Dear Colleagues,

I would like to invite all of you to our webinar that will take place on Tuesday, Dec 15.

Attached you will find the flyer. Please feel free to share and promote or register on the event.

With my best regards,

Elena Cedillo

Welcome to a unique webinar next Tuesday December 15^th!

In the framework of the 5-year anniversary of the Paris agreement, this webinar will present the case of the Río Atrato in Colombia, a river with legal rights, and the work of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities to protect both the river’s rights and their own.

The River Atrato, a major hotspot for biodiversity, has suffered the pressure of extractive industries and has been degraded and polluted, affecting the well-being and health of local populations. In the past 50 years of armed conflict in Colombia, local communities have been disproportionately affected by the violence.

With support from civil society organisations, the communities won the historic ruling T-622 in the Constitutional Court in 2016: the River Atrato was recognised as a subject of rights and local communities had their rights to life, health, water, food security, healthy environment and culture reaffirmed.

As a result, the Commission of Guardians of the Atrato was set up, with representatives from the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, to exercise legal representation for the river as a subject of rights.

The LWF, the Commission of Guardians, Siembra, Climate Alliance Europe, Climate Alliance Vorarlberg, FIAN international and FIAN Colombia invite you to this event with a unique panel of speakers. They will share their perspectives, presenting the experience of local communities as well as major lessons from this emblematic case.

This webinar will take place on 15^th December at 4pm CET/10am Colombia with:

• Maryury Mosquera, Guardian of the Atrato for the Community Council COCOMOPOCA
• Nixon Chamorro, Guardian of the Atrato for the Chocó Indigenous Roundtable
• Juan Carlos Morales Gonzalez, Director of FIAN Colombia
• Harol Rincon Ipuchima, Climate change and biodiversity coordinator of COICA and vice-president of Climate Alliance Europe
• Musonda Mumba, Chief of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Unit of UNEP

Moderator: Elena Cedillo – LWF Program Executive for Climate Justice

Register on Zoom to attend the webinar by following this link (interpretation will be available in English, Spanish, French and German) or

Watch the event in Spanish on YouTube