Start of a five-day convening in Colombia to address climate change inequalities
Atlantic Fellows and Dejusticia, a human rights organization, is holding a global convening, Planetary Health and a Just Transition, in Bogotá from October 14-18, 2024. Thirty-four leading researchers and activists who are all part of the Atlantic Fellows community are creating an action plan to tackle the inequalities of climate change, prioritizing justice and the environment. The five-day convening in Bogotá, Colombia, will build on the work of Fellows addressing climate inequities in their own countries. By working together, Fellows and partners hope to influence decisions taken in multilateral spaces such as the climate and biodiversity COPs and COP30 in Brazil in 2025.
Patronella Nqaba, Program and Impact Lead at the Atlantic Institute, said: “The group of people who will be in Colombia make up a diverse range of perspectives on how to address the climate crisis.
“These perspectives include artistic creation and expression, incorporating a climate perspective into food and health policy, governance of water and marine systems, building and working with climate justice movements, implementing conservation projects and other responses to the climate crisis by Indigenous peoples and other local communities, reforming the global financial architecture to align with climate commitments, among others.”
“This global gathering is a call for collective action and shared responsibility,” said Khalil Goga, Associate Executive Director of the Atlantic Institute. “Together we seek not only to understand the challenges we face but also to co-create solutions that put tackling inequalities at the heart of climate action.”
One week out from COP16 — the most important multilateral space for the protection and restoration of biological diversity—which Colombia and the city of Cali will host, the participants who will gather at this preliminary meeting hope to dialogue with representatives of environmental and climate organizations and movements, public officials, journalists and other actors to find common ground with the work they are carrying out in their own countries.
“For us, this is an exceptional opportunity to learn from the Colombian experience in order to find synergies with what is happening in the contexts we come from and to catalyze collaborations across borders,” said Atlantic Fellow, Lauren Burke, a participant in the event and organizer with more than 15 years of experience in climate and labor policy issues in the U.S.
Sergio Chaparro Hernández, International Coordinator of Dejusticia and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, said: “In a global scenario fragmented and plagued by multiple crises, the dilemma is to cooperate in fairer conditions to address the climate emergency and other planetary crises or go down a dangerous path that exacerbates conflicts and injustices. If we want to make peace with nature as is the COP16’s call, collaboration between disciplines and movements on a global scale is no longer an option, but a necessity. That is precisely what this event is aiming at.”
The group has invited other organizations, the academic community, the media, and the general public to a conversation that will take place at Dejusticia today, Monday, October 14.