Minister of Environment Lena Estrada Añokazi acknowledged the gravity of the situation during the press conference, stating that the government’s efforts “are not sufficient because deforestation persists.” She highlighted the particular concern for the Colombian Amazon, citing its fragility and the vulnerability of its populations.

While the official data from the IDEAM’s Forest and Carbon Monitoring System (SMByC) reported the loss of 113,608 hectares, international platforms such as Global Forest Watch have cited a higher figure of 213,031 hectares for the same period. This significant discrepancy has prompted a defense of the government’s methodology.

Minister Estrada Añokazi addressed the disparity directly, emphasizing that the official data is based on a methodology specifically adapted to Colombian territories and ecological conditions. “The real figures for deforestation are these, the ones we are presenting today, and not from any other source with an external measurement,” she stated. “We must trust our Colombian work, our product, our institutions, and our teams that make an enormous effort to perfect this monitoring system,” she added.

Ederson Cabrera, the coordinator of the SMByC, explained that the difference stems from distinct definitions and methodologies. The SMByC’s system generates official data for Colombia by adhering to the country’s specific legal definitions of “forest” and “deforestation.” In contrast, international platforms monitor “tree cover loss,” a broader metric that includes the removal of trees outside natural forests, such as in urban areas or agricultural plots, which are not classified as deforestation under Colombian law.

“That is why the tree cover loss figures are often higher,” Cabrera explained. “They include all possible changes that occur in the planet’s forests. In contrast, our figures are more precise and restricted to the natural forests of Colombia.” He also noted that international platforms sometimes focus solely on “primary forest loss,” a measure that can yield lower figures than those from IDEAM, as the Colombian entity includes all types of natural forests in its assessment.

The 2024 report, based on satellite imagery, regional authority information, and quality control processes, identified several key drivers of deforestation. These include land grabbing for cattle ranching, unsustainable practices in extensive livestock farming, unplanned transportation infrastructure, illicit crop cultivation, illegal logging, illegal mining, and the expansion of the agricultural frontier into restricted zones.

The report also detailed deforestation within the country’s protected areas. The Parques Nacionales Naturales (National Natural Parks) experienced a loss of 10,127 hectares, concentrated primarily in the Amazonian parks of Tinigua (3,684 hectares), Sierra de la Macarena (3,361 hectares), and Serranía de Chiribiquete (2,102 hectares).

Despite the persistent challenge, the report indicates a cumulative reduction in deforestation of 39% between 2022 and 2024 compared to the 2021 baseline of 174,103 hectares. This result exceeds the National Development Plan’s goal of a 20% reduction. Furthermore, the country has recorded three consecutive years of a sustained downward trend in deforestation. The 2022-2024 period saw a cumulative deforestation figure of 316,381 hectares, a lower total than in preceding government terms.

IDEAM director Ghisliane Echeverry attributed these results to the “Comprehensive Deforestation Containment Plan,” which involves collaboration with communities, criminal investigations, institutional strengthening, and the deployment of public forces. The minister called for a broader societal commitment to preserving the Amazon’s ecosystems, stating, “I call on all of society to start forming committees for life.”

Rainforest on Colombia’s Pacific Coast of Chocó. Photo credit: Loren Moss.

In a public statement, the company stated that the reasons for this determination were “significant delays in granting the environmental permits and licenses by local entities.” The document added that the decision is also the “consequence of regulatory and fiscal changes that have occurred since the auction took place. Among them, the tax reform that impacted the profitability of the projects and the benefits of Law 1715, to promote renewable energies. Likewise, the macroeconomic context with increases in interest rates and the volatility of the exchange rate have made the process even more difficult.”

In addition to all these circumstances, Elodie San-Galli, president of EDF Renewables Colombia, said to the radio station Caracol Radio, that on September 29, the national government, through XM, the operator of the interconnected system and the administrator of the Colombian wholesale energy market, imposed a compliance clause (a fine) for about $1 million USD.

