The Colombian government, with the support of Norway, hopes to expand the Visión Amazonía program and thereby combat deforestation affecting several regions of the country, official sources reported.

“We want not only to have the Amazon Vision program, but to scale it up to Vision Colombia, as we have other regions affected by deforestation where Norwegian support is essential,” said the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Carlos Correa, during a virtual meeting with his Norwegian counterpart, Sveinung Rotevatn.

The Visión Amazonía program is a Colombian government initiative with financial support from Norway, the United Kingdom and Germany to reduce emissions from deforestation in the Colombian Amazon through a sustainable development model.

According to Minister Correa, the objective is to create a macro program to combat deforestation and promote a sustainable forestry development model, taking advantage of the knowledge acquired in Visión Amazonía in recent years.

“We have had great approaches with the Government of Norway for the protection of our forests. We will receive technical support from this country to stop deforestation and build a roadmap to test the ART-Trees Standard in Colombia,” he said.

Minister Rotevatn said that Colombia’s contribution and support to address deforestation in Colombia depends on the country’s good results in this regard.

“I look forward to Norway’s continued cooperation with Colombia to achieve the goal of the nationally determined contribution of greenhouse gas reduction, mitigation and adaptation to climate change,” said Rotevatn, according to Colombia’s Ministry of Environment.

Forest protection

He also highlighted Colombia’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030 , which was announced by President Iván Duque on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.

During the meeting, Correa informed that Colombia is investing to increase the technical and human capacities of the Forest Monitoring System, which will allow faster decisions to be made at different points of deforestation in the country.

He also highlighted the announcement of the National Council of Economic and Social Policy (Conpes) that approved the national policy for the control of deforestation and sustainable forest management.

“This is an important milestone in our country, which gives us tools to be able to continue in the fight against deforestation, especially with more elements for sustainable development,” said Correa.

Finally, the minister thanked Norway for its contribution to the development of the Biodiversity PreCOP to be held in Cali, capital of the Colombian department of Valle del Cauca (southwest), probably in May of this year.