Tag Archives: Colombia

Mongabay @ COP16/CBD: Cities are climate solution leaders: Interview with Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson

Gregor Robertson served as the mayor of Vancouver in Canada for 10 years, earning an international reputation for leading efforts to reduce city carbon emissions through energy efficiency and by creating green economy jobs. He now leads global coalitions of mayors and governors who advocate for more resources for subnational entities to carry out climate action as national governments continue to fall short. Photo by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

This story came about on my second day in Cali, Colombia, as I scrambled to find stories at my first UN summit on biodiversity. Late morning, I stopped in the large plenary hall where I knew there was a daylong session on the role of cities and states — subnational entities — in conservation and climate action.

By luck, I entered as one of the panelists was talking about the work that had been accomplished in his city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I asked an event organizer who was speaking and she told me: Gregor Robertson. I looked him up on my phone, and up came a long list of impressive credentials as a former mayor and current leader of two large subnational coalitions on the issues being discussed from the stage. I waited until the panel concluded, introduced myself to Robertson and asked if he had time for an interview.

My idea at the time is what became this story: a Mongabay Q&A. Late afternoon, Robertson joined me in the media center where I was set up and answered my questions for about 45 minutes. His enthusiasm for the role that subnational entities are already playing in climate action and conservation was immediately evident. So was his frustration with the lack of action by national governments who control much of the finances that enables these urgent local efforts to take place.

The interview became, as my editor Glenn Scherer wrote to me after he completed his edits, “The first really sensible, and doable climate solution story I’ve read in awhile.” The story was published just as another UN climate summit, COP29, was wrapping up in a corrupt petrostate and predictably, failing once again to meet the urgency of the moment in this ongoing climate crisis.

I took this photo in Amsterdam after covering COP26, the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. The city is this interesting paradox — a place with more bicycles than people (1.2 million vs 821,000) — but also one that burns more wood (largely from North Carolina and the US Southeast forests) than coal for energy. It made a nice complement to my interview with Robertson and ran with the Q&A.

Mongabay: COP16 biodiversity meeting recap: Progress made, but finance lags

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres spoke at COP16 on Oct. 30: “Human activities have already altered three-quarters of Earth’s land surface and two-thirds of its waters. And no country, rich or poor, is immune to this devastation,” he said. “To survive, humanity must make peace with nature. We must transform our economic models — shifting our production and consumption to nature-positive practices. Renewable energy, sustainable supply chains and zero-waste policies are not optional. They must become the default option for both governments and businesses.” Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

This wrap up story from Cali, Colombia — an overview of the outcomes, good and bad, from the 16th United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (COP16) — started coming together on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, my last day at the summit. I focused on a half-dozen or so major issues, interviewed about that many sources one-on-one, attended several press conferences and generally took in the mood of the penultimate day of the two-week meeting.

By Saturday, November 2, after COP16 was gaveled to a premature close, the press releases started rolling in, as did WhatsApp messages from a variety of sources eager to weigh in with final thoughts. One comment from an event I covered days earlier stuck with me: delegates at this biodiversity COP need to celebrate positive outcomes, not simply wallow, however appropriately, in all the measures falling short.

“You can’t rally a constituency around dread and fear,” said Valerie Hickey, global director for the World Bank’s division on environment, natural resources and oceans.

So in consultation with my editor, I organized this story around highlighting what went right and almost- right before describing critical items that fell demoralizingly short. I ended by giving voice to an 27-year-old Indigenous woman from Chile — a courageous and outspoken advocate for human rights and the environment — whom I met by chance on a crowded shuttle bus one evening.

There were some legitimately promising outcomes from Cali, two of which center on regenerating pools of funding for conservation efforts throughout the tropical world. But overall, as one NGO leader from England put it: “The pace of COP16 negotiations did not reflect the urgency of the crisis we are facing.”

True enough, but the progress made is still welcomed. The problem is, so much more is needed in a vanishingly short amount of time to, at best, slow the rate of climate calamities and biodiversity extinctions around the world.

