Inching forward: COP16’s slow march on biodiversity goals

Despite two weeks of intense multilateral negotiations, many delegates to the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) travelled back to their homes in disappointment. While some progress was made, most countries still lack the ambition and sense of urgency needed to halt the global biodiversity loss by 2030, posing an existential threat to our future prosperity and livelihoods.

A key priority of COP16 was to establish a strategy to annually mobilise $200 billion for biodiversity by 2030, with $20 billion reserved for developing nations by 2025. Negotiations ran into problems due to the objection by developed countries against a proposal to establish a new global biodiversity fund. The meeting was suspended on Friday evening before a formal decision could be taken.

Talks at COP16 were overshadowed by the fact that most countries have failed to come up with national plans to meet the 2030 biodiversity targets on time for the summit. Alarmingly, nations are not yet moving forward to eliminate, phase out, or reform harmful incentives to reduce them by at least $500 billion per year by 2030. This lack of ambition and urgency has curbed enthusiasm and could potentially undermine the credibility of the global effort to ensure healthy ecosystems and help restore nature.

Not all was lost at COP16, however. In a landmark moment in the history of the UN’s environmental bodies, countries have agreed on a broader role for Indigenous Peoples and local communities in saving biodiversity, granting their working group recognition as a new permanent body with negotiating power for the first time. Another breakthrough of COP16 was agreeing on how to operationalise the ‘Cali Fund’, a new global mechanism to share some of the profits from digital genetic information used by the pharmaceutical industry with Indigenous Peoples and local communities. While promising, the agreement remains voluntary.

Overall, COP16 fell short of achieving the progress needed to reverse biodiversity loss. Two years on, most biodiversity targets agreed at COP15 in Montreal are only words on paper. With only six years left to meet the 2030 targets, a clear timeline for national plan implementation is crucial to achieve these ambitious commitments. Developed countries, and especially the EU, must step up their leadership and agree on a dedicated funding strategy at next year’s interim meeting to pave the way for COP17. As the U.S. has seemingly voted down climate and environment agendas with Trump’s recent victory, the opportunity stands for the EU to fill the leadership void on global nature conservation and restoration, while staying true to its Green Deal ambitions at home.

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