Colombia has made halting deforestation and restoring nearly one million hectares of forested ecosystems a pillar of its plan to cut emissions 51% from a business-as-usual baseline by 2030. The new and tougher target announced at the end of 2020 and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic is a significant hike from Colombia’s previous 20% target. It was set following extensive intra-governmental and public consultation and aims to establish carbon budgets from 2023 and put the country on a path to carbon neutrality by 2050. Data from Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (Ideam), which monitors deforestation in the country, shows deforestation soared to its highest level in 2017 with 219,552 hectares of forest cleared – up from just under 124,000 in 2015.
By 2019 deforestation levels had dropped to less than 160,000 hectares of land cleared that year. But 2020 goals were missed, as forest clearance nearly doubled in the first three months of the year compared with the same period in 2019. To save carbon-rich forests and create jobs to reboot the economy from the pandemic, Colombia is working to provide alternative livelihoods for people who live in and around forests. In its submission of its climate plan to the UN, measures to tackle deforestation account for a third of Colombia’s efforts to meet its 2030 goal. Together with ecosystems restoration, actions related to nature represent more than half of the country’s carbon-cutting effort. Additional emissions reductions from reduced deforestation could be sold as credits under the carbon market mechanism established by the Paris Agreement and help to finance other carbon-cutting measures, the plan states. In recent years, Norway, Germany and the UK have been supporting Colombia’s efforts to end deforestation through a payment-by-results scheme, under which it received $85 million since 2015. The partnership was renewed in 2019 with a commitment from European countries for an additional $366m to be paid by 2025 for achieving deforestation reduction targets and to implement policies.