In the plenary hall, delegates from 177 nations debated the language and intent of the principles and rules guiding the global protection of forests, oceans and biodiversity. The meeting ended abruptly on Saturday, Nov. 2, when too many delegates had to leave to catch flights as COP16 ran past its designated end time. Negotiations are to resume at an unspecified date in Bangkok. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: COP16/CBD: ‘A fund unlike any other’ will pay tropical nations to save forests

COP16 President Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s minister of the environment (center, in black), introduced an hour-long discussion on October 28 of a new, novel form of conservation finance being called TFFF, for Tropical Forest Forever Facility. She was joined by (from left), Jochen Flasbarth, Germany’s state secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development; Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment; Nik Nazmi bin Nik Ahmad, Maylaysia’s minister of natural resources; and Razan Al Mubarak, managing director of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

This story, easily my most upbeat and best read of the United Nations biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, came about as some good stories do: serendipity. Saturday, October 26, I was leaving after a second full day of scrambling, only partially successfully, for another substantive story. It was dark and I had not quite gotten the flow and content of this conference. At a vehicle area lined with taxis, I asked a woman standing behind me how I might get a ride back into in Cali, some 10 miles, away. Generously, she invited me to share her Uber. Her name was Frances Price with WWF-International (it turns out we had met years ago at a climate summit, but neither of us remembered). Like most everyone else at the conference, she knew Mongabay. So I told her I needed to identify more high-impact stories to pursue.

Right there, though I didn’t know it yet, she gave me the best story I would cover in eight days, and the most read and talked about: the now-organizing Tropical Forest Forever Facility, or TFFF. With finance promises barely registering the necessary funds for forest, ocean and biodiversity protection, this novel mechanism — an investment fund akin to how banks invest deposits and pay interest — promises to be “a game changer” in forest conservation. Fran had a WWF comms person send me background stories via WhatsApp and I started up the learning curve. On Monday, I was among the very few journalists who covered a high-profile event in the Colombian pavilion attended by some of the most influential people at COP16, including the president of the meeting, Susana Muhamed.

My story explains how the planned $125 billion fund could work; how investors will be repaid; how 70 tropical countries will be paid, year after year, if they keep their native forests standing. The story posted Wednesday, October 30, and started attracting readers. Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler summarized the story on LinkedIn and it drew some 750 engagements from around the world. Rhett sent me an email saying he had wanted to see a story on TFFF for six months, and was glad to finally have one on our news site. I wish I could say it was my plan all along. It wasn’t. But I’ll take that kind of luck any day while on a challenging assignment in covering a sprawling international meeting like COP16.

The Colombian pavilion, the host country’s centrally located meeting place during COP16, was filled to overflowing for the TFFF event in which the new funding tool for forest conservation was showcased. I arrived early and managed to grab a prime seat. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Action against forest biomass subsidies gains momentum at COP16/CBD

Barry Gardiner is a Labour Party member of the British Parliament who has been speaking out against public subsidies for forest biomass energy in the United Kingdom for more than a decade. He spoke at a side event at COP16 and showed a photo of the cooling towers at Drax, a UK energy company that is one of the world’s single-largest consumers of wood pellets for energy. The company has received roughly $9 billion in subsidies over the years from British taxpayers. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

In this story from Cali, Colombia, my second from the United Nations biodiversity summit (COP16), I draw a sharp distinction between this meeting and the four UN climate meetings I’ve covered since I began reporting in 2018 on the issues related to forest biomass for energy.

The difference is stark. Climate meetings to my questions? Don’t ask. This biodiversity meeting to my questions? Let me show you in the text where bioenergy is discussed.

Aside from interviewing forest campaigners, including two new sources from India and South Korea, I include again in this second story earlier reporting on Target 18 and comments made by Barry Gardiner. The British member of parliament has argued against the billions that has subsidized Drax’s burning of US and Canadian wood pellets in place of coal in its enormous energy plant in central England.

“The company has claimed almost $9 billion from British taxpayers to support its biomass energy generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions per unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal,” Gardiner says in my story. “That’s $9 billion in public money spent making our air pollution and our carbon emissions worse. More than that, Drax has been responsible for destroying some of the most precious old-growth, virgin forests in Canada, where some of the pellets come from.”

My COP16 wrap-up story details whether or not the text on biomass plantations remained in the final document. During negotiations, Souparna Lahiri, my source from India, told me Brazil argued adamantly to remove the language (Brazil is beginning to provide wood for pellet production) but somewhat remarkably, the European Union, which is dependent on wood pellets as a “renewable energy” source to replace coal, did not.

