David Barron discusses ICCF Colombia on Opinion Mundial [0:59-6:04]

The founder of the ICCF, David Barrow, welcome. Thank you. Who is David Barrow and how does it turn out to be a professional trajectory? I'm from South Carolina. I grew up in a family that was very active in politics over the years. I joined up with Ronald Reagan as a young man. I was a youth leader and a national chairman of the Young Republicans. I went to Washington with Reagan when he was elected in 1981, 1981. I spent a lot of time working on foreign policy issues. For a couple of years, I was on the White House outreach working group on Central America. And then I was on the White House ad hoc working group on South Africa, which took me to Africa for the first time. And there I fell in love with wild animals and wild places and became involved in conservation and in the political sense of liaising with policymakers in Washington to support conservation causes. Subsequently, we've become involved in other parts of the world as well. I sort of got into conservation by accident, but it was because of my interest in democracy and economic development, security, stability that led to me being involved with ICCF. Your baron, KSL is a safe. ICCF began as a secretary supporting the leadership of the U.S. Congressional International Conservation Caucuses in our House and in our Senate. But now it's grown into a far water collaboration of corporate NGO partners and now partners in other parliaments and congresses around the world as well. A group of congressmen in 2001 helped launch the Congo-based and forest partnership, which has been an enormous success taking forest lands, tropical forest, out of timber leases and putting them into national parks and protected areas. But with economic development schemes around those protected areas, the congressmen that undertook this came up with the idea of doing a lot more collaboration, bipartisan collaboration in the Congress to support other good conservation causes around the world. So the international conservation caucus in the House was born and then later in the Senate. I was asked by some of the leaders in the Congress to help put together a brain trust to support them with educational programs so that they would be better informed to act on opportunities, to understand challenges, to understand successful models, and frankly to incorporate good natural resource management into all aspects of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. foreign assistance programs. In what parts of the world do we find this organization? ICCF's partner, the Conservation Council of Nations, now has 46 nation partners and the European Union and the African Union, and we hope soon to have the organization of American states. We have caucuses in 10 countries now, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and we have programs in a number of countries that have requested technical support at policy making level, but also at program implementation level on the ground. We are in Kenya, in Tanzania, and Zambia, but we're also in Mongolia and the Bahamas, and we will be in Colombia soon. How was the foundation in our country? Well first a group of leaders in your House actually principles in five parties which you understand make up some 90% of the parliament came together to form the CCC here. They engaged us and asked for some technical support in replicating the model as it was established in the United States. Since then they've been very active and now have recently established a strong foundational caucus in the Senate as well. And now the hard work begins developing the programs, developing the missions, the brain trust here to support the leaders within your Congress. Who is this organization in Colombia? Well there's tremendous potential when political leaders from competing sectors work together generally, but when it comes to the environment, when it comes to conservation, natural resource utilization, this is an opportunity for this multipartisan approach within your Congress to actually identify ways in which natural resources can be better exploited in Colombia