Peace brings hope for biodiversity: Santos

Colombia’sPresident Juan Manuel Santos yesterday hailed his country’s peace dealwith the Farc guerrilla group as a chance to preserve his country’sbiodiversity after decades of violence.“We need to reconcile alsowith the environment, which was a big victim of the armed conflict,”Santos said after receiving an international environmental award fromthe Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London.“The number of barrels ofoil that we’ve spilled in our rivers, in our seas, was the equivalent of14 times the Exxon Valdez. And that was a huge environmental disaster,”he said, referring to the 1989 oil spill in Alaska.The peace accord signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) in November 2016 ended the 53-year conflict.Inaddition to the human cost of the violence, which left 260,000 peopledead and more than 60,000 missing, it also had serious consequences forthe environment.The country has suffered illegal mining and attacks on oil pipelines as well as the felling of forests for drug trafficking.Santoswas awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts to end hiscountry’s conflict, but he said his work was not finished.“We thinkthat Colombia’s future is very much dependent on how we protect ourbiodiversity,” he said. Santos was joined in London by his EnvironmentMinister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, who said the implementation of thepeace deal had enabled researchers to reach areas of the rainforestpreviously off limits.“The peace creates the right conditions forbetter protecting the environment, particularly in areas where we hadour conflict before,” he said.But he cautioned that pockets ofviolence, notably due to drug trafficking, continue to hamper thegovernment’s environmental ambitions.Although the peace accord hasbrought greater access to the rainforest, Kew Science researcherMauricio Diazgranados warned that it had also led to rapid development.