In late June, as the rains start to fall in the foothills of Colombia’s La Macarena region, something magical happens to the Caño Cristales river. The water rises, and Macarenia clavigera plants lining the river bottom bloom into an explosion of yellows, oranges, and—most strikingly—a deep raspberry red, creating what locals call a “liquid rainbow” in the forest.

Until recently, another kind of red regularly stained the Macarena region, in the territory controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The leftist guerrilla group was known for kidnapping and killing civilians in its quest to topple the government. The conflict between the FARC and the Colombian government—considered one of the longest wars in history—claimed some 220,000 lives and displaced an estimated 5.7 million over the course of its 54 years.

The war also took a heavy toll on the country’s environment. Unregulated mining, oil pipeline bombings, illegal cultivation of coca—the plant from which cocaine is made—and general degradation by the FARC and other criminal groups caused an estimated $7.1 billion in damage per year according to Colombia’s Planning Department. But conflict also brought an unexpected environmental upside: The FARC needed the trees for cover from air raids, so they enforced logging restrictions at gunpoint. As a result, the rainforests and tropical dry forests in La Macarena remain largely intact. Violence also shielded other FARC territory from the widespread environmental destruction that took place in relatively safe parts of the country at the hands of government-backed companies seeking mineral and petroleum resources and agricultural land.

Just this summer, on June 27, 2017, after years of negotiations and demobilization, the FARC officially disarmed. Hope is on the horizon for the first time in half a century, but so are many hurdles. It’s a critical time for Colombia to decide what its future should look like, including the fate of vast stretches of territory once held by the FARC. While some look to exploit these newly accessible resources, conservationists, the country’s national park service and the Ministry of Tourism are putting their efforts towards converting former conflict zones into ecotourism hubs, with hopes of revitalizing the country’s broken economy and empowering its rural communities.

While most Colombian cities remained relatively safe during the past half-century, rural areas bore the brunt of the war. Regions under guerrilla control had little to no state presence for decades, and the lack of a government-run economy fueled illegal activities. Throughout most of the conflict, Colombia was the world’s largest producer and exporter of cocaine. The FARC generated some $200 million to $3.5 billion in revenue each year from trafficking the stuff. While the drug trade represented less than 1 percent of the country’s GDP in recent years, this is big business for Colombia. The market won’t die with the FARC’s dismantling.

“Drug violence in some areas has actually increased with peace,” says Bruce Bagley, a professor at the University of Miami who studies conflict and drug trafficking in Colombia. “We have criminal groups that will step in and take over where the FARC have left off. There will be pockets of violence around the coca trade in Colombia for at least the next half-decade if not more.”

To prevent rural areas from spiraling into criminal hotspots, and to bring much-needed sources of income to its citizens, the government must grow the rural economy. For farmers who currently grow an estimated 360,000 acres of coca—the plant from which cocaine is made—the FARC has long provided both protection and high compensation, with farmers often cashing in at more than double the price of traditional crops. To counter this, the government launched crop substitution and subsidies programs last year. While these programs have potential to shift the mindset on a local level, they haven’t always been effective. In order to qualify for crop-substitution, an entire region has to first become coca-free, meaning that farmers have to wait months or sometimes years to receive government benefits after they stop growing coca. Even in areas that do qualify for crop substitution, farmers sometimes still make less money between crop sales and subsidies than they did selling coca—and given the lack of roads and other types of infrastructure, options are limited for people in rural communities.

There are no walls at the schoolhouse in Santa Rita de la Sierra. The desks sit on a concrete slab beneath a roof of zinc sheets, and the dense jungle creeps in across the floor. It’s an appropriate setting for today’s lesson, a training course for hiking guides. 

The hopefuls are all from the community of Santa Rita, a 4,000-acre territory in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern Colombia. The 89 families that live in the town all arrived over the past several decades through a government relocation program for people who lost their land to the armed conflict.

The training course, hosted by the Peace Corps the day after peace talks closed with the FARC on August 25, 2016, is part of a program designed to transform the group of primarily subsistence farmers into tour guides. The Santa Rita guides start their training by developing a trail through different points of interest in the mountains near the town and then practice guiding skills by leading volunteer tourists on hikes.

