The United Nations COP16 biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, were suspended on Saturday after rich countries blocked a proposal to set up a new fund to help poorer nations restore their depleted natural environments.
The decision, taken by a group of developed countries including the European Union, Japan, and Canada, left African and Latin American nations furious and prompted some to refuse to engage in talks on other matters.
It was a bitter end to a conference that many had hoped would inject fresh energy into the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious treaty that aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss globally.
While the talks yielded agreement on key issues — including compensation for the commercial use of biological information and the creation of a subsidiary body designed to ensure indigenous groups are included at every level of the Kunming-Montreal agreement — the failure to make progress on financing met with disappointment.
“Closing the finance gap was not merely some moral obligation but necessary to the protection of people and nature that grows more urgent each day,” An Lambrechts, head of Greenpeace’s COP16 delegation, said in a statement on Saturday.
“With one week to go until COP29 begins, the non-decision on a fund damages trust between Global South and North countries,” Lambrechts said.
Still, the outcome was not a surprise, as the EU had clearly stated it would not back the creation of a new fund going into the talks.
Successes
Countries had earlier adopted a text on the use of biological genetic information, known as digital sequencing information (DSI). Under the proposal, pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies which profit from the use of this information would pay compensation into a fund, known as the Cali Fund, on a voluntary basis. This would then go to countries where the information came from, to be used to restore nature.
A deal on DSI was almost scuppered when India proposed last-minute amendments that Switzerland refused to accept. In the end, Switzerland relented. The eleventh-hour agreement, which came well after sunrise on Saturday, met with qualified support from proponents of DSI compensation.
Oscar Soria with the Common Initiative called it a “unique funding mechanism,” but said its voluntary status could be a problem. “The mechanism’s effectiveness will likely depend on the global community’s willingness to support it and on corporate recognition of the value in participating for reputational gain,” he said.
Other highlights included the creation of a subsidiary body for indigenous peoples and local communities to ensure their participation in the biodiversity framework agreed on in 2022 in Montreal, and recognition of peoples of African descent as biodiversity custodians.
Agreement was also reached on a text linking biodiversity loss and climate change, which COP16 President Susana Muhamad said was essential ahead of the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, later this month. The previous day, countries had voted that Armenia would host the next meeting, COP17, in 2026.
But on the creation of a new fund, no agreement was reached, and as the morning wore on and delegates began leaving to catch flights home, it became clear time had run out.
Global North vs Global South
The European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland all opposed the proposal to set up a dedicated fund to pay for nature restoration in poorer countries, arguing it would complicate the funding landscape without necessarily raising new money.
The EU delegation suggested that the creation of a special fund would not necessarily prompt countries to donate more money. “We have been very clear throughout the process, we cannot accept establishing a new … fund, thereby further fragmenting the biodiversity-related financial landscape,” the delegation said at the plenary early Saturday.
African, South American and Pacific Island nations strongly backed the proposal; and Brazil and Panama both refused to deal with any other issues if their demands were not met.
When this issue could not be resolved, the COP16 president was forced to suspend the meeting before agreement had been reached on the budget for the Convention on Biological Diversity, an important topic that should have been relatively uncontroversial.
“The #COP16Colombia closing plenary meeting has been temporarily suspended,” the official X account of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity stated. “Stay tuned for further updates.”
The Kunming-Montreal agreement contains a list of 23 targets for 2030, including restoring 30 percent of degraded ecosystems, conserving 30 percent of land, waters and seas, and halving the introduction of native alien species.
Finance is key to meeting the goals. At COP15 in Montreal, countries agreed that the long-term goal should be to spend $700 billion a year on biodiversity loss. Under the Kunming-Montreal agreement, developed countries pledged to contribute $20 billion of funding a year by 2025 — a goal that so far looks unlikely to be met.
Earlier in the week, a group of seven rich countries pledged a total of $163 million toward the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund. The top contributors were the U.K. ($58 million) Germany ($54 million), Denmark ($14.5 million) and Norway ($13.7 million), with New Zealand, Austria and France also giving a few million each.
The shortfall in funding prompted a group of ministers from 20 African, Southeast Asian and Pacific nations to write a letter to wealthy countries expressing concern that “we have not seen a significant increase in international nature finance reach our countries” and calling for rich countries to “urgently deliver new international funding for biodiversity.”
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