Policy paper

Colombia-UK Partnership for Sustainable Growth

How the UK and Colombia work together towards greater climate ambition and action.

Documents

Brochure: how do the UK and Colombia work together? (PDF)

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alt.formats@beis.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

The Colombia-UK Partnership for Sustainable Growth is an agreement signed in 2019 which commits the United Kingdom and Colombia to work together towards greater climate ambition and action, and to strengthen our efforts to deliver on the Paris Agreement. It aims to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen efforts on resilience, to secure low-carbon development and foster sustainable growth.

The Partnership for Sustainable Growth forms part of the UK’s efforts to support international climate action and to build capability in partner governments to help meet their climate commitments. This bilateral work helps to understand and define priorities, design demand-led programmes, share knowledge and experiences, and promote scientific and technical collaboration.

The Partnership for Sustainable Growth focuses on the following areas of collaboration:

  • halting and reversing deforestation and tackling environmental crime
  • supporting a visionary energy transition: scaling up non-conventional renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable mobility
  • understanding, valuing and promoting biodiversity
  • promoting Green Finance and sustainable infrastructure
  • strengthening monitoring, reporting and verification systems for climate change
  • delivering environmental education

Our Partnership is underpinned by UK International Climate Finance and other Official Development Assistance (ODA) , which supports Colombia in addressing priorities in the different areas of collaboration.

What has the Partnership for Sustainable Growth helped to achieve?

Our collaboration with Colombia is already having an impact on emission reduction and sustainable growth. Key achievements include:

  • designing and launching TEFOS (“Territorios Forestales Sostenibles”), an innovative £64m programme the first programme of its kind in Colombia, which will help to tackle deforestation and build sustainable livelihoods in conflict-affected areas
  • promoting renewable energy in Colombia through technical assistance to the country’s first renewable energy auction, which will increase solar and wind capacity from less than 1% of Colombia’s energy mix in 2018 to 12% by 2022
  • supporting the capital city Bogotá to become one of the most ambitious cities in Latin America on electric mobility, with 1485 electric buses, through technical assistance to the tender process
  • collaborating with the Humboldt Institute and Kew Gardens to increase understanding of Colombian biodiversity and support new bioeconomy opportunities
  • supporting sustainable alternative livelihoods which help to reduce deforestation, for example, building capacity for 24,000 cattle ranchers to adopt more sustainable practices and establishing 38,000 hectares of silvo-pastoral farms in Colombia
Published 29 July 2021