Today was the dry run, and for the first time in as long as he can remember, Wilfredo Acósta, 52, one of the trainees, was not afraid to enter the forest. After a strenuous morning of hiking, his rubber boots are caked in mud, and beads of sweat squeeze out from under his baseball cap and down his forehead. When Acósta speaks of ecotourism in the area, his voice sounds upbeat. “When people come here, we hope they forget all the stories of conflict,” he says. “We want to show that we are moving on and looking for another form of life.”

Acósta is no stranger to such rallying. The rural farmer was born the year before the war began and has known no other way of life. He saw his family murdered by FARC paramilitaries and had his land usurped by armed rebels. He came to Santa Rita in 2000 after being displaced for a second time. A year after he arrived, right wing paramilitaries—criminal groups spun off from private militias created to fight off the FARC—swarmed the mountains, invading his fields and spreading terror. Three times, government planes, sponsored by U.S. anti-drug operations, poisoned his cacao plantation with chemicals meant for the nearby coca plantations.

Over the past four years, the government has brought a decline in paramilitary activity in Santa Rita through bloody military campaigns and hard-fought negotiations, and the region has become safer. Acósta now has a healthy cacao crop that he sells to a local cooperative for export, and he is looking to tourism as a way to bring more money to his community. Exactly how that should be done, and who should benefit, remain points of tension, however.

In addition to its potential benefits on local economies and rural development, the government sees ecotourism as one of the most promising employment opportunities for former FARC soldiers as they rejoin civilian life. “The guerrillas spent years in the jungle, getting to know the trails, the rivers, the wildlife all in order to better manage these areas for the war,” says Julián Guerrero, the vice president of tourism for ProColombia, an export-promoting arm of the Colombian government. “Now they can use that knowledge in service of peace.”

The FARC, too, has a vested interest in aiding rural development. Aside from its criminal activities, the guerilla force is a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist army. FARC leaders espouse the idea of fighting for the people and elevating the peasant class. The peace agreement gives the FARC a stake in politics and provides former guerrilla leaders with the opportunity to run for office and forward these ideals. The FARC’s ability to spur progress in the rural areas where it has influence is critical to the organization’s ability to gain political supporters.

Yet, while the government has grudgingly embraced the inclusion of the FARC and its allies in its development plans, there are many others who vehemently oppose the government’s support of FARC leaders, soldiers, or anyone, such as coca farmers, who benefited from the group’s decades of illegal activity. “The peace agreement leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” Acósta says. “The government wants to give money and opportunities to people who have lived outside the law when they should be helping us, the victims and the poor.”

Beyond government subsidiaries, there are other concerns over who will benefit from Colombia’s historic peace agreement. Many are worried that new investments and economic growth in the private sector will center primarily on large corporations and multinational companies. While ecotourism is often portrayed as a way to protect land from enterprises, tourism more generally may also bring its own share of big business. Since 2012, large U.S.-owned hotel chains like Best Western and Wyndham have expanded their Colombia operations, while many local businesses don’t have the capital upfront to build such sizeable structures.

“What’s still not clear is if people in poor communities that were affected by the conflict are going to benefit from this boom in tourism or if it will just be large hotel chains and travel agencies,” says Luis Fernando Castillo, the director of Calidris, Colombia’s largest organization dedicated to bird conservation and observation. “Specifically with birding and ecotourism, we need to realize that Colombia has some weaknesses, most notably a lack of specialized guides.”

In some areas, where conservation and tourism interests collide, NGOs have stepped in to help prop up new projects that address these needs. USAID has launched tourism trainings throughout Colombia in an effort to save critical ecosystems. The Audubon Society has developed a network of birding trails in different parts of the country, and helps birders find local guides and lodging. One such place to benefit from these efforts is Los Flamencos Wildlife Reserve, a collection of coastal lagoons and mangroves that provides critical bird habitat in the tropical dry forest and desert of the remote La Guajira Peninsula.