Posted on diciembre, 22 2020

This year we lived a historic moment. Within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly, and less than two weeks following the launch of the Global Biodiversity Outlook that revealed the world’s failure to meet any of its Aichi biodiversity targets for the decade, 77 heads of state, including President Ivan Duque, set 10 concrete targets to reverse the alarming loss of biodiversity and its effects.

The Leaders' Pledge for Nature includes actions such as the development and complete implementation of an ambitious and transformative post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted next year, which seeks a transition toward sustainable patterns of production and consumption. The pledge also aims to reduce land and air pollution, including the elimination of plastic waste from the ocean, to provide a green and fair response to the current economic and health crisis, to invest more money in nature-based solutions, and to generate a commitment toward the elimination or reorientation of harmful investments and subsidies, among other goals.

Seeking to push greater ambition and compliance with the country's climate commitments, we have been working since August with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and the World Bank on the participation and communications strategy to update the country’s 2015 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). This roadmap for climate action will be submitted to the United Nations Secretariat for Climate Change before the end of the year, to comply with the Paris Agreement. For months, we worked to ensure that specialists on the subject, climate change stakeholders in the territories, ethnic and campesino communities, and Colombians in general, could contribute to the document that contains the updated NDC, becoming part of this ambitious and inspiring national commitment.

We welcome Colombia's announcement to reduce its projected greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030, the main target of its 2020 NDC.