Half-Earth Day 2024:
Knowledge for Life
Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Location: La Casa Humboldt
Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia
Leveraging Knowledge to Support Global Species Conservation
Half-Earth Day® convenes people from around the world and across disciplines to share their perspectives and provide thought leadership on how we can work together to safeguard biodiversity and ensure the health of our planet for future generations. Half-Earth Day showcases scientific advances while addressing the cultural moment, empowering conversation around diverse topics, including crucial habitat restoration projects, the intersection of climate change and biodiversity loss, and community wisdom that informs conservation success.
The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation brought its annual Half-Earth Day event to Santiago de Cali, Colombia, to be held October 22 alongside the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16). Taking place in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, COP16 was the first meeting since the landmark 2022 adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Half-Earth Day 2024 responded to COP16’s theme Peace with Nature by emphasizing the role of knowledge in global species conservation. The program, Knowledge for Life, focused on lands and waters critical to protecting biodiversity—from Indigenous and local areas to urban and human-modified environments—and provided participants opportunities to learn about how knowledge, data, and experiences are creating innovative environmental management solutions, expanding private-sector collaboration and leadership, and leading to scientific advances that are transforming biodiversity conservation.
Half-Earth Day took place at La Casa Humboldt in the conference’s “Green Zone,” an interactive, public space for NGOs, the private sector, and community stakeholders to share inspiring and collaborative biodiversity conservation actions and initiatives. Taking advantage of the widespread participation and representation present during COP16, we built an inclusive and dynamic program that provided participants with opportunities for exchange with people working to protect biodiversity around the world including youth, Indigenous community members, corporate institutions, and public agencies.
EVENING PROGRAM
Welcome, Opening Remarks, and screening of Listening to the Quiet with Harrison Ford
Session 1: Sharing Knowledge and Insights
What does it mean to collect, integrate, and steward knowledge? These processes often vary when working with communities vs policy makers or the general public. Our speakers shared their perspectives and experiences related to championing access, inclusion, representation, equity, and respect while working to share knowledge.
Session 2: Applying Knowledge to Advance Species Conservation
How can we apply knowledge to most effectively and equitably drive species conservation? We heard three examples that capture a variety of ways in which species data can be used to support conservation around the world. Our speakers highlighted the types of knowledge and collaborations necessary to help communities, civil society, and governments to achieve 30×30 goals and a Half-Earth future.
Keynote Conversation: What it Means to be Human – Our Relationship with Nature
As E.O. Wilson says in Half-Earth, “The biosphere does not belong to us; we belong to it.” In this Keynote Conversation, moderated by María Cecilia Londoño Murcia, Wade Davis, Carmen Guerra, and Cristián Samper discussed how Colombia has uniquely nurtured their connection with nature and how that knowledge can inform our lives and livelihoods aligned with the COP16 theme of Peace with Nature.
Musical Performance
Ensamble Pacífico
Additional HALF-EARTH DAY Events
EDUCATION WORKSHOP
This hands-on workshopd promote international collaboration among teachers and educators through the sharing of knowledge, resources, and tools that can be used in and out of the classroom to celebrate Colombian conservation education efforts while engaging students in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math) practices to promote biodiversity conservation. Activities included a design challenge, access to authentic scientific data, and activities to promote communication through data visualization.
SCIENCE WORKSHOP
This workshop brought together senior practitioners in agricultural sourcing with global biodiversity information producers to further the understanding of decision-relevant biodiversity measurement and its effective use by the industry. The workshop was interactive and aimed at collaboratively delineating the information needs for agricultural sourcing businesses to effectively monitor, report, and make decisions around rare and threatened biodiversity.
Half-Earth Day Performers
Half-Earth Day 2024 was made possible with generous support from ADM and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
and with additional support from Nature & Culture International,
the Humboldt Institute, Esri, and other partners and sponsors
Previous Half-Earth Days have included influential voices like E.O. Wilson, Johan Rockström, Sir David Attenborough, Razan Al Mubarak, Sally Jewell, Cristián Samper, Tom Friedman, Dawn Wright, Paul Simon, Hansjörg Wyss, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Queen Quet, Wade Davis, and many more. Previous events have been held at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Royal Geographical Society, Eden Project, and University of California, Berkeley. “Half-Earth Day 2023 at GEO BON: Linking Information to Action” was held in Montreal, where governments from around the world convened in December 2022 at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP-15) to reach agreement on goals to guide global action to halt and reverse the loss of nature. On Half-Earth Day – generally on or around October 22nd – conservationists reflect on the state of biodiversity and convene in partnership with the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation at Half-Earth Day-affiliated events around the world, from Texas to Italy.
