Why legality is important in fighting deforestation in the Amazon

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing number of commitments to curb deforestation in tropical areas, with highly variable results depending on the region. Based on a case study in the Colombian Amazon, we show that making a distinction between legal and illegal deforestation, which most deforestation monitoring systems overlook, is essential and that it is crucial to involve different levels of governance when implementing zero-deforestation commitments.