Collective action pays dividends in the fight to reduce commodity-driven deforestation

As tens of thousands of leaders gather in Colombia for COP16 – to transform words into action on biodiversity – it is a good time to reflect on collective efforts in Latin America, where the agricultural transition is at the heart of countries meeting their nature and climate goals.

Agricultural commodity production underpins global food security; it forms the bedrock of many producing country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product); and it provides livelihoods for billions of people around the world. But it is also one of the main drivers of deforestation and ecosystem conversion.

While the destruction of rainforests in the Amazon has long attracted the world’s attention, other highly significant biomes in South America, such as the Cerrado and Gran Chaco, face equally grave threats from agricultural commodity production. Consequently, sustainable value chains in these countries have become an urgent necessity to combat biodiversity loss and climate change – both regionally and globally. Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) has this week launched a new ‘situational report’ – Coalitions for Sustainable Production – that provides an overview of the lessons learned from collective action in Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, and Peru. It is work that has been driven by a combination of government momentum, private sector engagement, and civil society leadership.

The main purpose of the report is to demonstrate how the production of agricultural commodities is being transformed in these key countries. Despite facing challenges, all four countries have made significant progress, and they have done so by establishing multisectoral coalitions and using jurisdictional approaches to ensure sustainable commodity production.

Highlights include the following:

• Colombia – with its ground-breaking Palm Oil Agreement signed in 2017 and supported by TFA Colombia acting as a national umbrella coalition – has demonstrated how the private sector can lead sustainability efforts, particularly in markets where global reputation and consumer pressure play a decisive role. The government has also signed additional agreements with producers and value chain actors, which together have proven to be significant, with rates of deforestation in the country falling from more than 219,000 hectares in 2017 to 79,000 in 2023.
• Peru has also developed or launched several agreements, such as the Cacao, Forests, and Biodiversity Agreement in 2021, which reflects a jurisdictional approach aimed at creating low-deforestation-risk territories and promoting responsible production in the Peruvian Amazon. TFA helped to convene public, private, and civil society signatories for several further zero-deforestation agreements in Peru.
• In Argentina, the creation of the VISEC (Sectoral Vision of the Argentine Gran Chaco) initiative in 2019 demonstrates a strong commitment from the private sector to develop a traceability tool that complies with the EUDR – a platform that is now being extended into Paraguay. VISEC emerged from a private sector-driven effort to enhance the traceability of soy supply chains, and since then, TFA has worked to enhance VISEC’s capabilities as well as the platform's expansion into deforestation-free beef supply chains from 2023.

TFA has played a key role in supporting these multisectoral coalitions and jurisdictional approaches in the Latin America region during its decade on the ground. This work will now be consolidated and led by in-country partners such as CIARA-CEC , The Nature Conservancy , Solidaridad Network , WWF , Organización Alisos , Fondo para la Accion Ambiental y la Niñez , and others, with TFA’s support happening at the global level.

The great work in Latin America has shown that collective action pays dividends and can drive the global transition towards deforestation-free supply chains, which is critical for meeting nature and climate goals.