A Green Transition for Whom? Colombia and the European Green Deal

The implementation of the European Green Deal is one of the most ambitious climate policies globally. However, it is reshaping the rules of access to one of the most important markets for Colombian food exports. The European Union Regulation on deforestation free products (EUDR), is not a minor technical detail. It is a new frontier of environmental governance that demands traceability, georeferencing, and verified deforestation free production for commodities such as coffee and cocoa. 

What is worrying is that this debate is often reduced to a narrow question: are producers ready to comply? A more useful question is different: are public institutions, together with industry and cooperation partners, ready to create the enabling conditions for compliance, so that traceability and verification requirements do not unintentionally widen existing gaps, overburden smallholders, or place the full cost of transition on those with the least capacity to absorb it?

Challenges of institutional capacity

The EUDR raises the standard of information required in trade. Producing well is no longer enough. Producers must demonstrate, with verifiable data, that production is not linked to deforestation and that origin can be traced with precision. This requires concrete capacities such as a functional cadastre, reliable plot level information, interoperable systems, traceability platforms, technical staff in rural areas, and agile channels for certification.

Here the first crack appears. Colombia has made progress, but it also suffers from persistent institutional fragmentation. Responsibilities are spread across environmental agencies, agricultural authorities, land institutions, trade bodies, subnational governments, and private actors, without a single architecture for coordination and monitoring. In practice, this dispersion translates into bottlenecks. Examples of this are incomplete records, high transaction costs, duplicated procedures, and limited technical presence where it is most needed.

In this context traceability becomes an administrative barrier, not because the producer deforests, but because the state cannot provide the information infrastructure and services needed. And when that happens, markets often do not wait. They replace suppliers, reconfigure purchases, and can potentially leave behind those who cannot produce the paperwork of compliance.

Tensions between sustainability targets and social inclusion

On paper, the EUDR pursues the legitimate objective of reducing pressure on forests and biodiversity and thereby contributing to climate mitigation. The problem arises when that ambition is applied through a one size fits all logic that fails to recognize productive trajectories and historical inequalities.

Colombia is a country where rural life combines informal land tenure, conflict, poverty, and technology. In many coffee and cocoa regions, small and medium producers operate with tight margins and limited access to credit, extension services, and connectivity. If compliance is defined as a costly and complex package of requirements, sustainability competes directly with inclusion. Those who cannot pay for certification, hire georeferencing services, or navigate digital platforms might be pushed aside.

The major policy question is whether Colombia will be able to undertake this transition without creating more space for inequality or whether it will negotiate and build a sustainability pathway compatible with rural development, with territorial differentiation, gradual implementation, and public support.

Challenges of exclusion for those unable to adapt

Those who cannot adapt rapidly are at risk of being excluded from the European market. This would mean lower demand, falling incomes, loss of contracts, greater dependence on intermediaries, and a shift of value toward larger actors who can comply and document compliance.

The inequality risk multiplies in coffee and cocoa value chains because supply is highly fragmented and much of the value is captured outside the farm gate. If a new market access condition based on digital evidence and certification is added, the balance tilts even further. In other words, the EUDR may end up reinforcing concentration, not by intention, but through capacity asymmetries.

There is also a territorial effect. Areas with weaker institutions, more informality, and deeper conflict related wounds are precisely where support is hardest to deliver. If compliance does not reach those areas in time, the outcome could be a new map of peripheries expelled from formal trade.

Will climate action policies open space for new inequalities, or will we build a transition where protecting forests also strengthens rural livelihoods, territorial development, and long term resilience? The EUDR and the broader European Green Deal aim to reduce biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions through stronger due diligence and traceability requirements. But if implementation does not account for local capacities and structural gaps, especially for small and medium producers, the benefits of climate action may be distributed unevenly, and compliance could become a new line of separation inside value chains.

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Dr. Felipe Roa-Clavijo is an Assistant Professor at the School of Government of Universidad de Los Andes and an Associate Researcher at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in International Development from the University of Oxford, a Master in Public Administration from Seattle University, and a degree in Ecology from Universidad Javeriana. His research focuses on the politics of food and agriculture, examining debates around food provisioning from the perspectives of agrarian movements, the state, consumers, and the food industry. To see more of his work, check out Felipe's website here.

The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of the EULAS Network.