By Oliver Griffin
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s government is looking to cut deforestation to 140,000 hectares (345,947 acres) a year by 2026, despite international agreements eyeing greater reductions, due to an uptick in the clearing of trees towards the end of the previous government’s term last year, the environment ministry said.
Last week, Colombia’s government, which took control in August, proposed a four-year, nearly $250 billion development plan which lays out projected spending on social programs, clean energy and myriad other areas.
That plan includes cutting deforestation by 20% to 140,000 hectares a year, from 174,103 hectares in 2021, by the end of leftist President Gustavo Petro’s four-year term, which ends in 2026.
However, the goal published in the development plan is less ambitious than targets published in a joint pledge on the environment which Colombia signed with Germany, Norway and Britain in 2019, which targets reducing deforestation to 100,000 hectares or less a year by 2025.
The government’s development plan’s deforestation-reduction target is predicated on the government inheriting a baseline of 174,103 hectares of forest torn down in 2021, while deforestation in the first half of 2022 was 15% higher than in the year-earlier period, the environment ministry told Reuters in a statement late Monday.
No government figures have yet been published for total deforestation in 2022.
“A 20% reduction in real deforestation is contemplated in this four-year period, so that at least the value of 140,000 hectares per year is reached by 2026,” the ministry said, adding it would work to reduce this number further.
The three European countries declined to comment but sources in embassies said officials were seeking clarification.
The government also looks to restore 1.7 million hectares of degraded or damaged forest, three times greater than achieved by the previous government, the environment ministry said.
That agreement with the three European countries lays out total potential funding worth $366 million for Colombia on completion of certain milestones, including targets to cut deforestation to 155,000 hectares a year by 2022 and 100,000 hectares by 2025.
It was unclear to what extent funding would be affected and from which countries.
Colombia’s goal of cutting deforestation by 20% over the current government “is a step in that direction,” the statement said, adding that taking deforestation to below 155,000 hectares a year “could activate a flow of finance based on these results.”
The statement did not comment on potential funding for reducing deforestation to 100,000 hectares a year or lower.
Colombia’s latest deforestation target is equivalent to reducing the size of deforested areas to 50,000 hectares a year by 2030, the environment ministry said, in line with the country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, published in 2020.
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
