UN talks on nature conservation run into financial obstacles November 4, 2024
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Nov 3, 2024
- 3 min read
By AFP - Agence France Presse
UN talks on nature conservation run into financial obstacles
The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was suspended by President Susana Muhamad when negotiations ran almost 12 hours longer than planned and delegates began leaving to catch flights.
The exodus left the summit without a quorum for decision-making, but CBD spokesman David Ainsworth told AFP that it would resume at a later date to consider outstanding issues.
The conference, the largest gathering of its kind to date with around 23,000 registered delegates, was tasked with assessing and accelerating progress towards an agreement signed in Canada two years ago to halt humanity's rapacious destruction of nature.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which emerged from this meeting, set 23 targets to be achieved in just over five years.
These targets include protecting 30% of land and sea areas and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030, reducing pollution, and phasing out agricultural and other nature-damaging subsidies.
The Canadian summit also agreed to make $200 billion a year available to protect biodiversity by 2030, including the transfer of $30 billion a year from rich to poor nations.
The actual total for 2022 was around 15 billion dollars, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
In addition, the nations pledged around 400 million dollars for a Global Biodiversity Fund (GBFF) set up last year to meet UN targets.
In Cali, negotiators were largely divided between rich and poor country blocs as they discussed increased funding and other commitments.
The summit's biggest request - to establish a detailed financing plan - turned out to be a bridge too far.
Muhamad, Colombia's environment minister, offered a draft text proposing the creation of a fund dedicated to biodiversity, which was rejected by the European Union, Switzerland, and Japan.
Developing nations have insisted on the creation of a dedicated biodiversity fund, saying that they are not adequately represented in existing mechanisms, including the GBFF, which they say is also too costly.
- 'The clock is ticking'.
The meeting succeeded in uniting 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.
This data, much of which comes from species found in poor countries, is mainly used in medicines and cosmetics that can make billions for their developers, but very little of which goes back.
The delegates also approved the creation of a permanent body to represent the interests of indigenous peoples within the framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Representatives of indigenous peoples, many of them wearing traditional clothing and hats, began to applaud and sing when the agreement was approved.
However, the negotiations on financing biodiversity failed, even as new research presented to coincide with COP16 showed that more than a quarter of the plants and animals assessed are now at risk of extinction.
It is estimated that only 17.6% of land and inland waters and 8.4% of the ocean and coastal areas are protected and conserved.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, who spent two days in Cali with five heads of state and dozens of ministers to give impetus to the negotiations, reminded the delegates that humanity has already altered three-quarters of the earth's surface and two-thirds of its waters.
“The clock is ticking. The survival of our planet's biodiversity - and our survival - is at stake,” he said.
The meeting was held amid a major security effort following threats from a Colombian guerrilla group with its base of operations near Cali. No incidents were reported.
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