Considered one of the countries with the richest biodiversity in the world, Colombia wants to take the lead in the international community in trying to save the planet, on the occasion of COP16 that Bogota is organizing this fall despite security challenges.
The UN’s main biodiversity conference will be held from October 21 to 1er November in Cali, in the southwest of the country. It will have to measure progress towards the ambitious objective, set by COP15 in Montreal in December 2022, of placing under environmental protection “by 2030 at least 30%” of the surface of the oceans and land, Colombian Minister of the Environment Susana Muhamad stressed to AFP.
“We have built a platform to put biodiversity at the top of global political agendas,” she said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s high-level week, which brings together dozens of world leaders in New York.
“If all goes well, COP16 will also be able to help the international community in view of the debates of COP29 (29e “UN Climate Change Conference” to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22,” Mr.me Muhamad.
More than 100 ministers and 12 heads of state, including Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, are expected to attend Cali.
“Latin American Time”
“As a country rich in biodiversity, there is potential for the region. Latin America’s time has come,” said the Colombian minister.
It is true, according to experts, that Colombia can boast an exceptional diversity of species and ecosystems, from the Andes to the Amazon: birds, plants, orchids, butterflies, freshwater fish and amphibians.
But Mme Muhamad acknowledges that his country is not out of the woods yet, particularly because of deforestation for coca production and cocaine trafficking to the United States.
A production that has jumped since the peace agreement signed in 2016 by the Marxist guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) which transformed the guerrillas into illegal farmers.
Guerrilla Threat
But one of the main FARC dissident factions, the Central General Staff (EMC), rejected the peace agreement eight years ago and threatened this summer to “fail” COP16.
However, the 1er August, this dissident group declared a truce in its “offensives” during the UN conference which is expecting nearly 12,000 visitors, exhibitors and diplomats from 90 countries, in the third city of Colombia (2.2 million inhabitants), where a large security force, military and police of 10,000 men and women in uniform, is to be deployed.
“Although we can say that we have a very strong voice on the international scene, we cannot say that Colombia has solved its problems,” admitted the minister, who began as an environmental activist before embarking on a political career.
In fact, COP16, whose official emblem is the red flower of Inirida — a “weed” found in the Colombian Amazon — has as its theme making or being at “peace with nature.”
Minister Muhamad hopes that the results of the UN conference on biodiversity can have a positive effect on the southwest of Colombia and its indigenous communities in a region affected by drug production and trafficking.
COP16 aims to promote the protection of biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, eco-tourism and environmental projects.
Mme Muhamad also calls for action from rich countries, which committed at COP15 to providing developing countries with at least $20 billion per year by 2025 and at least $30 billion by 2030.
The fund created for the occasion has so far received only 400 million dollars in pledges, of which around half has actually been donated, laments the Colombian minister.