Alliances to protect the environment, the triumphs of the Summit

After twelve days of a successful United Nations Biodiversity Summit, which focused the world's attention on Cali in the hope of making progress in conserving and restoring nature on the planet, Colombia's victories include two important factors: funding and partnerships.

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The first group includes around $100 million that the country will mobilise to protect its natural wealth, mainly to combat deforestation and make progress in fulfilling the 2030 Action Plan, a roap presented at COP16 that consists of six ambitious goals with which the country hopes to make progress in fulfilling the Kunming-Montreal Framework.

In of partnerships, the government launched the Peace with Nature Coalition at the Summit's high-level plenary, a call to mobilise world leaders and citizens to protect biodiversity. Another major achievement was the creation of the Cali Fund, which focuses on the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from digital sequence information on genetic resources.

The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, together with representatives of the Norwegian government, announced that the Nordic country will contribute US$20 million to the fight against deforestation in Colombia. The money will initiatives to protect the Amazon. For its part, the Swedish government will provide five million dollars to promote the bio-economy, climate protection and ecological restoration in Colombia.

Another major highlight was the launch of the world's second biodiversity green bond, and Colombia's first, by Davivienda and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), with the of the Ministries of Finance and Environment. The $50 million bond will help finance initiatives to conserve, protect and restore biodiversity and nature at competitive rates that allow them to scale up.

In the final hours of the COP16 plenary, which lasted until the morning of Saturday 2 November, it was agreed to create a global fund to focus on the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from digital sequence information on genetic resources. As announced by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, it will be called the Cali Fund, in honour of this historic biodiversity COP. Minister and COP16 President Susana Muhamad described the new fund as an innovative and important mechanism. The Cali Fund will collect contributions from private companies for the use of genetic resources once they are stored in digital databases. But other meetings will have to decide where the money will come from, how much it will be and how this instrument, created under the Convention on Biological Diversity, will work.

This coalition calls for a profound change in our relationship with nature, and therefore it is not a technical declaration, it is a political declaration, but one that is deeply rooted,' explained the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad, at COP16.

The head of the Environment Ministry also said that this was not a declaration of governments, but 'a declaration of mobilisation of peoples, sectors and all those who feel called to make this political change, including the governments that want to sign'.

Colombia's foreign ministry announced that the country's children and young people would be the initiative's ambassadors, including nine-year-old environmentalist Sara Sofia Diaz. More than 80,000 people have ed the coalition through the Avaaz and change.org platforms. According to Minambiente, the movement will remain open and active for the next two years, during Colombia's presidency of the COP on Biodiversity, during which they hope to further consolidate a global effort to protect nature and environmental balance.

The list of countries that have ed includes Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, , Honduras, Madagascar, Mexico, Moldova, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Togo, Uganda and Uruguay.

ALEJANDRA LÓPEZ PLAZAS - EL TIEMPO SPECIAL ENVOY TO COP16