The Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, Susana Muhamad, expressed this Monday the Colombian Government’s hope that at the COP16, inaugurated yesterday in Cali, agreements will be reached in the financial field and on the sharing of benefits of genetic resources.
“We are encouraging the parties to achieve very concrete results. This is the COP of the implementation. In this COP16 we have to provide multilateral tools to make it easier for society and all entities in the world to implement biodiversity plans,” Muhamad said at a press conference this Monday.
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Regarding what is expected from this summit, the minister announced that the creation of a fund for the sharing of benefits from genetic resources would be considered a “milestone” because it would open “the way for the private sector in the world to contribute when benefits from the resources we have environmentally.”
Another issue to be discussed, which the minister accepted a few weeks ago would be the most difficult part, is an agreement that allows for a “transparent financial architecture that really manages to accumulate resources effectively for the implementation” of the biodiversity objectives.
For her part, the secretary general of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Astrid Schomaker, highlighted that COP16 will bring together 23,000 delegates from around the world in Cali until November 1, making it “the largest conference in the history of the Convention.
Schomaker agreed with Muhamad in the hope of reaching an agreement on sharing the benefits of genetic resources.
“It’s really about giving back to nature when we benefit from genetic resources and also giving back to those who keep and protect them,” he said.
Colombia also presented this Monday its Action Plan for 2030, with which it seeks to expand the protected areas in the country from 24 to 34%, both continental and oceanic, which makes it the 34th nation in the world to publish this mechanism. to which all countries committed at the last COP15 on Biodiversity.
“The Government of Colombia, as host and future president of the COP, wants to promote the ‘Peace with Nature’ coalition, which implies a mobilization of all sectors in the materialization” of the Kunming-Montreal agreement, highlighted the minister, who He highlighted the great mobilization that accompanies this COP.
In this sense, in Cali there will be “a permanent mobilization beyond the negotiations”, something that Muhamad highlighted since “the mobilization of society is really the catalyst for change and allows governments to make political decisions, which are nothing easy, in this transition.”
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There will be “more than a thousand events that will involve tens of thousands of people who will participate from Colombia and around the world and will really show” the importance of listening to society, Schomaker highlighted.
Ultimately, COP16 will seek “policies from a place that allows for the acceleration of transformational change” in society to stop and reverse the loss of biodiversity, concluded the Secretary General of the CBD.
With information from EFE
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