Colombia's NDC 3.0 (2025)

Food System Overview

Colombia faces several challenges within – and opportunities to transform – its food systems. In 2018, agriculture accounted for over 6% of Colombia's GDP and employed nearly 16.5% of the country's workforce. Additionally, the agriculture sector was responsible for 19% of Colombia's total exports, including products like coffee, flowers, and plantains. In Colombia, agriculture is mostly performed by smallholder farmers, even though as much as 81% of the land in the country is owned by a small minority. Colombia’s arable land area almost tripled between 2010 and 2023, potentially linked to the government’s efforts to promote the expansion of crops such as cocoa, beans, cassava and rice, as a means to reduce deforestation linked to conflicts over coca production. Colombia also faces a complex issue of ‘dual’ malnutrition, with both food insecurity and obesity prevalent in the country. Considering these complexities, transforming Colombia's food system to ensure food security, healthy diets, environmental sustainability is of the utmost importance.

NDC Development

The process revising and updating Colombia’s NDC 3.0 (2025) involved an extensive process of participatory consultation and dialogue with a range of stakeholder groups, which the country clearly describes in its NDC. The country coordinates its NDC update process using an institutionalized, ministry-led mechanism that enables continuity and regular follow-up on the country’s climate plans and targets. The sectoral mitigation potential of Colombia’s climate change measures – which includes assessing some food systems elements, like emissions from agricultural production and refrigeration – was calculated using assessment models developed through the Low Emissions Analysis Platform, an integrated, scenario-based modelling tool. Additionally, the development of Colombia’s NDC included efforts to capitalize on existing synergies between the climate strategy and other policy development processes. For instance, all measures in the country’s NDC are linked to corresponding Sustainable Development Goals to identify the co-benefits that span further than emission reductions on their own.

NDC 3.0 reaffirms this commitment and advances the full and effective inclusion of women in all their diversity—rural, Afro-Colombian, Indigenous, peasant, Raizal, Palenquera, and fishing women—as well as people with diverse sexual orientations, gender expressions, and identities, in decision-making processes related to climate change and biodiversity. It also seeks to strengthen equal access to resources, opportunities, and benefits derived from climate action.

Food System Measures

The content of Colombia’s NDC includes several measures related to food systems. Colombia's NDC 3.0 sets an ambitious goal to achieve climate resilience in food and agricultural production, supply, and distribution, while increasing sustainable and regenerative production and equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all. This comprehensive approach recognizes that transforming food systems is central to both climate mitigation and ensuring food security for the nation's diverse population. Additionally, Colombia’s NDC 3.0 includes a greater number of agri-food system related measures compared to the country’s previous submission. Colombia’s NDC aims to “increase sustainable and regenerative production,” including by interventions such as commercial forest plantations on degraded soils (1 million hectares by 2035), cocoa under agroforestry systems (190,000 hectares by 2035), and the AMTEC 2.0 model for rice cultivation (369,000 hectares by 2030). These measures promote sustainable and regenerative production practices that restore ecosystems while maintaining agricultural productivity.

NDC Implementation

Colombia's NDC considers several elements necessary for implementation and monitoring. The implementation process is described as involving the consolidation of information systems and databases; record-keeping of research, technological development, and innovation needed for implementation; and capacity-building, education, and awareness-raising to facilitate climate action. For instance, Colombia’s National Information System of Climate is responsible for the monitoring, reporting, and verification of the country’s mitigation measures, plus the monitoring and evaluation of adaptation measures.

Sources

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “9. Colombia” in “Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2020” (2020). Retrieved from: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/46b251d4-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/46b251d4-en.

Food and Land Use Coalition, “Colombia: Food and Land Use” (2020). Retrieved from: https://www.foodandlandusecoalition.org /wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Colombia-Food_and_Land_Use.pdf.

DANE, “Tercer Censo nacional Agropecuario. Tomo 2. Resultados. Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística, Bogotá” (2016). Retrieved from: https://www.dane.gov.co/files/images/foros/foro-de-entrega-de-resultados-y-cierre-3-censo-nacional-agropecuario/CNATomo2- Resultados.pdf.

DANE ,”Censo Nacional Agopecuario: 2014” (2014). Retrieved from: https://www.dane.gov.co/files/images/foros/foro-de-entrega-de-resultadosy- cierre-3-censo-nacional-agropecuario/CNATomo2-Resultados.pdf.

Food and Land Use Coalition, “Colombia: Food and Land Use” (2019). Retrieved from: https://www.foodandlandusecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Colombia-Food_and_Land_Use.pdf; Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020” (2020). Retrieved from: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org /sites/13e271bc-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/13e271bc-en.; Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Untapped opportunities for climate action: an assessment of food systems in Nationally Determined Contributions. n.p.: Global Alliance for the Future of Food, 2022.

Gobierno de Colombia. (2020, December). “Actualización de la Contribución Determinada a Nivel Nacional de Colombia (NDC).” Retrieved from: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2022-06/NDC%20actualizada%20de%20Colombia.pdf

Gobierno de Colombia. (2020, December). “Actualización de la Contribución Determinada a Nivel Nacional de Colombia (NDC).” Retrieved from: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2022-06/NDC%20actualizada%20de%20Colombia.pdf; Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Untapped opportunities for climate action: an assessment of food systems in Nationally Determined Contributions. n.p.: Global Alliance for the Future of Food, 2022.

E. M. Broad Lieb, et al., “Colombia Legal Guide – Food Donation Law and Policy” (2021). Retrieved from: https://www.foodbanking.org/wpcontent/ uploads/2021/01/Colombia-Legal-Guide.pdf.