This Tuesday, February 18, President Gustavo Petro confirmed that Cali will be the city that will host the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity, COP16, the most important biodiversity summit.
This is the first time that Colombia hosts this event, which will take place between October 21 and November 2, 2024 and brings together delegations from more than 190 countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (UNFCCC) to address “an issue that is fundamental to humanity today: how to preserve life on the planet?”, in the words of President Gustavo Petro.
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There will be more than 13 thousand people, from all over the world, who will visit the capital of the Valley to discuss issues related to climate change and the protection of biodiversity.
Cali was competing with Bogotá to be the headquarters and during the last days the country witnessed a friendly discussion between the leaders of both cities to retain such honor. Finally, it was Alejandro Eder who achieved it.
According to President Petro, what was taken into account was that the place not only had the infrastructure, but that it was coherent with the event itself: “We are inclined towards the most biodiverse region of Colombia, which despite everything is the Pacific “he said at the press conference.
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And he added: “Cali has just suffered a social outbreak that was more intense there than in the rest of the country, where violence swarmed in events that we still do not know about, where black youth were murdered and indigenous youth were arrested,” so COP16 It will allow those wounds to seal.
In turn, the Minister of Environment, Susana Muhamad, highlighted that this is the largest “international negotiation event that the country has ever held in its history” and will allow “this to be the COP of the people, of those people who live and “They thrive in diversity, and may it be the COP in which peace with nature is promulgated.”
The chancellor in charge, Luis Gilberto Murillo, also participated in the press conference and assured that “we are not only sending the message to the world of what Colombia is proposing, but that the world is going to come here to make decisions.”
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For the diplomat, this is a “historical” fact, as it will allow the narrative of environmental, economic and peace justice to continue, but it also means that nearly 200 delegations will arrive in the Pacific: “Never before have we had so many heads of state, foreign ministers and environment ministers meeting.”
