Colombia joins the consensus Hobart Declaration at the International Whaling Commission

27 October 2026

Colombia took part in adopting the Hobart Declaration by consensus at the seventieth meeting of the International Whaling Commission, held in Hobart in Tasmania. The ministry describes it as the first collective statement in the Commission's history on its legacy, its present role and its future vision. Colombia's Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible and the Colombian embassy in Australia pressed an agenda of cetacean conservation and non-lethal use of these species. Colombia signed the joint position of the Grupo Buenos Aires along with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, backing conservation, non-lethal scientific research and responsible whale-watching tourism, and restating support for the moratorium on commercial whaling. The meeting marked eighty years of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, forty years of the commercial whaling moratorium and twenty years of the Grupo Buenos Aires. Minister Fabio Arjona tied the position to the government's Agenda ABC for water, biodiversity and communities.