Follow our live blog, and discover our full coverage from the Biodiversity COP16.
Biodiversity is a key pillar of a healthy planet – it is quite literally life on Earth.
It’s also crucial to our very existence, providing us with food, clean air and water, raw materials, pollination, climate regulation and countless other ecosystem services.
In fact, over half of the world’s GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature.
And yet, every year, we see wetlands drained, forests felled and grasslands planted. Around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.
It’s in the face of this daunting reality that the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) is convening in Cali, Colombia, between 21 October and 1 November.
But what exactly will delegates be discussing to tackle such a formidable challenge?
There are high hopes that COP16 – the world’s biggest event on biodiversity this year – will be the summit where targets turn into concrete plans to stem the biodiversity crisis.
“It’s an implementation COP,” Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), told a press conference last month.
“Countries were asked to do National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAPs) and to formulate targets by COP16 so we can do a first analysis and see if we are on the right track.”
These NBSAPs outline how each of the 196 signatory countries will meet the ambitious targets of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which was adopted at the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal.
The framework, which Schomaker describes as the “Paris Agreement for nature,” aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and consists of four global goals and 23 targets.
The most well-known is Target 3, referred to as ‘30 by 30’ for its goal of designating 30 percent of land and marine regions globally as protected areas by 2030.
“The Global Biodiversity Framework promises to set relations with Earth and its ecosystems, but we are not on track,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a video address to the COP16 opening ceremony.
“Your task at this COP is to convert words into action. That means countries presenting clear plans that align national actions with all the framework targets.
“It means agreeing a stringent monitoring and transparency framework. It means honoring promises on finance and accelerating support to developing countries.”
But there are justified concerns that this framework and COP16 could be yet another missed opportunity. The 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, none of which were met, still linger in the memory.
This fear is already somewhat borne out by the fact that 85 percent of the signatory parties of the CBD are set to miss the submission deadline for their NBSAPs.
This COP is also expected to strengthen the synergies between tackling the biodiversity and climate crises, which are inexorably linked.
“One of the main objectives the Colombian government has as a host of the biodiversity COP is to increase the profile of biodiversity within the climate crisis,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development and the president of COP16, at the same press conference.
While biodiversity loss is often overshadowed by the climate crisis, this year’s UN biodiversity conference is expected to be the largest of its kind, which could reflect the more significant role of biodiversity on the global agenda.
“It will be a COP with record-high participation,” said Schomaker. The conference’s Green Zone – the area broadly accessible to the public – will be the largest of any biodiversity COP to date, according to Muhamad.
What’s more, Muhamad explained that participants at this biodiversity conference will be a more balanced cross-section of society than previous summits.
“We will have ministers of labor, ministers of agriculture, ministers of finance. But we will also have the very strong presence of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendent communities, peasants, the private sector – all of whom have been given record accreditations,” she said at the press briefing.
This sentiment was echoed by Guterres. “Indigenous Peoples are the great guardians of biodiversity – luminaries of sustainable use,” he said in his opening speech. “Their knowledge and stewardship must be at the heart of biodiversity action at every level.”
The Biodiversity COP15 set a goal to ensure the full involvement of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in realizing the GBF targets. At COP16, parties are set to decide what institutional arrangements will be made to ensure that this happens.
Possible options that have been recommended by a 2023 Working Group include establishing a permanent subsidiary body to the CBD, directing relevant issues to the Convention’s existing subsidiary bodies or continuing the Working Group with a revised mandate.
Conservation programs have a poor track record of respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights, especially when it comes to land access, the use of biological resources and the use (or rather, disuse) of traditional knowledge and practices that are vital for protecting biodiversity.
The use of biological resources will also be discussed in its own right at COP16. This will include sustainable wildlife management, which is the responsible use of wildlife species in a way that sustains their populations and habitat while also considering human populations.
This is especially important for many Indigenous Peoples, who rely on wild species for food, medicine and cultural practices.
The use of wildlife species will also be considered on a genetic level, including digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources.
DSI refers to “genomic sequence data and other related digital data,” including “the details of an organism’s DNA and RNA,” according to the DSI Scientific Network, and can be used to develop and create commercial products such as pharmaceuticals.
However, while much of the world’s biodiversity is found in the Global South, it’s often large companies in the Global North that profit from the DSI it holds.
“Developing countries are being plundered,” said Guterres in his opening address.
“Digitized DNA from biodiversity underpins scientific discoveries and economic growth, but developing countries don’t gain fairly from these advances despite being home to extraordinary riches.”
At COP15, parties reached an agreement to develop a multilateral mechanism for the fair and equitable sharing of DSI benefits, including a global fund and criteria to monitor its effectiveness.
Now, COP16 will review the outcomes of two-year negotiations and studies on this mechanism and fund and consider how to move forward.
The topic that will dominate COP16 is how all of this will be financed.
According to a report by The Nature Conservancy, an additional USD 598 to 824 billion in biodiversity financing will be needed each year between now and 2030.
To raise these funds, the GBF commits countries to repurposing harmful subsidies as well as mobilize domestic, international, public and private finance.
This is summarized in Target 19, which calls on signatories to “mobilize $200 billion per year for biodiversity from all sources, including $30 billion through international finance” by 2030.
How exactly we will get there is less clear, but delegates at COP16, as well as the 7th GLF Investment Case Symposium, will be tackling this exact question in Cali.
“You must leave Cali with significant investments in the Global Biodiversity Framework funds and commitments to mobilize other sources of public and private finance to deliver the framework in full, and those profiting from nature must contribute to its protection and restoration,” said Guterres at the opening ceremony.
And if the opening remarks from the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, are anything to go by, we may even see delegates question the role of broader economic systems in the biodiversity and climate crises.
“The revolutionary flag today is called ‘life,’” Petro said at the opening ceremony. “We have to immediately move away from neoliberalism in all its forms. Capital and profit have broken a delicate equilibrium that is fundamental to life and the climate.”
“This is a complete paradigm shift. We must change global finance. Today, they are linked to death.”
There is no time to waste in tackling the biodiversity crisis – and here’s hoping the historic interest in what Muhamad calls “the people’s COP’ will translate into solid plans and concrete action.
Want to follow the discussions at COP16? ThinkLandscape will be on the ground in Cali. You can follow our live coverage here or on the GLF’s Instagram and WhatsApp channel.
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