How the 'Frida Kahlo of environmental geopolitics' is lighting a fire under big oil

Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad once worked for Shell. Now, as the country gears up to host the biodiversity Cop16, she is calling for a just transition away from fossil fuel.

Patrick Greenfield
Thu 3 Oct 2024 05.00 EDT

She is one of the biggest opponents of fossil fuel on the world stage – but Susana Muhamad’s political career was sparked in the halls of an oil company. It began when she resigned as a sustainability consultant with Shell in 2009 and returned home to Colombia. She was 32 and disillusioned, a far cry from the heights she would later reach as the country’s environment minister, and one of the most high-profile progressive leaders in global environmental politics.

Muhamad joined Shell an idealistic 26-year-old. “I really thought that you could make a huge impact within an energy company on the climate issue, especially because all their publicity was saying that they were going to become an energy company, meaning they will not be only a fossil fuel company,” she says, when we meet in the Colombian embassy in London.

“I resigned the date that they decided to put their innovation money on fracking.”

Now 47, Muhamad, whose surname comes from her Palestinian grandfather, is preparing to oversee biodiversity Cop16, a summit on the future of life on Earth that will bring together leaders from nearly 200 countries in Cali, Colombia, next month. For many, she is a rising star of the environmental movement, joining voices such as the Barbadian prime minister, Mia Mottley, in putting forward an alternative vision of how the world could be, and demanding the developed world finance a just transition.

“Susana is the Frida Kahlo of environmental geopolitics,” says activist Oscar Soria. “Like Kahlo, whose art challenged cultural norms and spoke of resilience, Muhamad paints a vision of ecological justice that goes beyond traditional environmentalism … an environmental agenda that is … reshaping the narrative around climate justice and biodiversity restitution.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/03/colombia-minister-susana-muhamad-biodiversity-cop16-fossil-fuels