The 16th UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, was canceled on November 2, 2024 after an extension – without agreement on the most important item on the agenda, the biodiversity fund to finance global species protection. The reason: Negotiations continued for so long that at the end there were too few delegates present to form a quorum. The outstanding points have therefore been postponed to the next summit.
It was one of the largest summits on species protection that has ever taken place: More than 20,000 delegates from governments, associations and NGOs negotiated in Cali, Colombia, how the World Conservation Agreement agreed in Montreal in 2022 can be concretely implemented. According to this, by 2030, at least 30 percent of the world’s land areas, coastal areas and oceans should be protected, 30 percent of all damaged ecosystems should be restored and food waste should be halved. In addition, subsidies that are harmful to nature should be reduced and countries in need should receive funds for the implementation of nature conservation. At COP 16 in Cali, there were more than 20 points on the agenda that were intended to clarify various aspects of this decision and implement them in the form of concrete measures and regulations.
Dispute over the financing mechanisms
One of the central negotiating topics was the financing of measures that enable poorer countries in particular to take measures to protect and restore biological diversity. According to the Montreal Agreement, part of the money for this should come from the reduction of environmentally harmful subsidies, for example for fossil fuels or the use of pesticides. A further part is to be paid in by industrialized countries and large companies. But the question of how and by whom the deposited money is managed and distributed caused heated discussions in Cali. There has been a fund, the so-called “Global Environment Facility” (GEF), at the World Bank since 1991. But the countries of the South criticized that they had little say in this and that it was inefficient. They therefore called for a change in the regulations and a new fund in whose management they would be more involved.
But until the end there was no agreement on the specific how. “The failure of the financing negotiations is bitter, because it seemed that a conclusion was close: there would have been a chance to operationalize the Global Biodiversity Fund at COP15,” comments environmental law expert Sabine Schlacke from the University of Greifswald. “According to the last draft, $200 billion should be paid in by 2030 and incentives that are harmful to biodiversity, such as subsidies, should be reduced or ended by $500 billion by 2030.”
At least there is a partial success in terms of financing: the delegates at COP 16 agreed that commercial users, i.e. companies, will pay into a fund if they use digital sequence information (DSI). In concrete terms, this means: If, for example, a pharmaceutical company develops a new active ingredient based on the gene sequence of a rainforest plant and markets it, they should pay compensation to the countries and indigenous peoples from whose area this plant comes. “This can be seen as the beginning of industry participation in the commercial use of DSI, which is ultimately based on genetic resources,” explains Schlacke. “It is regrettable, however, that this decision does not force the member states to implement it, as it is merely a political declaration of intent.” Whether a company pays into this fund is therefore voluntary.
There is also disagreement regarding control mechanisms
Another point that remains open is the question of which control mechanisms should be used to monitor and evaluate progress in species protection in individual countries. “The decision on ‘Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Review’ should determine who compiles and evaluates the national reports, what is used as a knowledge base and how recommendations are developed from this,” explains Yves Zinngrebe from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ). Leipzig. But the draft, drawn up after long negotiations, could no longer be approved. “But even if the limited paper drawn up for this had been accepted, the requirements would be very weak – mainly for two reasons: On the one hand, the report should be ‘party-led’, which means that the member states always decide for themselves and also prevent it that there is something in it that they don’t like,” says Zinngrebe. On the other hand, the indicators for failure to meet the goals are hardly suitable for finding the true causes.
But there are also successful resolutions from the nature conservation conference. The delegates agreed that the Biodiversity Convention would in future have its own committee with representatives of indigenous peoples. This gives these communities more influence on decisions regarding species protection. There has also been progress in marine protection, both in terms of maintaining existing protected areas and creating new protected zones. For the latter, suitable areas will in future be identified and selected using a more efficient process. It was also decided to establish closer links between species protection and climate protection. Greater cooperation between the two UN conventions and their bodies should take into account the fact that climate change and species loss are closely linked.
Source: COP 16, WWF, Deutsche Welle, Science Media Center