In the images: a bird “Habia gutturalis”; a “Paepalanthus alpinus” (top right); an ant “Camponotus sericeiventris”; and a frailejón “Espeletia uribei”.
Photo: Felipe Villegas-Vélez, John Jairo Ibáñez and Luis Fernando López – Humboldt Institute.
A few days ago, a group of 279 scientists from different countries published an article in the journal Nature that has gone around the world. In it they reconstructed what they called the “tree of plant life.” They had examined the genetic code of more than 9,500 flowering plants to better understand the complex relationships of that kingdom and how it has evolved over millions of years. They had managed to analyze so much data, they said, that a single computer would take 18 years to process all that information.
The work was led by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from the United Kingdom, one of the most important in the world. The Colombian Ángela Cano, researcher of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and one of the authors puts it in these terms: “Such a large number of species has never been used to make a reconstruction of this type. “We botanists used to use the characteristics of plants to classify them, but now, DNA analysis allowed us to make a much more precise tree of life.”
The good news is that those who have classified plants for centuries were correct in their assessments without resorting to DNA. Of the more than 400 families that exist (each family is made up of orders and each order is made up of thousands of species), only ten of them need to be adjusted.
Having absolute certainty about how they are related implies, to use Cano’s example, that scientists could reorient their efforts towards the study of some species and better investigate their properties. Like quinine, used to treat malaria, several of the drugs we know come, precisely, from plants.
When we hear the word biodiversity it is difficult to imagine that, beyond the animals or flowers that we keep in our memory, there are such complex relationships between the organisms that inhabit the planet as those revealed by the “plant tree of life.” To put another case, it is not so easy to intuit that a pot-bellied ceiba (Cavanillesia chicamochae), which is only found in the great Chicamocha canyon, in Santander, belongs to the same family as the baobabs (Adansonia digitata), giant trees from Africa, to which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry dedicated a chapter of The Little Prince.
A pot-bellied ceiba (“Cavanillesia chicamochae”), a species endemic to the Chicamocha Canyon.
Photo: Sergio Silva Numa
Or to think about biodiversityas Dimitri Forero, professor at the Institute of Natural Sciences of the National University who has dedicated his life to studying insects, not many of us would associate the existence of the tomatoes or cape gooseberries that we eat for lunch with the work of a particular type of bee that pollinates its flowers and that are not, strictly speaking, the European honey plants.
Biodiversity will be a term that Colombians will hear very frequently in 2024. As October approaches it will be on everyone’s lips, because on the 21st of that month it will begin in Cali the COP16 of Biodiversityd, a meeting in which, for two weeks, 196 countries will try to agree on ways to stop and reverse the loss of everything that word encompasses: from corals, keys to sustaining marine life, but in serious trouble due to global warming; to the Andean bear, the jaguar, or the incredible kingdom of fungi that, as the biologist Merlin Sheldrake wrote, allowed us to obtain penicillin, the first modern antibiotic.
There are many expectations about what is going to happen at this world meeting that, for the first time, is being held in Colombia. Therefore, the first step to approach it is to read its scope in the right proportions. As María Alejandra Riaño, advisor to COP 16 of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the meeting, which is held every two years, is important, but, after it is over, the immense challenges that biodiversity faces today will not be resolved.
It will be a step in that international negotiation, he says, which had its most anticipated moment in 2022: after several years of discussions, in Montreal, Canada, they were established global agreements to avoid the collapse of biodiversity. In the Kunming-Montreal Global Framework, as they called it, the 23 goals were made explicit to “halt and reverse the loss of biological diversity in order to put nature on the path to recovery for the benefit of people and the environment.” planet”.
One of the objectives states, for example, that, by 2030, at least 30% of marine and terrestrial areas must be protected. Another says that, by 2050the rate and risk of extinction of all species had to be reduced by a tenth.
So one of the main reasons why COP16 in Cali is important, adds Riaño, is because it is the first time that countries sit down again, after having adopted the Kunming Montreal World Framework. Everyone hopes, in the ideal scenario, that the representatives of each nation will show what their cards will be to meet those goals they adopted two years ago.
In slightly more technical words, as Ximena Barrera, director of Government Relations and International Affairs at WWF, explains, countries are expected to present the update of their “National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans”, which indicate the route to achieve the objectives, according to their context and their capabilities. So far, only Spain, China, Japan, Luxembourg, France and Hungary have presented their updates.
There is another point about which there is great expectation: financing. As happens in the climate change COPs, if there is no money it is difficult for countries, especially those with fewer resources, to join forces and carry out all the changes required to meet the goals.
As it says Sandra Vilardy, former vice minister of the Environment and professor at the U. de los Andes, “another reason why COP16 is important is because we should know precisely what the mobilization of that money will be like. Without enabling money and without innovative mechanisms we will not be able to advance in the implementation of a new biodiversity framework.” The goal set in Montreal is for there to be US$200 billion per year until 2030.
It is not only an event with negotiators
Image of a “Rhipidomys fulviventer” (on the left) and a “Leopardus pardalis”.
Photo: Felipe Villegas-Vélez and Francisco Nieto Montaño / Humbdolt Institute
It is impossible to summarize in these pages each of the 23 agreements that were drawn up in Montreal and detail what the expectations are for each one. That is why today in El Espectador we begin a route to explain them in detail. But, you will not only be able to find on these pages and on our web portal (in the environment section) the explanation of what they consist of, but also the elements so that we wake up every day thinking about biodiversity.
After all, for both Vilardy and Barrera and for Catalina Góngora, TNC Colombia public policy leader, there are something invaluable that accompanies this COP: allow spaces like this to exist to understand that biodiversity depends on everything from the water we drink to the food we put on our plate this morning. Also, says Professor Dimitri Forero, the chocolate that we enjoy so much, because the cocoa flower is pollinated, apparently, by very small flies. But as with invertebrates, which make up the majority of animals, an army of entomologists (who study these “bugs”) are still needed to resolve these types of unknowns.
There is another reason why COP16 is relevant for us: it is an opportunity to put on the global agenda issues that have gone under the radar, but have become part of Colombian daily life, such as “the impact that the organized crime in nature,” says Vilardy.
According to the IBPES, the most important scientific platform when it comes to talking about biodiversity, there are five drivers that are destroying it: changes in the use of land and sea, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species. However, for the former vice minister it is also time to look at the consequences that violence has left. Just look at the role of Central General Staff in the deforestation of the Amazon or the contamination of rivers with mercury with which illegal gold is extracted and which finances armed groups.
For all the people we have spoken with so far, there is no better motto to make that clear than the one chosen by the Ministry of the Environment: “COP16, Peace with nature”.
A “Caligo telamonius menus”.
Photo: Felipe Villegas – Humboldt Institute
Although the path that has been outlined in recent years opens a door of hope, it cannot be denied that there is a precedent that overshadows those who seek to stop the destruction of biodiversity. At COP10, which was held in Nagoya, Japan, countries adopted the “Aichi Targets.” There were 20 that had to be met by 2020, but that year arrived and they were not achieved.
One of them indicated that by 4 years ago invasive exotic species should have been identified and prioritized and priority species should have been controlled or eradicated. But the efforts have not been enough and, at times, they seem contrary to that purpose. The sample is what is happening with he bases, a fish that someone brought from Vietnam and that they are marketing in Colombia. Despite being prohibited and putting native fauna in trouble, in 2023 more than 20 thousand tons were produced in the country.
