The conservation of Caquetá’s tropical forests should be a priority for the department. According to Global Forest Watch, in the last two decades it has lost more than 756,000 hectares of forest and for many years the municipalities of San Vicente del Caguán and Cartagena del Chairá, for example, have had the highest deforestation rates.
In compliance with its mission objectives, IRI-Colombia is developing the second stage of the advocacy campaign that began in August 2023, which seeks to advocate for the inclusion of programs focused on the conservation and restoration of Amazonian ecosystems in departmental and municipal development plans.
For this reason, on February 19 and 20, it held meetings with the Governor’s Office of Caquetá and the mayors’ offices of Curillo, Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán, in which it presented its proposal for the environmental component of these local and regional planning instruments. As a result of these meetings, the governor of Caquetá, Luis Francisco Ruiz, and the municipal mayors of Cartagena del Chairá, Curillo and San Vicente del Caguán -Darwin Andrés Flórez, Javier Villanueva and Luis Trujillo Osorio, respectively- committed to include the Initiative’s proposals in their Development Plans, as well as two of its members in each of the Territorial Planning Councils.
These proposals respond to the Programmatic Agreement “A new opportunity of hope for the Amazon”, signed by both the governor and the municipal mayors, with which they committed themselves to work during their mandate to control deforestation and the loss of biodiversity and, in general, the protection of the Amazon rainforest.
In addition, they obey the government program of the department and the municipalities and have three fundamental elements at their core: the need to explicitly address the problem of deforestation and the urgency of halting its advance in the Development Plan; to recognize the transformative power of the community in the conservation of the Amazon rainforest; and to identify potential sources of resources that will help the conservation and restoration of the Amazon ecosystem.
Schedule of meetings
- February 19, in Curillo: meeting with the mayor of Curillo, Javier Villanueva Posso, and members of his team.
- February 20, in Florencia: meeting with the Governor of Caquetá, Luis Francisco Ruiz, and his work team.
- February 20, in Florencia: meeting with the mayor of Cartagena del Chairá, Darwin Andrés Flórez.
- February 23, in San Vicente del Caguán: meeting with the mayor of San Vicente del Caguán, Luis Trujillo Osorio.
