The COP 16 in Cali: A Hybrid Forum for Collective Education and intercultural Dialogue

Laura Balán^*

• University of Los Andes, Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia

The 2024 COP 16 held in Cali, Colombia, emerged not only as a pivotal event in the global response to the biodiversity crisis but also as a transformative pedagogical space. In the context of the Anthropocene-a proposed geological epoch defined by profound human impact on the Earth's systems-COP 16 served as a hybrid forum, convening scientists, indigenous communities, policymakers, activists, artists, and educators. These actors came together not only to negotiate international biodiversity targets but to engage in collective learning, critical dialogue, and contested meaning-making. This paper argues that the dialogic educational dimensions of COP 16 warrant deeper exploration, particularly as they illuminate emergent forms of governance and epistemic plurality in environmental politics. While the conference featured formal plenary sessions and negotiated outcomes under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the more transformative pedagogical practices occurred in unofficial and semi-official spaces-side events, roundtables, artistic interventions, and grassroots assemblies. Drawing from Paulo Freire's concept of dialogue as a liberatory practice rooted in mutual recognition and critical reflection, COP 16 can be seen as a living laboratory for what Santos calls an "ecology of knowledges"-a space where modern scientific epistemologies encounter and contend with indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local knowledges in asymmetrical but generative ways (Freire 1970;Santos 2014).In this sense, the conference represented a shift from monologic transmission of information to dialogic co-construction of meaning. The presence of multiple ontologies-ways of being and relating to the more-than-human world-challenged the assumption that biodiversity governance should be grounded solely in technocratic expertise. For instance, the Arhuaco people from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta have been emphasizing their millennial relational practices with sacred landscapes, inviting other actors to reconsider conservation as a spiritual and territorial commitment rather than merely a scientific imperative (Escobar 2008). Such engagements underscored the tensions and possibilities in hybrid forums where knowledge is not only exchanged but contested. Dialogic education in the context of COP 16 was not characterized by consensus but by negotiation. This is consistent with Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe's (2009) theorization of hybrid forums as spaces where conflicting actors collectively address uncertain and controversial issues. The tensions at COP 16-between conservation and development, local autonomy and global governance, ancestral rights and financial mechanisms-surfaced in discussions around biodiversity credits, land access, and benefit-sharing frameworks.The dialogue at COP 16, therefore, was not fully harmonious. Rather, it reflected the agonistic nature of democratic deliberation, as articulated by Chantal Mouffe (2000), where adversaries engage from divergent worldviews without erasing conflict. This perspective moves us beyond a naïve celebration of inclusion and urges a recognition of power imbalances that shape who speaks, who listens, and whose knowledge counts. For example, while indigenous leaders were given platforms to share their views, many noted the performative nature of their inclusion in high-level negotiations, where decisions remained largely technocratic and state-driven. Yet, these actors also subverted such dynamics through parallel dialogues and transnational solidarity networks formed during the conference. In parallel, Colombian business actors and international investors participating in the COP 16 Business and Biodiversity Forum echoed this positioning, presenting Colombia as a competitive and governable site for biodiversity markets and nature-based solutions. These efforts sought to rebrand the country not only as a custodian of global ecological patrimony but also as an emerging node in the global green economy. However, this state-led image-making belied deeper structural contradictions. Despite its performative commitment to sustainability, Colombia's environmental governance remains interwoven with extractive industries, uneven land governance, and persistent social-environmental conflicts. The deployment of ecological imagery and discourses of investment risks reproducing colonial tropesparticularly the portrayal of Colombia as a natural "El Dorado," simultaneously rich and unruly. As noted by Ojeda (2012), this dual imaginary enables external intervention and market integration while marginalizing local sovereignty and alternative ecological worldviews.Thus, while COP 16 offered Colombia a platform to recast its international image, it also revealed the tensions between geopolitical branding and the enduring legacies of territorial inequality and environmental contradiction. The dialogic practices at COP 16 were not only discursive but pedagogical and political. These spaces emerged through a hybrid configuration of official design and grassroots initiative. Some dialogues-such as youth assemblies, intercultural panels, and feminist ecological forums-were formally organized by the Colombian Ministry of Environment and allied institutions. However, a significant number of dialogic encounters took place in parallel and unofficial zones, particularly the "Green Zone" and the People's COP, which brought together over 700,000 participants and hosted more than 1,100 cultural and academic events, according to official bulletins and local reporting (El País Cali 2024).This hybrid configuration reflects a negotiated infrastructure of participation, where institutional actors opened space for dialogue, but much of its vitality and critical edge came from grassroots movements, Indigenous delegations, youth collectives, and artists, who reappropriated the conference as a living pedagogical process.The field of political ecology and environmental justice-especially in Latin America-has long been shaped by pluriversal commitments, grounded in Indigenous cosmopolitics, Afrodescendant territorial struggles, and feminist ecologies (Escobar 2008;Blaser 2010;de la Cadena and Blaser 2018). However, multilateral environmental summits like those under the Still, we acknowledge that this epistemic movement was uneven. As the reviewer notes, many of the most visible transformations occurred among those already working from nonmainstream or community-rooted knowledge systems. This does not mean that institutional actors were unmoved; rather, their shifts were often quieter, partial, or mediated through discomfort and uncertainty. The learning was mutual, but asymmetrical. The dialogic pedagogy of COP 16 thus resided not in the resolution of ontological conflict, but in its capacity to be inhabited as a condition of governance.While many of these dynamics faded from the official record after the conference's close, the pedagogical residues endure-inscribed in relationships, networks, and new commitments that continue to challenge the universalist norms of global environmental governance. One of the most contentious threads in the COP 16 dialogue was the role of investment in biodiversity conservation. While public-private partnerships were celebrated as essential to bridging the finance gap, local actors warned of the risks of green grabbing-where conservation initiatives lead to land dispossession, particularly for indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities (Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones 2012). The dialogue around investments illuminated a critical tension: can environmental finance be democratized, or does it inherently reproduce extractive relationships under a green guise? Educational interventions at COP 16 aimed to address this question by equipping communities with tools to critically evaluate and negotiate investment proposals. Workshops on environmental law, participatory mapping, and community protocols helped assert local agency. These initiatives align with critical pedagogy's goal of fostering conscientização-awareness of structural inequalities and the capacity to act against them (Freire 1970). The pedagogical work of COP 16, therefore, extended beyond knowledge transmission to the cultivation of political agency. As COP 16 concluded, its legacy lies not only in policy declarations but in the affective and epistemic infrastructures it helped build. The hybrid forum convened in Cali modeled an alternative mode of global environmental governance-one grounded in polyphony, reflexivity, and mutual care. Yet, its potential will only be realized if the dialogic spirit it fostered continues in concrete practices of solidarity, knowledge-sharing, and co-resistance.Future biodiversity governance must institutionalize such dialogic spaces, not as symbolic gestures but as integral to decision-making. This includes expanding community-led monitoring, embedding intercultural education in environmental policy, and ensuring that dialogues do not end when the conferences do. The Anthropocene demands not only new technologies and financial instruments but new forms of listening, learning, and living together.