Cali, October 29, 2024 – COP16 officially kicked off the High-Level Segment with the participation of heads of state, ministers and world leaders, which will set the course for biodiversity negotiations in the coming days. Cali, the conference venue, became the epicenter of a global call for concrete action to address climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and pollution.
The event was attended by the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres; the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, Luis Gilberto Murillo; and the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia and President of COP16, Susana Muhamad.
Among the international leaders also present were the President of Armenia, Vahagn Khachaturyan; the President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa; the President of Guinea Bissau, Úmaro Sissoco Embaló; the President of the Presidential Transitional Council of the Republic of Haiti, Leslie Voltaire; the President of Suriname, Chan Satokhi; the Vice President of Bolivia, David Choquehuanca; the Minister of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador, Alexandra Hill Tinoco; and the Minister of People's Power for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, Yvan Gil.
“The COP16 in Cali, the COP30 in Belén de Pará must be definitive turning points where we do not continue doing the same thing. Who believes that, to solve a problem the size of the climate crisis, which is the pollution of the entire planetary atmosphere by the factories of greed, is going to be solved with the same methods as always,", said the president during his opening speech.
Petro also stressed the essence of the event in Cali as a people's summit and a symbol of the change the planet demands: “Here we are surrounded by joy and human warmth. We wanted it to be like this. We wanted the people to take the COP because the peoples of the world have to make decisions for a world revolution, which is what we really need"
Message from Antonio Guterres during the opening of the high-level segment of COP16
For his part, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, gave a powerful speech in which he described the global environmental crisis as a “war against nature” and emphasized the urgent need to restore harmony with our planet and urged countries to present clear plans for alignment with global conservation goals and encourage the mobilization of financial resources, not only from public sources, but also from the private sector. “Biodiversity is our ally; we must move from sacrificing it to preserving it,” he concluded.
With this meeting, the leaders hope to lay the foundations for a sustainable future, strengthening commitments to adaptation, mitigation and financing, fundamental pillars to address the environmental challenges facing the world.
At the close of the meeting, the president of COP16, Susana Muhamad, pointed out that these are the first heads of state to come to a biodiversity convention: “This is not minor, because this is no longer an issue for conservationists or ecologists or environmentalists, it is an issue that should be at the center of public policy of governments and the world, and their presence raises the level of political discussion that the COP on biodiversity has, and it was also one of the objectives of hosting this event”.
Muhamad added that biodiversity and the recovery of life, hand in hand with the peoples, is a political objective as important and simultaneous to that of decarbonization and energy transition, despite the fact that this does not have immediate profitability, because it is not about profitability but about human security in the 21st century.