Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, indigenous authorities and artists inaugurated a United Nations biodiversity summit in the city of Cali.
The so-called Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will be attended by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, ten heads of state and some 15,000 diplomats and scientists.
The summit seeks to advance international cooperation on the preservation of biological diversity around the globe.
The inauguration ceremony was kicked off by representatives of ONIC, the organization that represents Colombia’s indigenous peoples.
Receive a warm greeting from the indigenous peoples who come from the jungles, the plains, the mountains, the seas and the desert, those who have maintained life and nature with their systems of knowledge.
ONIC representative Orlando Rayo
Petro, who has made the protection of the environment a key element of his government program, stressed the link between the accumulation of capital and environmental destruction while addressing the attendees.
The world’s wealth is measured in dollars and CO₂ equivalent. The richer a human being or a society is, the more CO₂ they spew into the atmosphere.
President Gustavo Petro
The president reiterated his call on the world’s richest nations to allow countries like Colombia, which is one of the most bio-diverse in the world, to swap outstanding debt for public spending on the protection of the environment.
The COP16 is expected to last until November 1.