Opinion: Colombia's new president and how to achieve just climate solutions

On Sunday, June 19, Gustavo Petro was elected president of Colombia: a leftist politician who, in fact, during his youth, belonged to the now extinct urban guerrilla group M19. The now president, besides having banners of reconciliation and redistribution, as a candidate had a discourse that could be considered environmental or climatic. While still a candidate and in an interview with the most widely circulated newspaper in the country, Petro stated that, if he became president, the first decision he would take would be to stop contracting oil exploration in Colombia. 

The pro-environmental discourse could also be identified in his government plan. One of the chapters of the document was entitled "Colombia, economy for life", which talked about the fight against climate change, ordering the territory around water, generating energy from the sun, wind and water, and achieving a zero waste society. In addition, there was a whole chapter, perhaps the longest, called "from an extractivist economy to a productive economy". The signs were good. Or, at least, they were on the way to what science has told us it is time to do. 

Although once he became president his discourse has become more moderate - "from words to deeds there is a long way to go", as we say in Colombia - Petro once again raised environmental demands and demands against the failed war on drugs during the United Nations General Assembly held in September in New York, United States. In this intervention there were phrases that reminded that the countries with higher incomes - almost all of them located in the global north - were responsible for the highest greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore, for climate change. While low- and middle-income countries, such as Colombia, were experiencing many of the consequences. 

Again, Petro's discourse is not wrong. However, his great challenge as president will be to understand that his will be a transition government. By this I mean that the fight against climate change must not only be marked by the warnings that science has given us, but it must be a fair fight. Any apparent climate solution that reinforces the gaps, that forgets the most vulnerable, that does not focus on gender or that forgets the indigenous and Afro communities, will be a failed solution. 

We would like, of course, to be able to switch off coal and oil. Stop emitting now! Whether we are a northern country or Colombia, which only represents 0.6% of global emissions. But this decision must be a planned one, one that takes into account what will happen to the jobs of the people who work in this sector or to the communities whose income depends almost exclusively on this. The second option is better than doing it now, without planning, or doing it progressively until it is completed in a couple of years. Because climate change is also a human rights crisis. And if we don't think about both in tandem, we will lose the opportunity to mitigate this crisis in a just way. 

Petro has the speech. Now he needs to understand that his government must be one of transition. One that leaves the first steps, the right signals so that, facing a certain opportunity that climate change is giving us to rethink a new society, we do not lose sight of the fact that it must be a fairer one.