The executive claimed, in another interview with W Radio, that how could this happen if they have requested several times a meeting with President Gustavo Petro and Omar Andrés Camacho, minister of mines and energy, but they were not available to meet.

In the release, EDF Renewables claimed that on September 8 the Council of State, the highest judge of public administration in the Andean country, annulled the regulatory framework of the 2021 energy auction due to it being ruled unconstitutional. For this reason, as indicated in the corporate text, the Colombian government should not have executed the guarantees for the initiation of the project.

The international organization maintained that it was not its fault. “The greatest responsibility for the project not entering into operation is the non-granting of permits and licenses by the regional corporation [Autonomous Regional Corporation of Cundinamarca], which failed to comply with the deadlines established in Decree 1076 of 2015.”

The French company expected the licenses and permits by December 2021, but they were only granted in June of this year. 

EDF Renewables concludes the text with a diagnosis about Colombia’s energy future. It asserted that obstacles like these are what have caused “no wind or solar project in Colombia is currently in operation. This is not only a competitive disadvantage for the country compared to other nations in the region, but also presents a panorama of uncertainty in the face of the El Niño Phenomenon that is being experienced [throughout Colombia].”

The Colombian Government’s Response

Following the publication of the EDF Renewables statement, President Gustavo Petro, in typical fashion, replied on his Twitter account. “What did not allow access to the French company in the required times was because the autonomous corporation, which is not part of the government, did not issue licenses opportunely and was heavily fined by the XN.”

In turn, the National Environmental License Agency (ANLA) posted on its Twitter account that “following an announcement by the company @EDF_Renewables, we inform that the project subject to environmental licensing in Girardot Cundinamarca was not the responsibility of ANLA, but of CAR. The ANLA responds to requests with opportunity and transparency.”

Regarding the matter of delays in the granting of licenses and permits, Minister of the Environment Susana Muhamad defended, on September 28 and 29 in the Caribbean city of Cartagena during the National Mining Congress, that ANLA “complies with the stages of the procedure. In the ANLA, everything is systematized and digitalized and is publicly known on the ANLA website.” 

However, the minister anticipated that to improve these processes, she will present a bill to the Colombian congress that will help speed up the procedures. According to Muhamad, in the face of the energy transition that the current administration is committed to, “strengthening environmental standards is an economic priority for the country, although we simply cannot accelerate the procedures while harming environmental standards.”

The Ambitious Solar Project that Was Not

The planned Pubenza PSR 2 Solar Generation Plant project was going to have a capacity of 50 MW, according to Energiaestrategica.com. Respecting EDF Renewables, this French firm awarded 254,899.6 kWh/day of energy in the auction they won in 2021. It did so at the most competitive price of all the selected offers: $118.7 COP ($0.028 USD) per kWh. 

The foreign company, along with this now rejected project, also kept 429,999.7 kWh/day of energy that would come from Bosques Solares de los Llanos 6 (in Colombia’s eastern), of 79.6 MW, where it offered the same price: $118.7 COP ($0.028 USD) per kWh.

Since its proposal became known, the renewable energy project aroused a lot of interest among state authorities. The deputy Minister of Energy, Miguel Lotero Robledo, during a presentation before the House of Representatives on December 13, 2021, explained that Pubenza PSR 2 was going to “allow for an increase in installed capacity in generation for the region, much greater reliability and energy security for users, of course, and it will encourage the increase of renewable energy in the region.”

At that moment, the state official estimated that the project would be operational in January 2023.

(Photo credit: ANLA)

The team, accompanied by Colombian technicians, toured the project area including the dam, upstream of the reservoir area and downstream to Nechí. They also reviewed the state of the marshes, interviewed fishing communities in the area, and worked with the ANLA local technical assets.

The recommendations that the scientists offered to their Colombian counterparts highlighted the need for coordinated actions to improve the conditions of the Magdalena-Cauca basin. They also stressed the importance of management and planning for watersheds and micro-watersheds, with better definition of the protection buffers provided by river banks, and careful regulation of socio-economic activities.

