EU, UN Host Summit on Cleaning, Protecting the World’s Oceans

World leaders met Friday in the French northwest coastal city of Brest for a three-day summit aimed at taking action to clean and protect the earth’s oceans.

The One Ocean Summit is being hosted by France, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union Council, along with the United Nations. The goal of the meetings is to raise awareness on issues such as pollution and over-fishing and get international commitments to address and reverse the situation.

French President Emmanuel Macron opened the summit with a call for such commitments “and useful actions, in hopes of setting “an international agenda for 2022.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke soon after, citing threats to the ocean and called for the adoption of an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of the ocean’s biodiversity. She said she was confident it could be adopted this year.

Von der Leyen cited a treaty signed in 2016 by the U.S., China, Russia, the EU and others, to protect the Ross Sea in Antarctica. She said, “They overcame their differences to protect this rich ecosystem. We can do it again.”

The treaty is being driven by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, ((HAC)) an intergovernmental group of at least 70 countries co-chaired by Costa Rica and France and by the United Kingdom, aiming to get at least 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans protected by 2030.

U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry spoke at the summit and called out illegal fishing operations that use drag nets that destroy habitat and deplete the world’s fish stocks. Kerry said illegal activity accounts for one-fifth of all the world’s fishing.

On the sidelines of the summit, the United States and France issued a joint statement to announce they are launching negotiations on a global agreement to reduce plastic waste in the world’s oceans. They expect the negotiations to begin at the 5th U.N. Environment Assembly (UNEA) to be held in Nairobi later this month.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

Pacific Alliance: Singapore arrives at the Summit in Buenaventura - Cali - Colombia

Nine years have passed since Cali hosted, in May 2013, the delegates attending the seventh summit of the countries that make up the Pacific Alliance to promote protocols and developments in trade, culture, tourism, technology and the environment.

The Pacific Alliance is made up of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, and is a mechanism for economic and commercial integration, based on four pillars: free movement of goods, services, capital and people and a transversal axis of cooperation. The group was founded in 2011.

For nine years there have been changes for the deep integration bloc, which held its Summit yesterday at the Bahía Málaga Naval Base, in Buenaventura.

The heads of state of Colombia attended, Iván Duque; from Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and Peru, Pedro Castillo, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard.

(Also read: What is behind the crime of indigenous leader Albeiro Camayo?)

The president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, also arrived. His country has been an observer state since 2013, it is not associated, but it hopes to be, after a request since 2018.

Also present were the Foreign Minister and Vice President of Colombia, Marta Lucía Ramírez; the Foreign Minister of Chile, Andrés Allamand; and the Colombian Trade Ministers, María Ximena Lombana; from Mexico, Tatiana Clouthier Carrillo; from Peru, Roberto Helbert Sánchez, and from Singapore, Gan Kim Yong.

During the period in the Presidency pro temporeAccording to President Duque, business expectations of more than 40 million dollars and investment of more than 84 million dollars were achieved.

He added that the efforts to incorporate Singapore and Ecuador were intensified, the number of observer states increased and improvements were achieved in customs and stock exchange procedures.

(Also: Camayo, a man who gave his life to defend his territory and his people)

Within the Alliance, the Bahía Málaga-Buenaventura Declaration was proposed.

At the Summit of the Alliance it was planned, in turn, to formalize the delivery of the Presidency pro tempore from Colombia to Mexico.

Likewise, the presidents and high dignitaries welcomed Singapore as a new partner, the first in the Alliance.

“Singapore arrives with its experience, with its tradition, as one of the main centers of innovation, science and technology on the planet. It also comes with a valuable contribution to the fourth industrial revolution and to enrich the trade and investment relationship, being one of the world leaders in port logistics and foreign trade logistics”, assured the Colombian head of state.

Singapore’s entry is the first recorded in the Alliance’s decade of life and, according to President Duque, above “to mobilize investment and to open up to the trade of the founding countries of the Pacific Alliance. This arrival of Singapore marks a historic milestone, and it is one more step with the prompt arrival of Ecuador as a full member of the Pacific Alliance”.

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Duque stated that Singapore means technical cooperation in areas where they are governed by excellence, such as educational quality, technological value-added projects in the industrial sector and the ability to train a relevant workforce, “to take on the challenges of the fourth revolution industry and position Latin America as a programming center and as a consolidated center for goods and services”.

With the entry of Singapore, additionally, the doors to cooperation are opened in various areas such as energy, food trade, the digital economy, infrastructure and urban solutions, port management and logistics and the interoperability of the Single Trade Windows. Exterior.

empowerment of women

At the Summit of the Pacific Alliance, an action plan was promoted, within a period of six months, to promote greater participation of companies led by women in production chains, in such a way as to favor their insertion in the intra-regional and extra-regional trade, with special emphasis on the entrepreneurship of rural women.

This is one of the two proposals within the Alliance that were discussed at the Summit, which takes place at the Bahía Málaga Naval Base, in Buenaventura.

According to Vice President and Foreign Minister Ramírez, the economic empowerment of women is sought.

The second proposal aims to carry out, in those same six months, a diagnosis of public policies at the economic level with a gender approach to identify strategic elements that increase and improve the participation of women, in the face of sustainable economic growth and with equity.

“With the endorsement of the Foreign Ministers and Trade Ministers, this proposal will become a mandate of the Pacific Alliance, which will be in charge of the Gender Technical Group,” said Ramírez.

The senior official highlighted that on December 11, 2020, within the framework of the XV Summit of the Pacific Alliance, held in Chile, the leaders of Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Peru signed the ‘Declaration of the Pacific Alliance on Equality of Gender’, together with the roadmap for the autonomy and economic empowerment of women of this regional integration mechanism.

With this, it seeks to guide the work of the Pacific Alliance in the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies and initiatives, to promote the economic and social development of women in the member countries.

At this Summit, the signing of the Declaration on Strengthening the Creative Economy was scheduled, which will later allow for a roadmap for economic recovery and social transformation in the countries of the Pacific Alliance in this important sector of the economy.

At the same time, in Buenaventura, authorities are looking for solutions to the critical social situation and public order, since more than 700 people were displaced from their homes in Bajo Calima, a rural area of ​​this district, due to the presence of organized armed groups, such as the ‘ Clan del Golfo’ that does not allow the entry of human rights defenders or any State official.

Social leaders make a call from Buenaventura for the Government to speed up the implementation of all the commitments made when there was a civic strike in 2017, among them, that the 400,000 inhabitants of this city have the drinking water that they have been demanding for a service not every three days, but 24 hours.

CALI