As Colombia hosts a UN biodiversity summit, its own Amazonian rainforest is in crisis

By Jesica Lopez, PhD Candidate, Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University

The city of Cali, in Colombia, is hosting the UN’s 16th biodiversity summit, known as Cop16. The summit, which runs until Friday, November 1, is focused on how countries will fulfil previous pledges to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and water and restore 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.

It’s a noble aim, yet Colombia itself shows just how far we have to go.

If you travel south east from Cali, over the Andes mountains, you drop into the Amazon basin. From there, rainforest stretches for hundreds of kilometres to the border with Brazil – and far beyond. This…

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