Negotiators at the world's largest summit on nature conservation came away empty handed after wealthy countries in the Global North blocked a proposal to help developing countries in the Global South restore nature.
The talks had a "heart-stopping" ending in the early hours of Saturday after two weeks of meetings in Cali, Colombia, due to the complexity of unresolved issues and an inability to compromise, according to Susana Muhamad, Colombia's environment minister and the conference's president.
Talks at the U.N. biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, known as COP16, will be remembered nonetheless as "a historic COP," Muhamad said, due to decisions taken that "benefit the protection of biodiversity and recognize the work of indigenous peoples, Afro communities, peasants and local communities as guardians and protectors of the territory."
The talks did have a couple of breakthroughs. One was an agreement to establish a permanent subsidiary body to consult Indigenous peoples about future decisions on nature conservation, and to recognize the contributions of Afro-descendant people in conserving biodiversity.
The other was a deal to tax products made by drug makers, cosmetics and other businesses that use digitally sequenced genetic data from nature. Business would contribute if they meet two of three criteria: at least US$5 million in profits, US$50 million in sales, or US$20 million in assets.
The payments for use of genetic data – under a voluntary "Digital Sequence Information" deal that governments would adopt – could generate billions of dollars for a new 'Cali Fund' on nature conservation. Half the proceeds would go to Indigenous peoples and local communities.
“The new ‘Cali Fund,’ although imperfect and with many details still to be ironed out, is an important step forward," said WWF International's Director General Kirsten Schuijt. "It ensures that companies profiting from nature contribute fairly to biodiversity conservation and directs critical funding to the people and places that need it most.”
Schuijt criticized the broader stalemate, however, saying it "jeopardizes the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Nobody should be okay with this – because it will impact us all. Delivering the mission to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 was never going to be easy, but we’re now veering dangerously off track.”
COP16 was meant to deliver on promises made at Montréal in 2022 under the agreement it produced: the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The U.N.-hosted summit was originally scheduled for Kunming, China, in 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The goal of the agreement is to conserve at least 30% of Earth's land, ocean and freshwater by 2030, and to pay for targeted projects. Only about 17% of land and 10% of marine areas are protected now.
The 'war' on nature
Rich nations agreed at COP15 in Montréal that countries should spend US$700 billion a year on biodiversity losses – and developed countries should contribute US$20 billion a year of funding by 2025.
But in Cali, developed nations including the European Union bloc, Canada and Japan would not allow talks to proceed on a proposal to set up a new fund to help developing countries restore and preserve biodiversity, enraging African and Latin American countries.
Eight governments – Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Canada's province of Québec – pledged an additional US$163 million to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, which has US$407 million for species conservation and restoration.
The summit included an emergency special session, which the U.N. usually only holds for wars and humanitarian disasters, that called attention to the bleaching that affects 77% of the world's coral reefs – the fourth and largest mass global bleaching on record.
Coral reefs support more than a quarter of all marine life, and nearly a billion people need them to be able to eat, work, and protect coastlines.
"We're approaching this point where the planet may lose its first planetary ecosystem," says Peter Thomson, a U.N. special envoy. "Coral is the first to go if we continue down the track that we're on at the present."
By the end of the summit, around 63% of the 196 nations that ratified the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity had submitted action plans for meeting the targets, according to WWF International. The United States is the only major country that has not ratified it.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to make new pledges and businesses to join in paying for more nature protections.
“Nature is life and yet we are waging a war against it, a war where there can be no winner,” he said. “Every day we lose more species. Every minute we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers and lakes."
This story has been updated with additional details.
