Latest attempt to break conservation summit funding impasse

Released: 01/11/2024 – 19:44

3 min.

The Colombian presidency of the summit, which opened on October 21 and was scheduled for Friday, proposed late in the evening a series of draft texts on possible ways to break the impasse.

The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, attended by approximately 23,000 registered delegates, is the largest meeting of its kind ever.

This is a continuation of an agreement reached two years ago in Canada on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for $200 billion a year to protect biodiversity by 2030.

According to the agreement, this would include $20 billion a year transferred from rich to poor countries by 2025, and $30 billion by 2030.

The goals included protecting 30 percent of land and sea areas and restoring 30 percent of degraded ecosystems, as well as reducing pollution and phasing out agricultural and other subsidies harmful to nature.

COP16 set out to measure and accelerate progress.

But funding talks have made no progress, observers and delegates say, even as new research presented this week showed more than a quarter of the plants and animals assessed are now at risk of extinction.

Amid speculation that talks could drag on for an extra day, the COP16 president proposed a compromise that would see talks continue after the summit – and until the next summit in Armenia in 2026 – to find a “comprehensive financial solution to close the financial agreement.” the biodiversity gap.”

Such negotiations would also assess the viability of creating a new dedicated biodiversity fund – a key demand from developing countries who say they are not represented in existing mechanisms, which are also too burdensome.

“Cali Foundation”

Another point of contention at the summit is how best to share profits from digitally sequenced genetic data obtained from animals and plants with the communities from which they come.

Such data, much of it from species found in poor countries, is used in drugs and cosmetics, among others, which can earn their developers billions.

COP15 in Montreal agreed to create a “multi-stakeholder mechanism” to share the benefits of digitally sequenced information (DSI for short), “including a global fund.”

But negotiators still need to resolve such basic issues as who pays, how much, what fund, and where the money should go.

In a draft text for negotiators, the COP16 presidency proposed the creation of a new “Cali Fund” to equitably distribute the benefits of the DSI.

Negotiators are also stuck over the nature of a mechanism to monitor progress toward UN goals.

“Everyone must give in”

On Thursday, COP16 president Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, said the negotiations were “very complex,” with “many interests, many parties… and that means everyone has to give something.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres, who stopped in Cali for two days this week along with five heads of state and dozens of ministers to add momentum to the talks, reminded delegates that humanity has already altered three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface and two-thirds of its water.

Urging negotiators to “accelerate” progress, he warned: “The clock is ticking. The survival of our planet’s biodiversity—and our own survival—is at stake.”

Representatives of indigenous peoples and local communities demonstrated at COP16 demanding more rights and protections, while internally delegates sparred over a proposal to create a permanent representative body for them under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

And on this matter, after almost two weeks of negotiations, no agreement was reached.

The meeting took place amid a massive deployment of security forces following threats from a Colombian guerrilla group with a base near Cali.

© 2024 AFP