The Potential of Colombia’s Zero Deforestation Agreements to Protect Forests and Bird Habitat

Keywords: conservation, tropical deforestation, bird diversity, cattle
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

By developing Zero Deforestation Agreements (ZDAs) for key forest risk industries, Colombia recently incorporated supply chain governance into its broader forest governance efforts. There are high expectations for these policies’ potential to curb deforestation, which surged in the wake of Colombia’s peace accord. Little is known about how much forest area these ZDAs currently influence, whether this area overlaps with recent deforestation, how much forest they could potentially influence, and how biologically significant those forests are. We define five spatially explicit scenarios for policy implementation, ranging from the current level of adoption to full adoption of the ZDAs throughout the beef and dairy sectors, to characterize the area and location of forests that these agreements could influence at the national scale. We produce the first map of supply chain infrastructure for these sectors in Colombia and delineate “supplysheds,” or the possible catchment area of supplying properties, based on distances that suppliers move animals or milk. These supplysheds and scenarios help identify which actors and segments of the sectors could influence the reach of the ZDAs, which forests are likely (or unlikely) to be influenced and what is needed for successful implementation. We utilize data on suitable habitat for birds to characterize the biological significance of the forests. The current reach of these policies is limited, covering 3% of forests and 19% of the habitat of endemic and threatened birds. With expanded uptake, the ZDAs could influence 39% of Colombia’s forests.