Former Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez has described Guyana’s biodiversity leadership as a model for the Amazon region. He said the country is well positioned to launch its own biodiversity taxonomy internationally by 2027 or early 2028.
Duque, who co-founded the Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA) with President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, made the remarks during the panel “Financing Nature at Scale: Mobilising Capital, Instruments and Delivery Partnerships” at the Second GBA Conference on Saturday.
“This is the time to use this leadership that Guyana has built,” he told scores of delegates at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC).
He recalled that President Ali invited him two years ago to help start the initiative. The alliance began with about 40 members at its launch last year and has since grown to 147.
A biodiversity taxonomy is a classification system with measurable targets. It shows investors which projects qualify as nature-positive and how their results are tracked.
Duque said a Guyanese taxonomy, developed with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Natural Resources, would help Guyana attract new financing instruments and multilateral support for the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), the 30×30 initiative and the expansion of protected areas.
“That will be something that will have a tremendous reference model for other countries,” he said.
Duque pointed to Colombia’s experience. The country launched a green taxonomy in 2021 during his presidency, which he said gave investors confidence and opened the door to new green financing.
“Once they noticed that this was based on technical assessment, and it was transparent, and it was traceable, that kicked off the opportunity,” he said.
He also committed his Fundación Innovación para el Desarrollo(I+D) Foundation to sharing its technical knowledge with GBA members to help them develop their own taxonomies.
Duque said that with every visit he sees more development in Guyana, yet the country continues to regard nature as its greatest asset.
“If we are not capable of putting together all this narrative to show through Guyana that other Amazonic countries can do the same at a larger scale, I think we will miss the opportunity,” he said.
He encouraged all GBA member countries to have at least one financial instrument in place by next year’s conference.