Souparna Lahiri, a climate campaigner with Global Forest Coalition in India, has been speaking out against forest biomass for energy on various panels at COP16 and tracking the language in a key summit document pertaining to issues related to bioenergy. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: COP16/CBD — Global biodiversity financiers strategize at COP16 to end ‘perverse subsidies’

The 16th United Nations biodiversity summit, called COP16, is being held in Cali, Colombia, near the country’s mountainous Pacific coast. The motto for the meeting is also its goal: Paz con la Naturaleza — Peace with Nature. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Since 2014, I’ve covered seven of the last nice United Nations climate summits, the last one in Glasgow, Scotland, during the pandemic, in 2021. In 2024, I decided against traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29, and go south instead, to Cali, Columbia, to cover my first UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the 16th such biennial Conference of the Parties. I’m glad I did.

COP16 is a far smaller meeting than any of the climate COPs I’ve covered, with 23,000 attendees instead of the 50,000 in Glasgow and more than 100,000 in 2023 in Dubai. The venue outside of Cali felt spacious and easier to navigate. The pace was significantly less harried. The two media centers were conveniently located not far from the entrance, and the press conference room was nearby (the last several climate meetings seemed intent on locating journalists are far from their sources and press conference rooms as physically possible). Some drawbacks: fewer NGOs provided daily briefings of the day-before’s happenings and fewer contextual press conferences were held until the very end. This made it difficult for this newcomer to the CBD to get a handle on what was happening. But with some diligent (perhaps manic) sourcing, I moved up the learning curve and spotted stories I needed to pursue.

Here’s my first one, which I started reporting on before I left for Colombia: a daylong, side event that focused on a crucial element of the CBD agreement approved during COP15 (in Montreal in 2022) — a vow to identify the more than $1.7 trillion paid out in subsidies and tax breaks that actually harm and destroy forests, oceans and species ($650 billion to fossil fuel companies alone), and redirect that money to conservation initiatives. The morning session produced a clear and substantive panel discussion, with a keynote speech by a British member of parliament, Barry Gardiner. He has been pushing back for a decade against the UK subsides paid to Drax ($1 billion annually) to burn wood pellets largely from North Carolina. I’ve heard about him for years. It was a pleasure to finally hear him speak and talk with him afterwards. My first few days in Cali — the lush, friendly home of salsa dancing — proved a solid start to my week at COP16.

Barry Gardiner, a Labour Party member of the British Parliament since 1997, was the keynote speaker on Sunday, Oct. 27, at a daylong meeting to discuss concrete plans to phase out $1.7 trillion in global economic subsidies known to cause environmental damage around the world. The trick of course, will be getting it done. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Interfaith leaders step up to protect the world’s ‘sacred’ rainforests

Seventy percent of the world’s remaining rain forests are in five countries: Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Indonesia and Colombia. Photo by Rhett Butler of mongabay.com

At the close of the UN Climate Summit in December 2018 in Poland, United General Secretary Antonio Guterres was so discouraged by the lackluster outcome that he told world leaders that he would admonish them to increase their urgency and ambition for climate mitigation during Climate Week in New York City (Sept. 23-27, 2019).

Guterres is not alone. Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, in her inimitable way, has inspired millions of school-age children around the world to organize and rally to demand that world leaders treat global warming at the existential crisis that more and more scientists are finding it is.

Add to that an emerging group of faith leaders — the Interfaith Rainforest Iniative (IRI) — that aims to use its moral clout and power in numbers to pressure national leaders to enact policies to slow, reverse and stop deforestation in five tropical countries, as my latest Mongabay story describes.

This kind of religious political lobbying comes with challenges and obstacles, as I explain. But here’s the goal:

“This isn’t about churches planting trees,” said Joe Corcoran, IRI program manager with UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme. “We want to say clearly and definitively to world leaders: religious leaders take this issue of forests and climate very seriously, and they are going to be holding public officials accountable to make sure these issues are addressed.”

