New arena, new attitudes? The scramble for money takes center stage at UN nature talks. February 20, 2025

New arena, new attitudes? The scramble for money takes center stage at the UN nature talks / Photo: © AFP/File.

By AFP - Agence France Presse

New arena, new attitudes? The scramble for money takes center stage at UN nature talks.

The world's biggest nature conservation conference will resume in Rome next week for an urgent attempt to overcome a standoff between northern and southern countries over funding for nature protection.

The countries meeting at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) must reach an agreement on how to govern funds for nature. This is a fundamental step towards halting the destruction of nature by 2030.

Their last attempt, in November, ended in disarray: the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16), held in Colombia, was interrupted due to a dispute between the blocs of poor and rich countries.

However, with up to a quarter of assessed plants and animals now at risk of extinction, the world could not afford to simply wait for the next nature negotiations in 2026.

Instead, the 196 signatory countries of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have been invited to three days of extraordinary negotiations in the Italian capital, starting on Tuesday, February 25.

They will pick up where they left off, amid an increasingly challenging geopolitical context.

- 'The signs are not good.'

Arnaud Gilles, from WWF France, told AFP that he was not optimistic about the change of positions in four months.

“At the moment, there is no more reason for us to get a result in Rome than in Cali,” in Colombia, he said.

“The international diplomatic signals are not good,” he said, citing the re-election of US President Donald Trump in particular.

Although the United States is not a signatory to the convention, the return of Trump, who denies climate change, is expected to weigh on efforts.

The same will happen with the stalled negotiations on a plastic pollution treaty and a disappointing financial agreement from a climate summit in Azerbaijan in November.

In addition, “some countries... are in a mindset of torpedoing climate and environmental ambitions,” Gilles said, pointing to Saudi Arabia's battle against phasing out climate-destroying fossil fuels.

- 'Alert'

Delegates in Colombia were expected to accelerate progress towards 23 goals set in Canada in 2022, aimed at saving the planet from threats such as deforestation, pollution, and climate change.

These targets were accompanied by a pledge to make available US$200 billion a year in funding, including the transfer of US$30 billion a year from rich to poor nations.

The dispute in Cali focused on the financing mechanism.

The developing nations - led by Brazil and the African group - are insisting on the creation of a new fund dedicated to biodiversity, claiming that they are not adequately represented in the existing mechanisms.

The rich nations - led by the European Union, Japan, and Canada - say that the creation of several funds fragments aid.

Negotiations between the nearly 154 countries confirmed for Rome so far will start from a compromise text.

This suggests laying the foundations for a new development aid financing instrument to be created at COP17 in Armenia in 2026, which would be overseen by the UN and give poor countries more say.

Observers will be watching to see whether developed countries, including those in budget crisis, such as France and Germany, can be persuaded to agree.

Brian O'Donnell, director of the NGO Campaign for Nature, said he was “cautiously optimistic”.

The financial debacle in Cali “was a wake-up call” and “prompted several countries to re-evaluate their positions” ahead of Rome, he told AFP.

- 'Very contested'

The president of the COP16 negotiations, Susana Muhamad, has been holding regional consultations and making contacts with influential ministers ahead of Rome.

The proposals are “very contested by the countries of the North, but more or less accepted by the countries of the South”, and “it is this division that the COP presidency is trying to overcome”, according to Daniel Mukubi, a negotiator from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

To break the deadlock, “we have to hope that the countries with a constructive approach ally,” said Juliette Landry, from the French think tank IDDRI.

The Rome meeting also has the task of adopting reliable indicators to verify, by COP17, the performance of countries in nature protection and prepare for probable pressure to set more ambitious targets.

COP16 was successful in some areas.

Delegates approved the creation of a permanent body to represent the interests of indigenous peoples under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

They managed to unite around the creation of a fund to share the profits from digitally sequenced genetic data from plants and animals with the communities they come from.

However, it remains to be seen how effective the so-called Cali agreement will be, and critics have criticized the lack of obligations to ensure that countries comply with it.

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