The team also recommended developing investment plans to encourage the implementation of wastewater treatment in the municipalities along the river; improving the management of fisheries based on ecosystems and their dynamics. Additionally, they pointed out the importance of the entities attached to the National Environmental System (SINA) working in a coordinated and joint manner to ensure that the impact assessment integrates their contributions as well as those of local, regional and national entities with responsibilities in the project, and establish quantifiable objectives to ensure transparency and inclusion with communities. In addition, they mentioned – based on the American experience – the benefit of giving priority to the exclusive use of native species, taking into account the risk analysis with adaptive management in the restoration process.

It is worth mentioning that the experts met with the participants of the ANLA inter-institutional support board for the contingency of Hidroituango, made up of the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MADS), Corantioquia, the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Authority (AUNAP), the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute (IAvH), representatives of the Presidency of the Republic and the Ministry of Agriculture. In addition, they participated in an academic event at the Universidad Javieriana in Bogotá, where they talked about their experiences in the United States dealing with the application of public policies to care for the water of the Chesapeake Bay and the management of exotic species in Florida.

The goal of the initiative is to begin reversing the negative effects that logging and agricultural clear-cutting have had in more than 60 million hectares of the world’s largest jungle. Ongoing deforestation is a “major driver” of pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity loss, said the World Economic Forum in a statement, and the group’s efforts will push to halt those factors while promoting sustainable development.

“We are pleased to have a critical mass of companies and organizations joining these efforts.” – Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombian environmental minister

By 2020, the partnership is hoping to achieve “zero net deforestation” in the Colombian Amazon, and, by 2030, “to have stopped all natural forest loss,” according to the World Economic Forum.

Colombia has joined 14 other governments that have signed on as official Tropical Alliance 2020 partners, including Brazil, the United States, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

More recently, through a new domestic platform of public and private stakeholders, the country has launched the TFA 2020 Colombia Alliance. The first task in Colombia will be to tackle deforestation caused by the palm oil industry, which has come under fire in recent years in Colombia for harming the environment. In time, the efforts will extend to confront damage done by the timber, beef, and dairy sectors.

The alliance’s work will largely follow principles laid out in its “Commodities and Forests Agenda 2020,” which is supported by the partner governments and environmental groups such as World Wide Fund for Nature, Fondo Acción, and the Nature Conservancy. Several private companies operating in the country have also supported the efforts, including leading Colombian retailer Grupo Éxito, consumer goods giant Unilever, dairy firm Alqueria, and agricultural companies Poligrow and Yara International.

According to the World Economic Forum, Éxito was the first Colombian company to join the alliance in 2014. It has since worked to promote reforestation and sustainable agricultural development efforts within the Andean nation.

READ MORE: Exploration Projects in Colombia Face Uncertainty as Another Town Bans Mining

“We are pleased to have a critical mass of companies and organizations joining these efforts,” said Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development (MinAmbiente).

He highlighted recent governmental initiatives, including the “Palm Oil Zero Deforestation Agreement” and “National Forest and Carbon Monitoring System,” that have aligned with the goals of a Tropical Forest Alliance 2020. Such work “represents a key effort in bringing down international commitments to the Colombian context,” said the minister.

With around 1,900 different species of birds (the most of any country in the world), more than 50,000 species of plants, and many other forms of life, Colombia is the second most biodiverse nation after Brazil. In all, the medium-sized country is home to around 10% of the known species of plant and animal life on Earth.

Environmentalism has become increasingly common in the country over the past decade and advocates continue to clash with the private sector. A series of popular referendums have placed a prohibition on mining in various municipalities and more and more advocates are waging campaigns to protect cloud forest, páramo, and coastal ecosystems across Colombia.

Photo: The Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 is looking to stop deforestation in parts of the Amazon, such as this swath of jungle in the department of Vaupés near Mitú. (Credit: Jared Wade)