COP16 host Colombia pushes for unified climate and biodiversity pledges

By Jake Spring and Oliver Griffin

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Colombia wants to write a unified climate and biodiversity pledge, seeking to combine efforts to protect nature with those to tackle climate change in United Nations talks, Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad told Reuters on Friday.

The South American nation later this month will host the U.N. COP16 biodiversity summit aimed at halting the rapid destruction of nature, with Muhamad serving as the conference's president.

The United Nations currently has three environmental conventions - one each on climate change, biodiversity, and desertification - with negotiations and pledges being done separately on each issue.

That is a demanding process for developing countries that do not have a lot of resources, which could more easily be put toward developing one unified plan, she said.

"If you are repeating the same thing for three conventions, I think we are wasting time and probably also losing the opportunity for synergies," she said.

Those synergies include halting deforestation, which destroys biodiversity and is also the largest source of emissions for many Latin American countries, she said.

Colombia could launch such a unified plan ahead of COP30, the U.N. climate summit set to be held by Brazil in 2025, she said.

"We will send for the three conventions a synthesis plan that covers in an integral manner the three conventions because actually they are deeply interrelated," she said.

Panama had raised the idea of unified pledges and plans at a meeting of Latin American environment ministers in Rio de Janeiro last month, with two other nations strongly supporting the idea, Muhamad said. She declined to specify the countries.

A $40 billion investment portfolio that Colombia announced last week will not only help it with the energy transition away from fossil fuels but also preserve nature, she said.

Colombia is additionally pushing for human rights to be central to environmental plans and will launch a Peace with Nature coalition at COP16. 

"We really think that taking care of nature, reconnecting to nature and conserving together within different peoples is peace-building and also will make us more resilient to climate change shocks that will also create more broader context for conflict," she said.

(Reporting by Jake Spring in Sao Paulo and Oliver Griffin in Bogota, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)