UN conservation talks hit financial hurdles – Environment

With other successes under its belt, the 16th^th The Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was suspended by its President Susana Muhamad as negotiations lasted nearly 12 hours longer than planned and delegates began to disperse to catch their flights.

The outcome left the summit without a quorum to make decisions, but CBD spokesman David Ainsworth told AFP it would resume at a later date to consider outstanding issues.

“We will continue to work because this crisis is too great and we cannot stop,” Muhamad told AFP after announcing the closure of the Cali CS.

The conference, the largest meeting of its kind with some 23,000 delegates registered, aimed to assess and accelerate progress towards 23 goals set out in Canada two years ago to stop humanity’s destruction of nature’s bounty by 2030.

They include placing 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection and restoring 30 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2030, reducing pollution and phasing out agricultural and other subsidies that harm nature.

To this end, it was decided in 2022 that US$200 billion per year would be allocated to protect biodiversity by 2030, including a transfer of US$30 billion per year from rich to poor countries.

The total for 2022 was about $15 billion, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

On top of that, countries have pledged about $400 million to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), created last year to achieve UN goals.

In Cali, negotiators were divided largely between blocs of poor and rich countries as they argued over increased funding and other commitments.

The summit’s biggest request—to develop a detailed funding plan—was a step too far.

Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, proposed a draft text proposing the creation of a special biodiversity fund, which was rejected by the European Union, Switzerland and Japan.

Developing countries have pushed for the new fund, saying they are underrepresented in existing mechanisms, including the GBFF, which they say are also too onerous.

The lack of an agreement is “a negative signal that will have implications for other environmental negotiations later in the year as it highlights deep divisions over the technical feasibility of transfers between the global North and South,” said Sebastien Treuer of French think tank Iddri.

Several successes

The meeting did succeed in coalescing around the creation of a fund to share profits from digitally sequenced genetic data obtained from plants and animals with the communities from which they originate.

Such data, much of it from species found in poor countries, is especially used in drugs and cosmetics, which can earn their developers billions, very little of which is ever made back.

The California agreement specifies that genetic data users whose income exceeds a certain threshold must contribute one percent of profits or 0.1 percent of income to a new fund that could potentially be worth billions of dollars a year.

Delegates also approved the creation of a permanent body to represent the interests of indigenous peoples within the UN CBD.

Indigenous people, many wearing traditional clothing and headdresses, burst into applause and chants as the agreement was concluded.

But negotiations over biodiversity funding have stalled even as new research presented for COP16 found that more than a quarter of the plants and animals assessed are now at risk of extinction.

It is estimated that only 17.6 percent of land and inland waters and 8.4 percent of ocean and coastal areas are protected and conserved.

Observers hailed the summit’s progress on indigenous representation and the distribution of benefits from genetic engineering, but lamented the funding impasse.

“Governments in Cali have put forward plans to protect nature, but have failed to mobilize the money to implement these plans,” said An Lambrechts, head of the Greenpeace delegation to COP16.

“Financing for biodiversity continues to be stalled by a stunning lack of credible financial commitment from wealthy governments and unprecedented corporate lobbying.”

The meeting came amid a major deployment of security forces following threats from a Colombian guerrilla group based near Cali. No incidents were reported.