30/10/2024 | Our colleague Dr Véronique Helfer was at COP16 in Cali, Colombia. She participated in the pre-COP course “Green Strategies for Blue Ecosystems” organized by CEMarin, during which she had the opportunity to visit and exchange with two communities of the Pacific living in mangrove ecosystems, the Bahia Malaga’s community of piangüera and the community of Punta Soldado. It was very inspiring to see how the young generation and communities of women were taking responsibility to restore and monitor their ecosystems and evaluate whether their practice (e.g. harvest of piangua) and life style was sustainable, and what innovative solutions they found to address challenges encountered in their practice, such as the design of floating mangrove plantations.
She could share the lessons learned from this enriching experience during a panel discussion that took place on the first day of the COP16, the Ocean day. Her main take home message was that “we should stop consider human and nature as two separate 'units'”, but approach nature and human societies jointly, as one socio-ecological system. Ecosystem governance measures should be transformed towards people-inclusive conservation and management approaches; this will permit protecting nature while ensuring social justice”. As concluding remark, she stressed: “There is only one earth, one ocean, one humankind; we are all facing the same challenges and we need strong commitment from all parties here to address those.”
Together with colleagues from the CEMarin, she could share her passion for coastal ecosystems and communicate on joint efforts to protect marine ecosystems with the general public of Cali, in the green zone within an exhibit hosted by the German Embassy Pavillon, where various Colombian-German collaborative projects where showcased.
She is glad that among the major outcomes of the COP16, lies the creation of a subsidiary body dedicated to the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities.
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