President Juan Manuel Santos wants Colombia to take on a leadership role in tackling climate change in Latin America.
BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Recently elected President Juan Manuel Santos wants Colombia to take on a greater leadership role in tackling the effects of climate change in Latin America and protecting the region's biodiversity and rainforests as the Andean nation seeks to play a more high-profile role on the international stage.
"Colombia is not a country with high emissions, but we want to assume our responsibility with the planet and its future," Santos told the United Nations General Assembly in New York in his first address last month.
"Latin America can and wants to be part of the solution. Ours is the richest region in biodiversity of the planet. Â? Latin America as a whole must be a decisive region in saving the planet," he added.
Often described as the most biodiverse nation per square kilometer in Latin America, Colombia is home to relatively intact swathes of Amazon rainforest and an almost pristine Pacific coastline.
The country's protracted armed conflict has partly helped to preserve forests, has discouraged large-scale industrial projects in Colombia's biodiverse hotspots and has kept major logging companies in the Amazon at bay.
"Colombia is basically unspoiled. The country has an enormous starting point for sustainable development," said Juan Manuel Soto, head of Green Action in Colombia, a global non-governmental organisation that campaigns to reduce deforestation.
SUSTAINABLE GROWTH?
But protecting Colombia's biodiverse regions and keeping carbon emissions low is a pressing challenge as Latin America's third most populous country becomes more developed.
Colombia, the world's fifth largest coal producer and Latin America's fourth largest oil producer, is enjoying record foreign investment buoyed by improved security and steady economic growth driven by a commodities boom. But whether Colombia's natural resources can be exploited in a sustainable way is unclear.
"There are lots of competing interests in Colombia," Rob Fowler, head of the Ottawa-based Academy of Environmental Law, told AlertNet during a recent conference on climate change in Bogota.
Still, "Colombia has the capacity and is showing increasing interest to make a substantial contribution to climate change issues," he said.
Colombia's new president Santos has urged industrialized nations to help Latin America reduce deforestation by supporting initiatives that offer developing countries financial incentives and credits to preserve forests, under the developing UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, effort.
"With the appropriate economic compensations, we have an enormous capacity to reduce deforestation and for growing new forests, changing not only the history of the region but of the world as a whole," Santos said.
Reflecting the new government's commitment to environmental issues, the Santos government has proposed setting up a separate environment ministry Â? the ministry is currently attached to the ministry of housing and development Â? and has appointed Colombia's first special presidential advisor on the environment.
"The separation of ministries will hopefully bring about a more robust management of the environment and the countryÂ?s resources, and help mitigate the effects of climate change," said Colombian Manuel Rodriguez, a former environment minister.
He added that Colombia has, "immense water reserves but they are managed very badly."
Colombia is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, experts say. The country faces coastal erosion on both its Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean coastlines, and communities living in low lying coastal areas are at risk from rising sea levels.
In the Andean mountains, the retreat of glaciers is already affecting local water supplies. Local glaciologists estimate that if Colombia's glaciers continue to melt at current rates then within 25 years they are all expected to disappear.
BIOFUEL GROWTH
In recent years, Colombia has focused on developing its biofuel sector Â? renewable fuels derived from crops such as maize and sugar cane - to spur economic growth and rural development.
But experts increasingly question whether such fuels should be a leading part of the push to replace fossil fuels, in part because using large quantities of food crops for fuel can push up international food prices and potentially threaten food security. A push to increase crop production for biofuels also threatens forests, as farmers seek to expand their fields.
"Biofuels can present an alternative to fossil fuels but they can bring problems like the clearing of land and forests," Fowler said. "The main challenge is how to become a major biofuel producer in a sustainable way."
To keep carbon emissions low, Colombia also needs to focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its agricultural sector, the biggest source of carbon emissions in the country. Such efforts generally involve better land use and promoting UN-led Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in Colombia's agricultural sector.
CDM projects allow industrialized nations to meet emissions targets in part by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.
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