Colombia Launches Biodiversity Credit Programme While Its Own Gas Crisis Deepens

Colombia Launches Biodiversity Credit Programme While Its Own Gas Crisis Deepens Bogota bets on nature finance as the Hormuz closure chokes LNG supply to a country already facing severe energy shortfalls. Colombia has launched a programme to foster nature resilience through biodiversity credits and innovative finance, entering a market that Carbon Pulse described as the closest ecosystem service to commercial viability. The initiative positions the Andean country as a test case for whether biodiversity-linked financial instruments can attract private capital at scale — and whether they can do so fast enough to matter for a nation simultaneously grappling with an acute energy crisis.^7,6 The timing is brutal. Colombia is facing a severe energy crisis as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz after US strikes on Iran has constrained global natural gas supply, OilPrice.com reported. The country was already experiencing a massive supply shortfall before the geopolitical shock. The Hormuz disruption could not come at a worse time for a nation where gas plays a central role in both power generation and industrial use.⁵ The biodiversity credit market sits at an early stage of development, but it is attracting serious corporate interest. Biodiversity credits could become the future of carbon markets, an executive told Carbon Pulse, suggesting that the instruments may eventually trade alongside or be integrated with existing carbon credit mechanisms. The logic is that measurable biodiversity outcomes — species counts, habitat restoration, ecosystem service provision — can be monetised in the same way that verified emissions reductions are.⁶ Colombia's programme builds on a broader Latin American push toward nature-based finance. The Kinetic Coalition, a global alliance of more than 20 major companies including Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Mastercard, and PepsiCo, is backing the early retirement of coal-fired power plants through energy transition credits. The coalition already explores pilots in the Dominican Republic, Chile, and the Philippines. In the Philippines, where coal still powers close to 60% of the grid, the coalition plans to support the early retirement of a major coal-fired plant. Research showed that winding down a 1 GW plant five years early would require about $310 million, with one pilot aiming to avoid up to 19 million tonnes of CO2.³ The institutional architecture needed to make these markets function at scale does not yet exist. A net-zero world needs new markets and institutions, The Economist argued, noting that existing financial systems were not designed to price ecosystem services or channel capital toward nature preservation at the speed the climate crisis demands.² The quality problem is real. Voluntary commitments to boost forests have sometimes produced poor-quality commercial plantations rather than genuine biodiversity gains. A study found that 45% of commitments made under the Bonn Challenge, a voluntary NGO-led initiative, involved planting plantations rather than restoring diverse ecosystems. Colombia's programme will be judged by whether its biodiversity credits represent measurable ecological outcomes or become another vehicle for greenwashing.⁴ For energy traders, Colombia's dual position — launching nature finance while its gas system is in crisis — creates a specific tension. The biodiversity programme assumes a medium-term transition timeline. The gas crisis demands immediate solutions. European thermal coal imports are set to reach a five-month high in April, with deliveries rising 25% month-on-month and 10% year-on-year to 2.27 million tonnes, Kpler vessel-tracking data showed, as utilities stock up against further gas price spikes linked to the Middle East war. Colombia's energy mix faces the same pressure: when gas is scarce and expensive, coal fills the gap regardless of nature finance ambitions.¹ The unresolved question is whether Colombia's biodiversity credit programme can attract enough capital to influence the country's energy trajectory, or whether it becomes a parallel track that runs alongside continued fossil fuel dependence without changing it. The next signal is whether international buyers — the same corporations backing the Kinetic Coalition's coal retirement pilots — commit to purchasing Colombian biodiversity credits at prices that make the programme financially self-sustaining. Without that demand signal, the credits remain a policy aspiration rather than a market instrument.