Cali, Colombia, Oct 20 (EFE).- The great battle for life is about to begin, warned Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro as he opened the world’s biggest nature protection conference in Cali on Sunday.
A cultural and artistic representation of the various indigenous, Afro-descendant and farmers of Colombia began the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity, which will run until Nov. 1.
“Perhaps the greatest battle is about to begin. It is no longer a battle for spoils, for slaves, for the conquest of land and people. It is the great battle for life,” Petro warned in his speech.
COP16 is being held under the motto ‘Peace with nature’ and to that end, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Susana Muhamad said: “We have realized that peace cannot be consolidated in the territory without the inclusion of diversity, of specific knowledge, without also making ‘peace with nature.’”
“Nature is not a resource, it is the fiber of life that makes us ourselves possible,” she said, advocating for the mobilization of “all of society” to meet the goals of biodiversity protection.
Petro took advantage of the event to charge that “those who think in world forums like this that the free market will lead to the maximization of wellbeing and that it will lead human beings to be bearers of life are deluded.”
He also defended the need to “change global finances,” of which he said: “Today they are linked to greed. That is, to death.”
“Who said that planetary life is saved through banking projects, linked to the interest rate, to projects that make profits and fill the hunger of greed? (…) It is essential today to change debt for climate action,” the president said.
“Those who emit the most CO2 into the atmosphere are the fossil, oil and coal economies, they are the powerful economies of the United States, China and Europe,” and they are the ones who “charge interest rate surcharges to countries that can still absorb CO2.”
“That is a true moral and deadly contradiction,” so it is the “richest, predatory countries that must be taxed to eliminate carbon from production and consumption,” he added.
The president insisted that “capital and profit have broken a delicate but fundamental balance of existence, the climate” and asked civil society to mobilize “to bring capital to decarbonization,” of “the entire economy.”
Muhamad also criticized a lack of climate funding, pointing out that “the resources that are available quickly for war, but for the care of life, biodiversity and climate transition are scarce and difficult to obtain,” while proposing “a change of vision, of paradigm.”
Calls for action followed one another in the opening ceremony, and Muhamad urged for “a step forward,” since “it is not only about implementation mechanisms, it is, at its core, about recomposing the way, the life in which we live, the development model.”
This message was endorsed by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who said in the video message that the Global Biodiversity Framework promises to reestablish relations with Earth and its ecosystems, but “we are not on the right path” and that the task at this COP is to move from words to actions.
The Pacific Valley Events Center became a Blue Zone on Sunday, where delegates from more than 190 countries are discussing how climate commitments are progressing and how to stop the loss of biodiversity during plenary sessions and negotiations.
In addition, the government has installed a Green Zone in the center of Cali with a view to giving prominence to civil society, and especially to indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities and farmers.
For this reason, Muhamad said that “caring for biodiversity is not just a problem for the minister of the environment, but for the entire society.”
Along these lines, Cali Mayor Alejandro Eder stressed that this is the COP “with the greatest citizen participation in history.”
Petro said that it is the youth who “must come to the front today, led by the female hand” to achieve these changes.
“We, the warriors of before, only have to follow their arrow.”
“Brothers of all nations, let us make the effort to save the earth,” concluded an indigenous elder, summarizing the desire for this to be a summit in which governments listen to citizens and take decisive action to stop and reverse the loss of biodiversity in the world. EFE
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