Reflections of COP16 in 21st Century Colombia
In February, 1997, over a coral reef along Colombia’s Caribbean, I slipped on a snorkel mask and looked beneath the surface of the sea for the first time. Nearly thirty years later, I would put on a badge in Colombia’s Southwest city of Cali and walk into my first Biodiversity COP as part of the delegation for the Mesoamerican Reef Fund and supporting the Global Fund for Coral Reefs & UN Capital Development Fund.
Here in the heart of the country with the greatest concentration of biodiversity in the world, COP16 would be the largest biodiversity meeting in history, and with a major focus on my field of finance for nature sparked by commitments from the Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022. Combine this with meeting dozens of people I’d worked with for years in person for the first time and COP16 made for — unsurprisingly — a head spinning professional experience of a lifetime.
But it was also a deeply personal one. With the exception of that brief experience in 1997, Colombia would remain a mysterious distant land for the first twenty years of my life, in part due to conflicts that terrorized several generations of its citizens that also kept my family from returning for many years (and in some parts of the country remain an unfortunate reality).
Still, from the unlikeliest environment in New York City, my relationship with Colombia was cultivated by nature from the very beginning. Bedtime stories from my father of massive sharks and pristine coral reefs from Santa Marta long ago. Indigenous artwork from throughout the country my parents and other family had brought to the United States over the decades, often depicting jaguars, caimans, and other wildlife. Books that captured the diverse landscapes from glaciated peaks to sand beaches. Even some fossils of prehistoric ocean life as a reminder that much of the Colombian Andes were once underwater. Tropical fishtanks and a Spanish speaking parrot only added to the effect of this biodome-like atmosphere in the middle of a concrete jungle.
Considering the country’s environmental and political history, to see 23,000 delegates and 700,000 participants from around the world converge unto Colombia to take global action for biodiversity felt like a dream. Dreamlike for how fitting it was with Colombia having the highest concentration of biodiversity in the world, where green macaws flew over the conference’s pavilions. But also for how impossible it would have seemed to anyone all those years ago that the Valle del Cauca, at the foot of the Western Cordillera, would even be a consideration for such an event. Cali pulled off the role of both host and ambassador to the country that even just a few months ago many doubted it could.
But somehow, all this makes sense in its own way with Colombia a country of remarkable consistency that’s also constantly self-contradicting. A land where the weather changes little over the course of the year, sees every season in a day, and where almost every climate and ecosystem you can think of on Earth is within easy reach. Where its capital city must enact water rationing measures due to severe drought while simultaneously battling devastating flooding. Flanked by two juxtaposing coastlines that show the dangers of unsustainable development in the north but also some of the least disturbed coastline in the tropics worldwide to the west. Home to the highest concentration of biodiversity of any country in the world, but also the most dangerous one in which to work in environmental protection. The same armed conflicts that have tormented its citizenry for generations have been credited with both the unintended protection of but also a leading cause of degradation for many of the country’s most important ecosystems.
Of all the countries in the world, the complicated yet forever intertwined fate of nature and humanity is perhaps no more evident than in Colombia, subtlety but perfectly captured in three simple words for COP16’s slogan, “Peace with Nature”. No matter where we are or where we come from, that’s something we can all relate to and affects each of us daily, whether in the field every day or just a kid listening to family stories or reading nature books in a city thousands of miles away, dreaming for the day when he’d be able to see it for himself.
To me, COP16 will always be a story of light at the end of the tunnel for people and our planet, even when it seems out of reach.
Congratulations to Colombia, the city of Cali, and thank you to the individuals and organizations that made this possible.
