The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, signed the Escazu Agreement on Saturday, which aims to protect the environment and encourage citizen participation in this area, before heading to Egypt to attend COP27.
This text seeks to guarantee access to information and environmental justice, and therefore includes a strategy of «accompaniment» to environmental defenders, including the nation’s ethnic peoples, according to Colombian radio station Caracol.
«This is a vital law for the citizenship of Colombia and we have done it in a joint work between Congress, the Government and the citizenship. The political change brought a change that had not been possible in three years and it is the ratification of the Escazú Agreement», emphasized the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development.
This text was signed in 2019 by the government of Iván Duque, but had not been ratified by the last Congress, so this has been the last step for its entry into force.
Escazú is a treaty developed by 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries to improve «access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters» in the region, according to the agreement.
