Summary

This Blue Zone Faith Pavilion event will be held at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday, October 24. It will coincide with the United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties 16, to be held from 21 October-1 November 2024 in Cali, Colombia. This in-person panel will highlight the challenges in protecting biodiversity and the human right to equitable access to water. Particular attention will be paid to the role that extractive industries like mining pose toward meeting the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Mining’s threats to water and biodiversity touch on a number of cross-cutting issues, including but not limited to: health, migration, gender, Indigenous rights, education, and climate change. 

Background & Rationale

 Water is threatened by the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Human rights are integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite this, the management of water is frequently not driven by human rights norms, but rather by the interests of big businesses seeking maximum profits. This leads to human rights violations and grave consequences in the context of a global water crisis. We need a profound re-valuing of this life-giving resource in order to safeguard the human right to water, and all the biodiversity that depends upon it, for current and future generations[1].

Violations of human rights often go hand-in-hand with environmental violations. The same logic of capital-generating extraction drives both forms of violations against the community of life. To move forward and achieve the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, we need to promote measures that protect human rights and biodiversity simultaneously. Civil society (including faith communities), governments, and the business community, all need to respect our global commons and make changes.

Extractive industries like mining threaten water and biodiversity. Mining is a water-intensive industry, and throughout the world we have witnessed both short and long-term environmental degradation due to the impacts of legal and illegal mining. Short-term profit-seeking often leads to long-term costs for ecosystems and communities: remediating the damages can cost billions of dollars[2] and the damages may be beyond repair. Mining’s threats to water touch on a number of cross-cutting issues, including but not limited to: health, migration, gender, Indigenous rights, education, climate change, and biodiversity loss. There will be an increase in mining for ‘transitional minerals’ that are needed in the change to renewable energy systems; this urgent need cannot override the rights based just transition or it will simply repeat the existing problems.

Objective/Desired Outcome

This side event will showcase a diverse array of global voices who will raise awareness about water, biodiversity, and mining. This panel will inspire real action toward achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets, suggesting actionable pathways forward. These pathways may include educational strategies, strategies for governments to require businesses to include the environmental externalities, coalition building, and ways to center the wisdom of communities on the frontlines.

Time / Date / Location

Thursday, October 24

10:45 a.m.-11:45 a.m.

Location: Faith Pavilion in Blue Zone, Centro de Eventos Valle del Pacifico, Cali, Colombia

 Language

 This event will be held in English.

Sponsors

This event is co-sponsored by the NGO Mining Working Group, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, Passionists International, and the Temple of Understanding.

[1] The Mining Working Group has been actively working towards the human right to water and sanition for over a decade. Our resource for communities is online at: https://bit.ly/mwg-sdg6

[2] USGS, 2018. Available: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/mining-and-water-quality