By Juan Manuel Santos
On my first day in office as Colombia’s president just over 15 years ago, I met with the leaders of four indigenous peoples in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta – the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa, and Kankuamo. As we stood together in the shadow of a magnificent mountain range next to the Caribbean Sea, the wisdom they imparted transformed how I viewed my responsibilities as a leader. It also changed how I saw our collective duty as transitory inhabitants of this increasingly bruised planet.
I was given a wooden baton – a symbol of power – to remind me to strive toward two goals: peace among our citizens after 50 years of conflict, and peace with nature. The indigenous leaders warned me that our relationship with the natural world had been harmed, that nature was angry, and that we would suffer the consequences. Two weeks later, La Niña hit Colombia with devastating floods, and I spent the first two years of my administration supporting those affected and preparing for the next natural disaster.
We now live in a world threatened by shattering storms – both physical and ideological. Just recently, flooding killed at least 1,006 people in Pakistan, with 2.5million reportedly evacuated from Punjab and Sindh, regions that were also hit by colossal flooding in 2022. Disturbing attacks on multilateralism and the post-World War II institutional foundations of human rights are making matters worse. Our entire value system, it seems, is under siege.
But as The Elders (a group of former leaders that I currently chair) recently stated, fatalism and cynicism are never options, no matter how relentless the crises we face may be. Multilateralism was developed precisely for times like these –to guide us through disagreements and disasters, with no exceptions.
This November, two major summits aimed at tackling global problems will take place. The first is the second World Summit for Social Development. The first such summit 30 years ago brought together an unprecedented number of world leaders, marking a new chapter for multilateralism in the service of human development. The other summit next month, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, will address the existential crisis of global warming.
As president of Colombia, I saw firsthand that when disaster strikes, the poor are always hit the hardest. That is why we created various institutions to coordinate assistance following the 2010 floods. Now, it is essential that all countries take heed of climate warnings and scale up their own resilience and adaptation policies.
A timely new report from researchers at the University of Oxford and the United Nations Development Programme shines a spotlight on this issue. It finds that almost 80% of multidimensionally poor people –whose deprivations are measured beyond low incomes – across 108 developing countries, totalling 887 million individuals, live in regions exposed to at least one climate-related hazard (such as extreme heat, drought, flooding, or air pollution).
The report also confirms that people in lower-middle-income countries confront more overlapping climate hazards than those in low-income or upper-middle-income countries. And while upper-middle-income countries have relatively fewer poor people, this cohort is still exposed to air pollution and flooding in particular. Such findings underscore the need for a just energy transition.
To that end, Colombia introduced Latin America’s first carbon tax in 2016. Now, in the run-up to COP30, The Elders are calling for G20 countries to use their financial advantages to “turbocharge the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.” At COP29 last year, world leaders committed to provide $300 billion to fund such efforts, even though the total needed is closer to $1.3 trillion. Given the size of this gap, we welcome the International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion ruling that states are legally responsible for climate harms, particularly those caused by the fossil-fuel industry.
With the Planetary Health Check warning of accelerating deterioration and the growing risk of reaching dangerous tipping points, we urgently need to improve our understanding of where and how both the planet and its people are suffering. That means reinvigorating efforts to support the interconnected agendas of climate action and poverty reduction.
When I left office in 2018, I met again with the indigenous leaders who had entrusted their hopes to me. I tried to return the baton. But to my surprise, they asked me to keep it, and then articulated a new principle that the international community would do well to consider. They spoke of the spiritual bond between humans and nature: nothing can be taken without first asking for permission and giving something in return. We break this bond at our peril. Today, many connections are broken – between peoples and between humans and the planet. Our task in the years ahead is to restore them.
The writer, a former president of Colombia, is Chair of The Elders and received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.
©Project Syndicate
