“The science has spoken: the climate crisis is humanity’s biggest problem. It can end – and has the potential to end – life on the planet and the existence of the human species. Political leadership from the first COP to date has failed to stop the cause of the climate crisis.”
This was the apocalyptic tone struck by Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, in his address to the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
Petro used his speech to present a “decalogue” of actions to confront the climate crisis, offered to the world following, as he described it, the enormous amount of time that has been wasted on “war and the geopolitics of the domination of humanity”.
The Colombian president travelled to the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh with Susana Muhamad, a noted environmentalist who has served as the country’s environment minister since Petro took office earlier this year.
A political scientist by profession, Muhamad, 45, became known for her fierce defence of a nature reserve that a former mayor of Bogotá wanted to develop. Years later, she was one of the founders of the Fracking-Free Colombia Alliance, and went on to serve as secretary of environment for Bogotá.
Ahead of her trip to COP27, Diálogo Chino interviewed Muhamad at her office in Bogotá, where she told us of her plans to counter deforestation and protect environmental defenders, and of Colombia’s energy transition and the prospects for the Egypt summit.
Diálogo Chino: Among your priorities as environment minister, is the first to fight against deforestation?
Susana Muhamad: That’s right, and the other side to the coin is the generation of economic alternatives for the communities that live in these strategic ecosystems – alternatives that really fulfil the vocation of the land, which is forestry, which is biodiversity.
This is extremely important because the social and economic inclusion of this population helps us with three objectives: to halt deforestation – which is, in short, to remove the basis of the work of illegal economies; to consolidate the social state and the rule of law; and to advance in the consolidation of peace. Currently, deforestation is closely associated with illicit economies, such as drug trafficking, illegal mining and massive land grabbing.
DC: Previous ministers promised major actions to curb deforestation and nothing has changed. How can we believe that this time this problem will be tackled?
SM: We are now considering this as an integral state policy, not just as a problem that is only the responsibility of the environmental sector. The consequences are environmental, of course, but we need a very serious economic and social policy in these territories, and that goes far beyond the Ministry of Environment.
We must generate a new biodiversity economy, so that each deforestation hub becomes a hub for the forestry economy and ecological restoration. This implies that we have to offer campesinos credit and legal stability in terms of land ownership… and this is a joint effort by the entire state.
The other differentiating factor is the “Total Peace” policy of President Petro’s government. There is also the tool of criminal investigation. We have told the Attorney General’s office that what we are interested in are investigations into the financial flows and those who determine deforestation with political power – not the campesinos on the ground who are carrying out the operation, who cut down the tree.
We have been dealing with this issue in the same way as with coca leaf cultivation, criminalising the last link in the chain – the weakest – but that does not stop the problem. We need a comprehensive intervention and for farmers and communities to regain confidence in the state.
President Petro made a proposal to swap foreign debt in exchange for preserving the Amazon. Has there been progress on this?
Yes, it is still in place, and we are structuring it. But in addition to that, there are international mechanisms, such as a fund that the president announced at the UN General Assembly. Swaps for nature are important because in our difficult fiscal situation they help us to make a commitment on public policy.
We are going to establish synergies on all international cooperation. When I arrived at the ministry I realised that we have a lot of money coming from outside and it is scattered, fragmented, not linked to a public policy outcome. That is why one of the first things I did was to sit down with all the international donors to explain to them what our policy will be and where we need them to help the government, because we cannot continue with each one doing isolated projects without there being clarity on the environmental results, and without this being connected to a public policy.