The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) is held in Colombia’s southwestern city of Cali, Oct. 21, 2024. The COP16 opened in Cali on Monday, with Colombia taking over the rotating presidency from China. (Source ARCST)

The Chinese Minister of Ecology and Environment, who also chairs the Conference, expressed his deep gratitude to all parties for their unwavering support during the biodiversity negotiations. He sent special recognition to Colombia and its Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad, in recognition of their commitment to ecological preservation. In conclusion, the Chinese Minister expressed his hope that through global collaboration, biodiversity loss will be reversed by 2030. He then formally invited Dr. Susana Muhamad to assume the presidency of COP16.

Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, taking over as the president of COP16UNBiodiversity / X (formerly Twitter)

In response, Dr. Susana Muhamad presented a symbolic gift to her Chinese counterpart, thanking him for the dedicated efforts made over the past two years to protect biodiversity. In his speech, he stressed the importance of merging ancient wisdom with modern ecological science, saying that such collaboration could lead to a sustainable future amid the current environmental crisis: “It is in this dialogue of knowledge between the ancestral and fundamental roots of our knowledge of the ecology of life, with scientific capacity, that we could generate a transition… to create at least habitable and relatively stable conditions for a new society that will be forged in the light of the crisis.”

Members of the Andean Road Countries for Science and Technology (ARCST) in Colombia, and the International Green Science Center for Latin American and the Caribbean among other delegates participating at the COP16. (Source ARCST)