Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad told Reuters on Friday that the country wants to write a unified climate and biodiversity pledge, seeking to combine efforts to protect nature with those to tackle climate change in United Nations talks.
The
South American nation will host the U.N. COP16 biodiversity summit later this month, which aims to halt the rapid destruction of nature. Muhamad will serve as the conference's president.
The
United Nations currently has three environmental conventions—one each on climate change, biodiversity, and desertification—with negotiations and pledges being made separately on each issue.
She said that is a demanding process for developing countries that lack many resources, which could more easily be used to develop one unified plan.
"If
you are repeating the same thing for three conventions, I think we are wasting
time and probably also losing the opportunity for synergies," she said.
Those
synergies include halting deforestation, which destroys biodiversity and is
also the largest source of emissions for many Latin American countries, she
said.
She said Colombia could launch such a unified plan ahead of COP30, the U.N. climate summit Brazil will hold in 2025.
"We
will send for the three conventions a synthesis plan that covers in an integral
manner the three conventions because actually they are deeply
interrelated," she said.
Muhamad said Panama had raised the idea of unified pledges and plans at a meeting of Latin American environment ministers in Rio de Janeiro last month, and two other nations strongly supported it. She declined to specify the
countries.
She said Colombia's $40 billion investment portfolio, announced last week, will help the country with its energy transition away from fossil fuels and preserve nature.
Colombia
is additionally pushing for human rights to be central to environmental plans
and will launch a Peace with Nature coalition at COP16.
"We really think that taking care of nature, reconnecting to nature and conserving together within different peoples is peace-building and also will make us more resilient to climate change shocks that will also create more broader context for conflict," she said.