Colombia has adopted a national law that requires its beef and dairy supply chains to show that their products are not tied to recent deforestation. Ley 2585 de 2026, enacted on 4 June, sets out instruments for what the text calls a sustainable, deforestation-free livestock supply chain, and connects agricultural traceability with forest monitoring, land registration and property records.

Technical work led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, under the CGIAR Climate Action programme, fed into three of the law's provisions. The Alliance runs the technical secretariats of Colombia's Zero Deforestation Agreements for meat and for milk, and has worked for years on the traceability systems the law now leans on.

Article 7 gives those agreements a formal role. They bring together public agencies, companies, producer organisations and others working to cut deforestation, and under the law they become consultation bodies that help develop good practice and implementation measures. During public hearings on the bill and in meetings with the members of parliament responsible for it, the secretariats argued for exactly this — that the agreements be recognised in law rather than left as a voluntary arrangement — and coordinated the drafting with the organisations involved.

Article 8 deals with the Colombian environmental label for cattle and buffalo production, NTC 6550:2021. The law requires that standard to support national zero-deforestation policy and to be connected to animal traceability data, forest monitoring, cadastral records and property registration. The Alliance convened the technical working groups that put zero-deforestation criteria into the label. How well it works will depend on how the standard is updated and applied in practice.

Article 12 obliges the government to create financing routes for the information systems and monitoring needed in areas where deforestation is active, and allows money from the Fondo para la Vida y la Biodiversidad to pay for it. Alongside the legislative process, CIAT has worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the National Planning Department to standardise Proyectos Tipo — model projects a municipality can adapt when applying for public funds.

"The CIAT Biodiversity Alliance has been supporting the Ministry of Agriculture in standardising projects for the implementation of sustainable livestock traceability models and deforestation monitoring; this will enable access to public funding in municipalities that are hotspots for deforestation," the Ministry of Agriculture said.

The law is a policy outcome rather than a finished system. Ministries must now write regulations, update standards, connect the information systems to each other and help producers meet the requirements. The Alliance's next task is to help local authorities use the standardised traceability projects once they are approved.

Source: CGIAR