Global Convening on Planetary Health and a Just Transition in Bogotá Ahead of COP16: Collaboration Across Borders to Combat the Climate Crisis and Inequalities
- 34 researchers and global activists from the Atlantic Fellows community will meet for a week in Bogotá to discuss a just transition to address the world’s climate crisis.
- The week will have several key spaces to strengthen collective action and climate justice, as a prelude to COP16 in Cali, Colombia.
- Dejusticia and the Atlantic Institute, which supports the global community of Fellows, invite the public to register for the open conversation with the Atlantic Fellows, to learn about their perspectives and reflections, which will take place this Monday, October 14, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Bogotá D.C., October 11, 2024.- Dejusticia and the Atlantic Institute based at the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, UK are honored to announce the Global Convening on Planetary Health and a Just Transition, to be held in Bogotá from October 14-18, 2024. This event will bring together 34 leading researchers and activists from around the world, who are all part of the Atlantic Fellows community, to build alternative narratives, exchange knowledge and share strategies. This event will bring together visions of the Global South for a just transition in a way that highlights the need for reforms at all levels to build more harmonious relationships with nature.
The climate crisis, biodiversity loss and other interrelated planetary crises require collaborative and effective responses. This global gathering proposes to build on the knowledge and experience of leaders whose work is focused on combating the multiple inequalities related to the climate emergency in their own contexts. Participants will build an action plan that fosters broader collaborations among the movements, organizations and networks of which they are a part.
“The group of people who will be in Colombia make up a diverse range of perspectives on how to address the climate crisis,” said Patronella Nqaba, Program and Impact Lead at the Atlantic Institute, adding, “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.”
The event has a clear strategic objective: to prepare the ground to strengthen collective action in the face of the climate crisis and to influence the decisions that will be taken in multilateral spaces such as the climate and biodiversity COPs. “This global gathering is a call for collective action and shared responsibility,” said Khali 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.
For Sergio Chaparro Hernández, International Coordinator of Dejusticia and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, this event takes place at an ideal moment when the environmental and climate conversation occupies a central place in Colombia which, in turn, gives it credibility in speaking to the world about such issues. “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.”
We invite organizations, the academic community, the media, and the general public to closely follow the activities of the global convening and to participate in the public conversation that will take place at Dejusticia this Monday, October 14 between 4:00pm and 6:00 pm. To attend this space, please register in the following form.
Press contacts
For more information about the Global Convening on Planetary Health and a Just Transition, including details about the agenda and participants, please contact:
Adriana Abramovits – – +573163565681
Diego Zambrano – – +573013369282
