As of 2019, 15.8 percent of the population is employed by the agriculture sectors, being especially threatened by climate induced weather events, such as La Niña, whose characteristics are strong periods of drought followed by intense rain. Agriculture in Colombia is indeed vulnerable to soil aridity, erosion, and desertification, all of which already pose serious threats and are expected to increase with climate change, according to the  World Bank Knowledge Portal. According to its updated nationally determined contribution (NDC) in 2020, Colombia represents only 0.4 percent of global emissions with 71.3 percent of domestic greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture and land use.

Colombia was part of the IKI-funded  NAP-Ag programme from 2015 to 2020, which facilitated the design of the Integral Management Plan of Climate Change for the Agricultural Sectors (PIGCCS), and its Action Plan (2019), which represents the national landmark for sectoral climate change planning. It addresses adaptation and mitigation articulately and converges with the broader national and territorial commitments on the stabilization and consolidation of affected areas by the armed conflict and the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Beforehand, the country adopted its NAP in 2012, " Plan Nacional de Adaptación al Cambio Climático (PNACC)”, and a roadmap for its elaboration in 2013, “ Hoja de ruta para la elaboración de los planes de adaptación dentro del PNACC”. In 2020, under the adaptation planning funded by Green Climate Fund, the country elaborated a series of  Strategies to strengthen the business sector in climate risk management to maintain competitiveness. 

In line with the NDC priorities, the SCALA programme and Colombia will prepare for the implementation of adaptation actions in five agricultural sub-sectors: rice, corn, meat and milk, sugar cane and cocoa. This includes field and practical work with communities, unions, institutions, and territorial entities in the three regions of the country with the most significant agricultural potential. Specific activities include capacity-building for institutional actors of the Andina Centre, participatory characterization of climate change impacts on sustainable agro-food systems, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and Evaluation of Damage and Loss tools.