in creating novel ecosystems and their respective plant and animal assemblages [7, 8]. The transition of a society as part of its industrialization and post-industrialization processes, has driven these modern globalized economic shifts and affected the dynamics of labor, land, and capital and the eventual reduction in the demand for agricultural labor [12, 13]

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