Colombia’s second BTR offers lessons for strengthening climate transparency

Colombia submitted its second Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) on 7 August, well ahead of the 31 December 2026 deadline. For the team behind the report, however, being first is less important than what made it possible: building on the experience of the country’s first BTR, strengthening institutional processes and using international cooperation to continuously improve the quality and timeliness of climate information.

“First of all, we feel a sense of collective pride and achievement, a deep satisfaction for the effort made by the technical teams of IDEAM, the Ministry of Environment, the National Planning Department, and the multiple institutions we have coordinated for this process,” says Leonardo Pineda, Coordinator of the Global Change Group at Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), and General Coordinator of the country’s second BTR and Fourth National Communication on Climate Change.

From reporting requirement to national climate information system

BTRs are a core part of the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) of the Paris Agreement. Every two years, countries report information including their greenhouse gas emissions and removals, progress towards their NDCs, policies and measures, adaptation action, and climate finance, technology and capacity-building support. The reports are then subject to technical expert review and facilitative, multilateral consideration of progress.

But their value extends beyond meeting an international reporting requirement. The information generated through the ETF provides countries with a stronger evidence base for climate policymaking, helps identify gaps and investment needs, and supports tracking progress towards national climate commitments. At the global level, BTRs also contribute to understanding collective progress under the Paris Agreement.

Colombia’s experience illustrates how this can work in practice.

Methodologies useful beyond reporting

Rather than treating the second BTR as a stand-alone report, the country built on processes developed for its first submission and sought to embed the requirements of the ETF into its national systems. According to Pineda, this included linking the reporting requirements to Colombia’s National Climate Change Information System and establishing processes for mitigation, adaptation and climate finance.

The result is a set of systems and methodologies intended to remain useful beyond the production of a single report. These include strengthening the national greenhouse gas inventory system, disaggregating inventory information at municipal level to support local action, updating information on criteria pollutants and black carbon, developing methodologies to assess NDC targets and policies, and establishing national approaches for tracking climate finance.

For Pineda, institutionalization is critical. The objective is to ensure that improvements become part of the regular work of national institutions rather than remaining isolated outputs from individual projects or consultancies.

Learning between reporting cycles

Colombia’s approach also demonstrates the value of using one reporting cycle to prepare for the next.

Following the country’s first BTR, the team assessed gaps identified through the report’s improvement plan and began addressing them before the formal results of the technical expert review of the first BTR were available. The review itself took place in October 2025, with the final report published in April 2026.

The findings were then cross-referenced with the formal technical expert review, allowing the Colombian team to identify where work had already progressed and where further improvements would need to be carried into the third BTR.

This iterative approach is consistent with the purpose of the ETF: transparency is not a one-off exercise, but a cycle of reporting, review, learning and improvement.

The Capacity-Building Initiative for Transparency – Global Support Programme (CBIT-GSP), funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by UNEP, and executed by the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre supported Colombia with peer learning, technical exchanges and peer review of climate transparency work, including the national greenhouse gas inventory, helping strengthen the country’s capacity to prepare and continuously improve its BTRs.

The country’s efforts were also supported by two other complementing GEF funded initiatives: The project for the preparation of the 1BTR and the 2BTR/4NC, and the CBIT project “Climate Transparency Colombia” with UNDP as the implementing agency and Fundación Natura as the executing partner.

Colombia has also participated actively in the CBIT-GSP network, including hosting a regional training on national inventory reporting under the ETF in Bogotá in 2024. The training brought together experts from across Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen the technical preparation of national inventory reports and BTRs.

Pineda points in particular to the value of learning from other countries. Through CBIT-GSP, Colombia has exchanged experiences with countries including Chile and Panama and has been able to engage directly with experts to address technical challenges.

“CBIT-GSP’s support is key to continuously improving the understanding of the MPG and also to exchanging experiences with different countries,” he says. “We have learned from Chile, Panama, and other countries in the region that, thanks to the facilitation provided by CBIT-GSP, we have been able to evolve our own tools and have direct contact with experts to solve underlying problems.”

Building transparency through coordination

Another lesson from Colombia’s experience is that producing a BTR is fundamentally a coordination exercise.

The country’s second BTR was supported through a combination of GEF funding, national resources and cooperation from partners including GIZ and SIAT. Rather than treating these as separate streams of work, the Colombian team sought to coordinate outputs across projects and institutions.

This is particularly important because climate information is generated across different sectors and institutions, each with their own mandates, objectives and sources of funding. Bringing these processes together can help turn separate technical outputs into coherent national information.

The approach has also helped strengthen the link between transparency and decision-making. Colombia’s second BTR is intended not simply to be submitted internationally, but to be used domestically – including in the formulation of the country’s new National Development Plan and in decisions on mitigation, adaptation and climate empowerment.

This reflects the broader role of the ETF. Transparency systems can strengthen national climate policies and provide information relevant to decision-making, climate finance and further implementation of countries’ climate commitments.

For Colombia, the next challenge is therefore already underway. With the second BTR submitted, the country is turning its attention to the third, while continuing to improve the systems and institutional arrangements that underpin its climate information.

The lesson is not that a country’s transparency system needs to be perfect before it can produce a BTR. Rather, Colombia’s experience suggests that progress comes from treating each reporting cycle as another step in building lasting capacity.

“But the key lies in strengthening teamwork, institutionalizing processes, and seeing previous reports as learning stepping stones. Not expecting everything to be perfect, trusting in the technical rigor of the different teams, taking advantage of all the support from international cooperation in the different initiatives that exist, and, above all, taking the first step.”