Mongabay: Colombia, an example to world, balances conservation and development — a Q&A

Interviewing Colombia's minister of the environment on Sept. 21 at the headquarters of National Geographic. Photo by Enrique Ortiz

Interviewing Luis Murillo, Colombia’s minister of the environment, at the headquarters of National Geographic. Photo by Enrique Ortiz, Andes Amazon Fund

On Sept. 21, 2017, in Washington, D.C., I had the unique opportunity to interview one of the leaders of environmental protection in Latin America — Luis Murillo, the minister of the environment and sustainable development in the cabinet of President Juan Santos. Murillo was in DC that day for a ceremony sponsored by National Geographic honoring Santos for his aggressive action in doubling the amount of protected areas in his biodiverse country — from coral reefs to high-mountain rain forests — since taking office in 2010. My interview with Murillo preceded the event and was an exclusive for Mongabay. The story link is here.

In the weeks prior to my DC sojourn, I spent hours immersed in studying Colombian environmental politics, Santos’ environmental record, his controversial peace accord with the FARC that ended a 50-year civil war and earned him the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, and as much as I could about Murillo. Haley Weibel, a communications specialist with the Andes Amazon Fund in DC, was instrumental in providing key material for me to read. My good friend Enrique Ortiz, program director with the fund, provided critical insight about Santos, Murillo and the myriad challenges to their environmental legacy.

My time with Murillo was limited, so we wasted no time jumping into deep end of the issues I wanted to discuss. He was a pleasure to talk with. He spoke with great candor and insight, and never ducked when I asked him pointed questions. He knows what’s at stake in setting aside so much land in Colombia — land that just below the surface is rich with fossil fuels and precious metals. He made it clear that he believes his developing country has a moral obligation to not plunder these critical ecosystems for short-term economic gain. But he stressed that the world’s wealthiest nations should feel compelled to support Colombia financially so that it can actually protect and preserve all the land Santos has set aside for future generations. Extraction industrialists will only sit on the sidelines for so long. Deforestation in Colombia since the end of the civil war is already escalating. My interview with Murillo gets into such thorny issues and more. My thanks to Mongabay founder Rhett Butler for assigning me the story.

Mongabay: Colombian president honored in Washington, D.C. for efforts to protect biodiversity

Gary Knell of the National Geographic Society honoring Juan Santos, president of Colombia. Photo by Enrique Ortiz

When Rhett Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay, contacted me a few weeks back and asked if I could attend an event in Washington, D.C., I didn’t hesitate. The National Geographic Society would be honoring, on Sept. 21, 2017, President Juan Santos of Colombia for his unparalleled actions to preserve land, sea and biodiversity in his critically important Latin America country. By going, I would also get an exclusive interview with Luis Murillo, minister of the environment and sustainable development. That story is coming. The link here is to my story about Santos’ talk after receiving a plaque from Gary Knell.

President Santos greets indigenous leaders from Colombia on stage at the conclusion of the event at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, DC. Photo by Enrique Ortiz

KERRY: The Climate Crisis Is Here, And Republicans Are Threatening Us All

Former Vice President Al Gore listening to Secretary of State John Kerry’s blistering speech at the UN climate summit in Lima, Peru. Photo by Justin Catanoso

LIMA, Peru — In a clear message to the world that the United States, at least in the form of the Obama Administration, intends to lead prominently in the battle against climate change, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Lima on Thursday (Dec. 11) to deliver a blistering assault on GOP climate deniers in a 32-minute speech to a packed press conference.

I was just a few rows back and saw Al Gore‘s profile against the video screen with Kerry speaking. It made for a powerful image — two Americans who have been raising awareness about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions for a generation. I snapped the photo with my iPhone.

BusinessInsider published my story about Kerry’s speech, which includes a one-on-one interview I had with the Peruvian co-chair of the Green Climate Fund. Naturally, the GOP leadership in Washington intends to block Obama’s $3 billion pledge to the fund. The story contains a short video clip of the vice chair shot and edited by Michael Frierson, a UNC-Greensboro film professor.

A powerful quote from Kerry not in the story:

“Ask yourself, if Al Gore and Dr. Pachauri and Jim Hansen and the people who’ve been putting the science out there for years are wrong about this and we make these choices to do the things I’m talking about, what’s the worst thing that can happen to us for making these choices? Create a whole lot of new jobs. Kick our economies into gear. Have healthier people, reduce the cost of healthcare. Live up to our environmental responsibilities. Have a world that’s more secure because we have energy that isn’t dependent on one part of the world or another. That’s the worst that can happen to us.

“But what happens if the climate skeptics are wrong? Catastrophe. And we have a responsibility to put in place the precautionary principle when you’re given certain evidence and you’re a public official.”