LocationsA Foundation for Sustainable Development
Living in Harmony with Nature
May 22, 2025
Chingaza National Park, Colombia
Photo: Midori Paxton
Walking up a trail in Chingaza National Park at an altitude of over 3,500 meters, panting in the thin air and enveloped in mist, rain and wind, it is easy to feel lost in another world. But this ‘other world’ is less than 2-hours drive from Bogota – the capital city of Colombia and home to nearly 8 million people.
Páramos are tropical high-altitude moors (between tree line and permanent snow line, at around 3,000-5,000 meters) found in the Andes in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and a small area of Costa Rica. Páramos cover only a tiny 0.02% of the Earth’s land surface but are an extraordinarily biodiversity rich ecosystem that supports people, provides clean water and can help fight climate change. The páramos of Colombia are home to more than 3,500 plant species – including giant rosette plants, shrubs and grasses and at least 60% of these plants occur nowhere else on earth.
Chingaza National Park, Colombia
Photo: Midori Paxton
The richness of this biodiversity is immediately apparent in its mesmerizing variety of species crammed together, dense carpets designed by Nature. Páramos are not only a privilege to spend time in, attracting visitors from around the world, but are fundamental to the quality of people’s lives in Bogota. The Chingaza National Park provides 70% of the water supply to the capital city of Bogota, essential for the city's economy and daily life, underpinning direct economic output including mining, agriculture and the beverage industry. Our dependency on the world’s most pristine places is not as rare as you might imagine: 33 out of 105 of the world's largest cities obtain a significant proportion of their drinking water directly from protected areas.
With the Government of Colombia, UNDP is proud to be implementing a Global Environment Facility (GEF) financed Páramos for Life Project. This 5-year project will safeguard this vital ecosystem through strengthening the governance of its conservation, improving ecosystem services, and supporting transitions to activities compatible with its conservation. Protecting and sustainably managing over 250,000 hectares of this biodiversity hotspot is critical to the nearly 20 million people in Colombia who depend on its water supply but it also stands to support the quality of life of the more than 76,000 Colombians, mostly rural farmers who live within the páramos, through a wide range of Nature positive capacity building and engagement, helping to create opportunities and minimize rural migration.
This effort is complemented by the UNDP Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) work in Colombia with different financial incentives under development for biodiversity conservation, including greening agricultural credits issued by the national agricultural development bank FINAGRO. This will support farmers including cattle ranchers to shift to Nature-positive and more sustainable farming practices.
Rainbow-bearded thornbill - one of the many magnificent and unique páramos hummingbird species
Photo: Adriana Dinu
Harmony with Nature
Harmony with Nature for Sustainable Development is this year’s theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22. What is clear from being in the páramos, and understanding the direct impact it has on the healthy functioning of life in the communities, towns and cities that surround these rare landscapes is the exhilarating potential that being in harmony with nature offers, if harnessed correctly. Chingaza reminds me that our existence and our lives are at the mercy of our symbiotic relationship with Nature. Nature will still thrive in some form without humans, but we certainly cannot survive without Nature.
Andes mountains and Páramos offer habitats for spectacled bear
Photo: Adriana Dinu
Re-thinking Nature: A New Era of Human Development
This necessitates us to re-think Nature – how we value it, how we account for it, and how a transition from Nature negative human activity to Nature positive activity can be the direction of a new era of human thriving. Under the UNDP Nature Pledge, UNDP has put Nature at the very heart of our sustainable development thinking and our support to 170 countries. The next 2026 Human Development Report will unpack the relationship between people and Nature, for the first time, the concept of human development will be fully embedded within planetary systems. We must embrace the fact that there is only one path for humanity and Nature to flourish into the future.
The path to sustainable development runs through the forests, wetlands, the Paramos, across ocean and mountains, and through the lives of all living beings. On this International Day for Biological Diversity, let’s seize the opportunities of a new era of sustainable development—not as separate from Nature, but as a part of Nature, because we are Nature.
This fundamental recognition can far better guide our policies, our economies, and our daily decisions. And, it must be a far more important factor in how we invest, how we govern, and how we imagine our future.
We stand with countries, communities and indigenous peoples, and partners around the world to advance this vision. Together, we are building a world where human and planetary well-being reinforce one another—not compete.
In 2030, only 5 years from now, the world will gather again to assess progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. What story will we tell?
We will tell the story of how the Páramos in Colombia has been safeguarded to continue to provide vital water and other ecosystem services to the 8 million people in Bogota and more in surrounding areas.
And we hope that this will be just one story among thousands that share how we began to re-think the value of Nature to humanity —when we chose harmony over harm, regeneration over degradation, partnership over separation and Nature positive over Nature negative.
