Colombia, which experienced a long armed conflict with the now defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), wants the planet to make "peace with nature." This is the theme chosen for the 16th edition of the Conference of the Parties on Biological Diversity, which will be held from October 21 to November 1 in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, in the country's southwest. Over 190 delegations and 14 state leaders are expected to attend this COP16 dedicated to safeguarding biodiversity. Colombia hopes to assert its regional and global leadership in this area, in a tense security context.
The municipal authorities are officially prepared to host 12,000 people. "If 20,000 people turn up, logistics will have a hard time keeping up," said a worried official in charge of organizing the event who requested anonymity. But Mayor Alejandro Eder is confident. "From a security standpoint, Cali is unassailable," he said. Some 3,300 police officers are expected to reinforce the city's security apparatus during the event, and 1,600 soldiers have been deployed in the area.
In a message posted on X on October 12, the armed group EMC, which claims to be the heir of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla group and is active in the mountains south of the city, invited "delegates from the national and international community to refrain from attending this event," promising a that it would be "fiasco." In July, the EMC threatened to derail the COP before announcing a truce in August. "We are all nervous [hoping] nothing bad happens because it is the biggest international event that Colombia has hosted," acknowledged President Gustavo Petro (left) on Friday, October 18, while reaffirming that security for the COP would be "guaranteed."
"Never before have so many heads of state attended a COP on biodiversity," enthused Susana Muhamad, Colombia's Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, who will preside over the event. Negotiations will focus on implementing the ambitious action plan adopted in 2022's COP15 in Montreal, known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Among other things, member states will have to specify their goals in establishing protected areas to halt the unprecedented erosion of life.
With three cordilleras reaching altitudes of over 6,000 m, two oceans, a large chunk of Amazon rainforest, glaciers, rivers, marshes, mangroves, deserts, humid plains at higher altitudes and warm plains in the east of the country, Colombia's geography hosts a wide variety of ecosystems. The country ranks among the world's top countries in terms of biodiversity.
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