Date: October 14, 2024
The act we have witnessed today is not a minor act. We have raised in Valle del Cauca, in Colombia and in the Colombian Pacific, the flag of the United Nations is a flag that represents world peace. Since 1948, this flag has represented the guarantees for the diverse peoples and nations of the world to have a forum for dialogue in search of peace to prevent armed confrontation from being the scenario that leads to the destruction of peoples.
That flag raised in Colombia, in a territory that in 2016 an emblematic peace agreement sought a beacon to resolve through the social rule of law its internal conflicts, to manage to resolve social injustice, to resolve exclusion by gender, by race, by regions, today stands in a country in search of peace.
A peace that is not easy to achieve, but where there is a great collective purpose and it cannot be elevated for a better purpose in Colombia than to seek Peace with Nature. This is the fundamental search of the XXI century, it is the search where the future of humanity will be defined. This Peace with Nature opens the question of fundamentally rethinking the industrial capitalist development model in which we have lived based on fossil fuels.
It is the moment in which the cultural diversity of the entire planet, the ancestral knowledge of the entire human experience in the millions of years of the planet's history, that we are barely an anecdote, the human species in those 4.6 billion years that the planet has, seeks to reconcile itself with the ecological cycles of life and, therefore, erecting that blue flag implies that the Pacific Valley Event Center becomes the host of the world for this great discussion, for this fundamental search to safeguard all forms of life, not only human life, because understanding that if we safeguard all forms of life we are safeguarding ourselves, we are safeguarding ourselves.
We chose a principle that is a principle of Peace with Nature, but that also means the search for peace among peoples, hopefully, Cali 2024 will be a before and an after for Colombia in recognizing its valuable cultural and biodiversity wealth and how to enhance it for a future of wellbeing for all. after for Colombia in recognizing its valuable cultural and biodiversity wealth and how to enhance it for a future of well-being for all. Hopefully, Cali 2024 will be a before and an after of the global mobilization of peoples towards the search to put biodiversity as a joint peace purpose. Hopefully, Cali 2024 will be that last pebble missing from the sea for this great global mobilization, but also hopefully, Cali 2024 will be remembered as a symbol that manages to balance the scales in this difficult armed confrontation that we live in the world at a time when genocide is looming again.
At a time when war between nations is once again the order of the day, we hope that Cali 2024 will also be that beacon of light for Peace with Nature and world peace. We welcome from Colombia with open arms all indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, peasants, environmental activists, civil society, international organizations and, of course, the delegations from international organizations and of course the government delegations so that in a broad, democratic and participatory process we can jointly seek these proposals for Peace with Nature and from this moment the Pacific Valley Events Center becomes an area of international jurisdiction to generate guarantees for this important negotiation and well now it has become real: we are entering the COP16.