Boosting the adoption of sustainable land-use systems for achieving Colombian land-based climate action and peacebuilding goals

• Agroforestry cocoa boosts productivity, curbs deforestation and supports incomes, climate resilience and peacebuilding. • For SLUS adoption, policies must strengthen farmer associations via training, finance access, and market linkages. • Technical assistance, social organization, and farmer interactions boost adoption rates driving agroecological transitions. Sustainable land-use systems (SLUS), such as agroforestry cocoa, implemented using organic fertilization, prescribed post-harvest practices and rainwater irrigation, can potentially increase farm productivity, while reducing pressure on natural resources by decreasing deforestation, providing legitimate incomes for rural households and helping farmers to adapt to extreme weather events. SLUS also contributes to peacebuilding by providing sustainable income sources and enhancing social cohesion and contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation and reduce climate vulnerability. SLUS can contribute to agroecology transition through a cumulative process, boosting adoption rates and encouraging farmers to remain committed to a sustainable process. Despite evidence of their potential and global efforts to promote their use, SLUS adoption rates remain low. Building on traditional ex-post generic adoption studies, we identify the enabling factors for farm-level transitions to SLUS in Colombia to propose policy design that will boost SLUS adoption in areas that are conflict affected and exposed to deforestation. We surveyed a sample of 922 cocoa producers in conflict-affected areas prone to deforestation. To reveal SLUS adoption factors, we (i) classified farmers according to number of sustainable practices applied; (ii) estimated an ordered probit econometric model; and (iii) assessed existing policies to promote cocoa production systems in Colombia, comparing their alignment with the adoption factors identified. We find a mismatch between farm-level adoption factors and policies promoting SLUS in Colombia. The principal factors enabling farm-level adoption of sustainable cocoa production system depend on: (i) cocoa plantation age; (ii) technical assistance provided; (iii) social organization membership; and (iv) farmer-to-farmer interaction, while national policies to promote sustainable cocoa are mostly oriented towards (i) renewing and rehabilitating established farming areas (directly related to crop age); (ii) expanding cocoa agroforestry systems; and (iii) establishing zero-deforestation cocoa production agreements. Our results indicate that to achieve wide-scale SLUS adoption, policies should focus on: (i) capacity building through technical assistance and strengthening farmers’ associations; (ii) strengthening farmer’s social organizations, social interactions, and knowledge sharing between producers to generate cascading information (iii) land-use conversion instead of expansion, for example from pastures to cocoa.