The 16th edition of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) has recently ended inconclusively. Disagreements on funding and implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework which was set up to reverse and stop nature loss derailed the 16th edition of the Conference of the Parties.
The 23,000 representatives who attended the two-week COP16, held in Colombia, took stock of what had been achieved and what needs to be done but failed to agree on a strategy for raising the billions of dollars needed to meet the 2030 goals.
Achievements and disagreements
According to a 2024 protected planet report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), global conservation of land is over 17% and in the water, it is 8% percent. The target expected to be met by 2030 is 30% of the world’s land and water, as agreed in 2022 at COP15 in Montreal when the Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted.
The participants welcomed the progress made and highlighted that countries need to collectively protect 16.7 million km2 of land (almost the size of Russia) and over 78 million km2 of marine and coastal areas (more than twice Africa’s size) in the next six years to 2030 to meet the Global Diversity Framework’s targets.
Despite this apparently positive trend, COP16 ended in disarray and prematurely as the financing of further steps grew into a bone of contention for the attending representatives of 196 countries. During COP16, US$163 million was pledged to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund. However, this fell way short of what was expected. One of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s goals, Target 19 requires that at least US$200 billion be set aside annually for nature conservation funding gaps.
Financing disagreements made the organizers defer that discussion to an intersessional meeting to be hosted in Bangkok in 2025.
Major COP16 outcomes
Still the convention’s outcomes were viewed as inclusive and progressive by biodiversity stakeholders in policy making, business and the indigenous people and local communities.
Expanded roles of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) – Since 1992 when the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreement was formed, IPLCs functioned as just informal working groups during UN biodiversity negotiations. But during COP16 a subsidiary body was formed that has expanded their roles so that they can fully and effectively participate during biodiversity conservation negotiations. The body also decrees stakeholders in CBD to honour, preserve and uphold traditional knowledge, inventions, and practices and ensure their benefits are equitably shared by IPLCs when they are utilized.
Establishment of Cali Fund to pay for digital sequence information – Countries at the COP16 conference approved the establishment of the “Cali Fund” which will charge users of Digital Sequence Information (DSI). DSI is genetic information sequenced from nature and uploaded online for research. DSI users will need to pay a share of their income to the fund to benefit the nature-rich countries where it is sourced. Still, governments will have to enact the rules locally since the application of the Cali Fund agenda is optional. Parties that benefit financially from DSI utilization for example in biotechnology, medicine, and breeding, will have to pay 1% of profits or 0.1% of their revenues to the Cali Fund.
Audit of national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) – NBSAPs measure how CBD goals and targets are implemented into action at the country level. At COP16 the gathered representatives audited which countries had met their goals and targets. Of the 196 countries under the CBD agreement, only 44 submitted updated NBSAPs, which experts noted represented a significant shortfall. 119 countries also submitted their policy measures and actions needed to reach the Global Biodiversity Framework but they also had not met the agreed-upon expectations. Although there was discussion at COP16 over how the goal and targets could be monitored, the conference ended before an agreement was struck.
Scaling up biodiversity financing – By October 2024 US$396 million had been promised by the United Kingdom, Japan, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, the Province of Québec, and Spain to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF). At COP16, a further US$163 million was promised to GBFF. Already, GBFF has approved US$110 million for biodiversity conservation in 24 countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, South America and Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, the Philippines, Samoa, and Tonga.
A proposal to establish a global financing conduit under COP, separate from GBFF was rejected by developed countries. So GBFF remains the primary biodiversity conservation financing conduit until the end of 2030. Still the funds pledged cannot meet the existing nature finance gap. According to UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature report, US$700 billion is needed annually to reverse the biodiversity crisis.
International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB) Framework – During the COP16 conference, the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB) formed in 2023 established the IAPB framework to enable private companies to buy credits as part of their biodiversity conservation commitments. Their purchases will fund forest biodiversity conservation and restoration. The framework will provide guidance to market stakeholders, and foster the development of trustworthy biodiversity credit markets. Nature Framework under Verra was also launched to generate nature credits for verifiable biodiversity restoration activities. The framework is expected to drive the much-needed investment in biodiversity conservation activities and contribute to the at least US$200 billion needed for biodiversity conservation annually.
The nature for resilience director at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Alec Crawford argues that, while financing for nature needs to be rapidly increased, the biodiversity crisis needs to be tackled alongside climate change since they are inseparably linked.
