21 Oct 2024 WACC partners to highlight key role of local voices at UN global biodiversity summit

WACC partners from Latin America are set to demonstrate the essential place of local voices exercising communication rights for climate justice as the United Nations Biodiversity Conference  – COP 16 opens today in Cali, Colombia.

Every two years the UN event gathers governments and other stakeholders to strategize on action to protect the world’s biodiversity, an essential piece of the puzzle in the fight against climate change. Representatives at this year’s summit, running until 1 November, will report on progress within on Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at COP 15 in 2022 and are expected to agree new financial mechanisms to protect biodiversity.

WACC is supporting and accompanying several of its partners as they raise local voices at the summit as both media organizations and civil society participants, says Lorenzo Vargas, WACC Communication for Social Change program manager.

“WACC believes that it is impossible to tackle the climate emergency, both in terms of decarbonizing our economy and of protecting critical ecosystems, unless the voices of local communities in the South — who are often both victims of climate injustice and prime movers in the social movements protecting the world’s rivers and forests — are the center of the conversation.”

Voices of the Amazon

In the context of WACC’s multi-year Voices of the Amazon project, the Latin American Association of Popular Education and Communication (ALER) is sending a COP 16 delegation of 14 community reporters from across Latin America to cover proceedings in the event’s Green Zone for civil society and Blue Zone for governments.

The delegation, which includes communicators from the Amazon Radio Network (RNA) in Brazil and the Ecuadorean Network of Community Radio Broadcasters  (CORAPE), plans to report in Spanish, Portuguese, and some Indigenous languages. Their content will be amplified by ALER’s network of community radio stations across Latin America and the Caribbean.

“ALER’s coverage will pay special attention to issues such as the relationship between peacebuilding and ecosystem protection, alternatives to extractivism, social movements and nature, and the rights of Indigenous people,” says Vargas.

Voices of the Andean moorlands

Grupo Comunicarte in Colombia, a WACC partner for the Voices of the Amazon project and implementer of the three-year initiative Voices of the Andean Moorlands (Voces y Susurros de los Páramos), is sending 30 reporters from 18 community radio stations across the country to COP 16.

According to Vargas, the delegation will report under the common theme of “local voices in support of peace, life, and biodiversity,” broadcasting from a mobile unit in the green zone and in neighborhoods across Cali.

Voices of local communities

“Coverage of COP 16 by both ALER and Grupo Comunicarte is expected to be among the few instances of coverage by independent community media and with connections to the many local communities across Latin America that are at the forefront of efforts to protect essential ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest,” says the WACC expert on communication rights and climate justice.

He notes that the reporting at COP 16 builds on the WACC partners’ coverage at previous environmental policy-making events in Latin America, such as the Amazon Summit 2023 in Brazil and the Pan-Amazon Social Forum 2024 in Bolivia, and is expected to serve as a model for WACC’s engagement in the UN Climate Change Conference – COP 30 meetings next year in Belém, Brazil.

“Unless these communities are able to communicate their concerns and solutions, and unless their voices are heard and considered in public debate, it will be impossible to come up with sustainable legitimate solutions to the climate crisis,” Vargas stresses.

WACC is proud to partner with organizations such as ALER and Grupo Comunicarte, who not only share this vision but are also an inspiration to those working for the communication rights of those who have been historically silenced, he adds.

WACC is supporting the ALER delegation together with the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF), Deutsche Welle Akademie, and Universidad del Valle (Colombia). WACC, PWRDF, and the Dutch government are supporting the Grupo Comunicarte reporters.

A representative of an Indigenous community speaks to ALER in the Blue Zone at COP 16 in Cali, Colombia.
Photo: ALER