Improving sustainable forest management in Colombia’s Amazon region

Context

With its high biodiversity and species diversity, Colombia is one of the world’s 17 ‘megadiverse’ countries. Forests cover over 60 hectares of the country, but these forest areas were inaccessible for many years due to internal armed conflict.

Following signature of the peace agreement in 2016 and withdrawal of the armed groups, forest areas became accessible again and were therefore vulnerable to uncontrolled deforestation.

Objective

Sustainable forest management has improved in selected regions of Colombia. Forest-based value chains have been expanded and the implementation of interministerial policy provisions and regulations is supported.

Approach

Together with the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and the regional environmental authorities, the project works to reduce deforestation by promoting climate-friendly forest management in the Amazon region.

To this end, the project operates in the following fields of activity:

• It trains small and medium-sized enterprises as well as producer associations so that they can gain access to sales markets by means of new products and improved production processes. In addition, it sets forth the economic interest in conserving forests in the long term.
• It works together with the regional ‘round tables’ on forest-policy topics in Meta and Caquetá. The project improves the ability of political, private sector and civil society representatives to take action so that they can jointly coordinate and implement regional and local measures.
• It develops alternative funding options for climate-friendly forest management measures and for the value chain for timber and non-timber products from the natural forest.
• It improves the sharing and dissemination of knowledge via the ‘ExpoBosques’ platform, which reports on successful examples of climate-friendly forest management in Colombia.

Last update: August 2023