Voices from the River Atrato

In Person Exhibition

Thursday 4 November

COP26 Green Zone, Stall C2, Clyde Suite, Glasgow Science Centre

The exhibition looks at how the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples of Choco Colombia used a legal case to protect Mother-Earth. They won a ground-breaking case before the Colombian Constitutional Court which gave rights to the River Atrato. In a landmark ruling, the Colombian Constitutional Court adopted an unprecedented ecocentric approach to human rights: the judges recognised Colombia’s Atrato River as a legal entity with environmental rights that need to be protected alongside the communities’ bio-cultural rights. The Court acknowledged the inherent interdependency between the environment and communities in the Atrato region.
 
Find out what the Guardians of the Atrato River are doing to ensure that this decision is implemented, the challenges that they face and the successes they have achieved. Explore what role the international organisations (ABColombia, SCIAF, CAFOD, Christian Aid and Oxfam) and collaboration with UK Universities – Glasgow, Nottingham and Portsmouth as part of the Colombia River Stories project – have played in supporting the communities in this process.
 

Find out more about how respecting and protecting human rights, environmental activists/defenders, and biodiversity are all inextricably linked and why it is essential to ensure that respect for the protection, promotion and fulfilment of human rights, and the protection of those who defend them, are a non-negotiable part of the measures adopted at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP26