Image (c) Carol Schaffer
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is working towards presenting the Summit on Climate Change a gift for humanity – the world’s largest ecological corridor.
President Santos has announced he would like to work with neighboring Brazil and Venezuela to create a massive 135 million hectares of ecologically protected area. His proposal will state that the area is needed to protect the world against climate change and protect the unique biodiversity in the area.
The size of the proposal is staggering – 135 million hectares is more than twice the size of France and is designed to protect three key areas in particular, the Andes, the Amazon and the Atlantic. The idea of world’s largest ecological corridor was presented to the President by Dr Martin von Hildebrand, an anthropologist dedicated to protecting the Amazon Rainforest.
Termed as the ‘Lungs of the World’ by environmental scientists this proposal has the possibility to help mitigate climate change as well as protecting a vast wealth of plant and animal life.
Colombia in particular has much to lose if current climate trends continue. President Santos stated that “our biodiversity is as important as what oil is to Saudi Arabia wealth, and so we have to keep it.”
“What we (need to) do, as of this moment, is to establish all communication mechanisms with Brazil and Venezuela to the three we can present, hopefully at the end of the year in Paris, a concrete and realistic proposal and make the world understand the enormous contribution that this would do in order to keep humanity alive and mitigate climate change ”
