Colombia launched ‘Camino a Cero’, the climate change strategy

In the framework of COP26, President Iván Duque launched the ‘Road to Zero’, Colombia’s climate strategy, long-term, which will guide national management to address the climate change crisis.

According to the president, in this way the country wants to establish itself “in a reference point for the agreement that we will reach in Glasgow “

“This strategy, the ‘Road to Zero’, is a way of showing the world that we are not only committed, but that we are going to achieve our goals. And we cannot wait to build the agreement, but we can be a benchmark ”, said the Head of State at the Colombia Pavilion in Glasgow (Scotland), where he presented the main aspects of the Colombian initiative.

The President expressed his gratitude to the Government of France, which supports the ‘Path to Zero’ through the French Development Cooperation Agency (AFD), and added that “the best way to receive support is by mobilizing resources for the achievements made. . And that is the reason why we want to live the experience of Green Bonds and that they become something that is attractive to investors around the world ”.

In this regard, he explained that “we issued the first Green Bonds in local currency a month ago and had a subscription seven times higher than expected. We did another issue last week and I said that, by having these very important objectives, they can change this market ”.

He also clarified that he hopes, in this way, to achieve the most important objectives for the country such as achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030.

“We cannot wait for the world to act or to come to an agreement. We must start working immediately. But I have come to Glasgow to say that we need to reach a great agreement that allows us to align the world in what we must place in the coming decades ”, emphasized Duque.

“If a country like Colombia, which only represents 0.6% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world, has made these commitments and has acted – decisively – in all these aspects, it is because we want to make a a call to action from the richest countries in the world, the most powerful, and also those that have contributed the most to the emissions that have generated this crisis to, please, act now, “said the President.

In that sense, he added, that “the commitment established in Paris to have USD 100 billion mobilized a year to achieve these objectives is something that has to happen today to generate confidence.”

President Duque reiterated the need to appeal to figures such as the cancellation of debts to the poorest countries in Latin America, which do not have the resources to apply reforms aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change, and to design tools to compensate the efforts carried out on climate action and commit them to the proposed goals.

Likewise, the President of the Republic reiterated Colombia’s goals to promote energy efficiency, biodivercities and the Circular Economy, among others, to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in the long term.

In the same way, he took stock of the actions carried out by the country in this area and highlighted programs such as progress in the energy transition, where 2,800 MW will be reached at the end of his mandate; and clean mobility, in which Colombia has legislation that has allowed it to have one of the largest electric public transport and cargo fleets in Latin America and the Caribbean.

He also mentioned the achievements in the goal of planting 180 million trees by 2022, for which, he said, this year the goal of having planted the first 120 million will be completed.

Participating in the event were Mauricio Claver-Carone, President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Carlos Eduardo Correa, Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia; Laurence Toubiana, Executive Director of the European Climate Foundation; and Philippe Lacoste, Director of Sustainable Development of France.