CALI, Colombia (AP) — At the United Nations biodiversity summit in Colombia, negotiators have struggled to reach agreement on key issues.
These include how to finance the protection of 30% of the world’s plants and animals by 2030, how to establish a permanent body for indigenous peoples and how to make payments for the nature’s genetic data used to create commercial products.
The two-week conference, known as COP16, was due to end on Friday, although observers say negotiations could move into the weekend.
In 2022, the biodiversity summit in Montreal, COP15, created a framework for countries to save plummeting global ecosystems. This year’s follow-up summit was intended to put the plans in motion.
“COP15 was all about the ‘what’; this had to be about the ‘how,’” Georgina Chandler, head of policy and campaigns at The Zoological Society of London, told The Associated Press.
Rich countries pledged at the Montreal summit to raise $20 billion a year in conservation financing for developing countries by 2025 – rising to $30 billion a year by 2030.
“I don’t think we’ve seen governments come here with bigger commitments to the $20 billion that are big enough to achieve that,” Chandler said. “That fell a bit short.”
The lack of financial commitments from rich countries prompted twenty ministers from the Global South to issue a joint statement calling for the need to build trust between countries and for the Global North to meet its financial targets .
In the run-up to the negotiations, more than 230 companies and financial institutions demanded stronger policy ambitions to tackle the growing risks of nature loss, says Eva Zabey, CEO of Business for Nature.
“In the final stretch of COP16, negotiations on crucial issues are at a standstill – including the mobilization of meaningful financial resources and a way for companies to ensure that the benefits of nature are fairly valued and shared,” Zabey said.
“We need governments to put aside their differences and show real and urgent leadership to deliver a strong COP16 outcome that further and faster drives and incentivizes the necessary business action to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 make,” she said.
Who owns nature’s DNA was a major topic at the summit. There was tension between poorer and developed countries over digital genetic resource sequence information (DSI). This would mandate benefit sharing when genetic resources from animals, plants or microorganisms are used in biotechnology. In Montreal, countries agreed to establish a global fund.
“The DSI fund was supposed to be adopted here two years ago. There is no clarity on how money will be raised from companies,” said Oscar Soria, director of The Common Initiative. “As the text reads, it is purely voluntary.”
Sources told AP that there has been a lot of back and forth over countries’ wording of the draft agreement.
“It is clear that a number of issues in the COP16 negotiations are on the rocks,” said Catherine Weller, director of global policy at charity Fauna & Flora.
One of the biggest controversies during the talks was the blocking by a few countries of a permanent subsidiary body for indigenous peoples and local communities, which Weller says brings valuable insights to many discussions.
“We urge negotiators to take action and ensure this is completed,” she said.
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