DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkm47
title: Data for: A policy mix approach to biodiversity governance in Colombia

description: We lack an understanding of how diverse policymakers interact to govern
 biodiversity. Taking Colombia as a focal case, we asked: (i) What is the
 composition of today’s policy mix?; (ii) How has the policy mix evolved
 over time?; (iii) How do policies differ among actors and ecosystems?; and
 (iv) Does the policy mix address the primary threats to biodiversity? We
 found 186 biodiversity-related policies that govern multiple ecosystems,
 use different instruments, and evolve as a mix to address the main threats
 to biodiversity (i.e., agriculture and aquaculture, biological resource
 use). We notice policy gaps in the governance of invasive species.
 Biodiversity policy integration into some sectoral policies, such as
 climate change and pollution, has become more common in the past decade.
 Our results point to an increased need for effective coordination across
 sectors and actors, as new ones become part of the policy mix.
description: We had personal communication
 with people working in public sector agencies, bi(multi)lateral
 development agencies, environmental NGOs, and private sector leaders who
 pointed us to master lists of policies that they issue or implement in
 their respective roles. For each actor we sampled policies as
 follows:  Public sector-We identified the following actors as leaders
 (i.e., agenda setters, funders, or policy initiators) of Colombian public
 policies: (a) central government, (b) subnational and regional
 governments, and (c) Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. The
 collective property rights of ethnic groups are protected in the Colombian
 constitution, granting them authority to lead or co-lead policies that
 govern their territories. Additionally, (d) municipalities (3rd
 administrative tier) issue their own plans and strategies for conservation
 planning. We only included the strategies issued by the top 4 largest
 municipalities (Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cali) as the innovators of
 urban sustainability policies that are mirrored by smaller
 cities49.  We used a snowball sampling approach, starting
 with a master list of the environmental policies listed on the Ministry of
 Environment website50.
 These included international treaties adopted by Colombia, laws, decrees,
 resolutions, and municipal planning strategies. We began with the
 country’s first comprehensive national environmental policy established in
 1959, and included
 policies introduced through 2020. We included biodiversity-specific
 policies, such as endangered species regulations, protected areas,
 payments for ecosystem services, and habitat banks, among
 others11. We also applied
 broader inclusion criteria to consider any public environmental policy
 with clear influence on biodiversity in all its forms. This included
 climate, pollution, and sectoral (e.g., agriculture, forestry, mining,
 oil, and gas) policies targeting terrestrial and coastal
 ecosystems. We excluded strictly marine policies, as they are
 often done in coordination with other countries.  As recurring policies are periodically
 superseded (e.g., the national development plan changes after each
 presidential election), we only included their most recent versions in our
 database. We only included policies led by the legislative and executive
 branches of government and excluded policies from the judicial branch,
 such as supreme court rulings, although admittedly several of them have
 important policy implications. Private sector and supply chain
 initiatives—For policies
 initiated and funded by private actors, we included those in the forestry,
 agriculture, energy and mining sectors, as these sectors are the main ones
 affecting biodiversity in Colombia52. We included certifications led by
 international corporations and non-profits that were mentioned in the
 state of sustainable markets report (2020) and in the state of
 sustainability initiatives review for the extractive
 economy53 that operate in
 Colombia. We included certifications that apply to individual commodities
 (e.g., C.A.F.E Starbucks for coffee), as well as those that certify
 multiple commodities (e.g., Rainforest Alliance). 
 The Colombian private sector
 is organized by “gremios empresariales”, which are clusters of businesses
 or trade associations that are formally regulated
 together54. The largest
 business cluster in the country is ANDI, which is a conglomerate of 1400
 businesses that represent 50% of the national GDP32. We coded the policies led by ANDI as clusters
 of projects implemented in key regions (e.g., Amazon, Caribbean, Andean).
 We excluded projects and initiatives led by individual companies. Although
 many companies have in-house, corporate sustainability strategies, we only
 included policies that were issued by multiple companies in the same
 sector, or by various sectors adopting the same sustainability
 standards. Bi(Multi)lateral development
 sector—To identify key
 development banks and cooperation agencies active in Colombia, we
 consulted a list of donors and projects (n=988) from Aid Atlas,
 representing US$56.6 billion in development finance sent to Colombia
 between 2002 and 2018, out of which $1.36 billion was specifically
 designated as biodiversity finance55. The largest donors were World Bank,
 Inter-American Development Bank, Agence Française de Développement
 (France), GIZ (Germany), USAID (USA), and the United Nations Global
 Environment Facility. We only considered financial strategies that were
 co-developed with the Colombian government, such as bank country
 strategies that determine investment priorities.
 Sampling
 bias: We were not able to
 estimate the proportion of policies sampled in our study, as there is no
 information about the total number of public, private, and multilateral
 policies that govern Colombia. Thus, our sampling bias is based on
 documents that are available online and that officials working on
 different agencies were able to identify. While our policy list is likely
 not complete, it is, to our knowledge the most comprehensive one. We were
 able to identify 126 more policies than the BIOFIN
 report56, which is the
 most recent assessment of Colombian biodiversity
 policies.
description: This includes the following files:
 Policy_mix_database.xlsx: A database in Excel format with the 186
 policies included in the study. Each row represents and individual policy,
 and columns are information about the unique policy ID (ranging from ID_1
 to ID_186), name of the policy, url links to the original policy, policy
 goals, years the policies were introduced, lead actors, scale of
 governance, among others. Policy_mix_DB.csv: A csv file
 of binary trait data. Each row represents a unique policy, with columns
 being the unique policy ID, and dummy variables for the eight axial codes
 in the study. Columns B-G refer to the biodiversity scale subcategories;
 Columns H-P refer to ecosystem subcategories; Columns Q-U refer to Policy
 instrument subcategories; Columns V-AA refer to conservation paradigm
 subcategories; Columns AB-AR refer to Policy theme subcategories; Columns
 AS-AW refer to governance scale subcategories; Columns AX-BC refer to lead
 actor subcategories; Column BD refers to the year when the policy became
 effective; Columns BE-BN refer to biodiversity threats
 sucategories.  Frequencies_BPD.csv: A csv file with the
 contingency table of dummy variables in the Policy_mix_DB.csv file and the
 count (number of policies) of policies for each variable.
 BPD_for_logistic_regression.csv: A csv file of the database in
 long format used for figures and files Sankey1.csv:
 Source data for the Figure 4 panel A Sankey2.csv:
 Source data for the Figure 4 panel B IPBES.csv: Source
 data for the Figure 4 panel C
 Echeverri_main_analysis_biodiversity_policy_mix: R script for all
 quantitative data analysis and for making figures 1,2,3 and all
 supplementary figures Echeverri_et_al_Figure4.jpynb:
 Script with Python code in a jupiter notebook for making Figure
 4