Bogotá – February 21, 2018 – In partnership with the Norwegian Embassy in Colombia, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MADS) of Colombia and the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 (TFA2020), GGGI co-hosted the first plenary meeting of the TFA2020 Alliance’s Colombian chapter with over 30 stakeholder institutions from the public and private sectors. This partnership platform was designed to share best practices and identify projects and initiatives to implement and accelerate the national commitments on zero-deforestation supply chains – particularly focusing on 4 major commodity sectors driving deforestation: palm oil, cattle, dairy and timber. The participants, including representatives of Unilever, the World Bank, Poligrow, Climate Focus, WWF, Fundación Natura, South Pole Group approved the governance structure and 2018 TFA2020 Action Plan in Colombia.

“This is a first stride of Colombia towards compliance to achieve net zero deforestation”, said Juhern Kim, Acting Country Representative of Colombia, at the event, “this is a significant step as the world will follow this practice, and GGGI feels privileged to be an important part of this coalition with the Government of Colombia, the Government of Norway, and TFA 2020.”

In Colombia, GGGI has been supporting the Ministry of Environment & Sustainable Development in the process of consolidating this public–private coalition, which directly supports the one of the key milestones prescribed in the Joint Declaration of Intent between the Government of Colombia, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom.