Global talks to protect biodiversity have resumed with a call for humanity to unite to “sustain life on the planet” and resolve a dispute over funding that caused the previous meeting last year to end in disarray.
More than two years after a landmark biodiversity agreement—which included a pledge to protect 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030—nations are still negotiating the funds needed to reverse the destruction that scientists warn threatens a million species. Negotiators meeting at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome are tasked with breaking the deadlock between wealthy and developing countries over whether to establish a dedicated fund for nature conservation.
Disagreements over this issue caused the previous UN COP16 talks in Cali, Colombia, in November to extend for hours without reaching a deal. At the opening of the Rome talks on Tuesday, many developing nations urged the meeting to unlock funds and called on wealthy countries to fulfill their pledge to provide $20 billion annually to poorer nations by 2025.
“Without this, trust might be broken,” Panama’s representative warned, urging the international community to ensure that financing beyond 2030 reflects the “urgency of the biodiversity crisis.” They added, “This is a matter of survival for ecosystems, economies, and humanity. We cannot repeat the failures of climate finance. COP16.2 must deliver more than words; it must deliver funding. The world is out of time.”
A report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London in October revealed that global wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73% over the past 50 years.
The talks are taking place as countries face a range of challenges, including trade tensions, debt concerns, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the U.S. has not signed the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, new President Donald Trump has moved to halt development funding through the United States Agency for International Development.
COP16 President Susana Muhamad urged countries to work together “for something that is perhaps the most important purpose of humanity in the 21st century: our collective capacity to sustain life on this planet.” Muhamad, who has resigned as Colombia’s environment minister but will continue to serve until after the COP16 conference, expressed hope for a resolution in Rome.
Unlike the record 23,000 participants at the Cali conference, the Rome talks resumed in a smaller format, with 1,400 people accredited and just a few hundred country representatives attending the opening plenary in a hall overlooking the rain-soaked ruins of Rome’s Circus Maximus. Countries immediately began closed-door negotiations, which will continue into Tuesday evening. They have until Thursday to finalize a plan for delivering the promised $200 billion annually for biodiversity by 2030, including $30 billion annually from wealthy nations to poorer ones. In 2022, the total funding was approximately $15 billion, according to the OECD.
The debate primarily centers on how funding is delivered. Developing nations, led by Brazil and the African group, are pushing for a new, dedicated biodiversity fund, arguing that they are inadequately represented in existing mechanisms. Wealthy nations, led by the European Union, Japan, and Canada, argue that creating multiple funds would fragment aid. On Friday, the COP16 presidency proposed postponing the decision on a new fund to future UN talks while suggesting reforms to existing financing mechanisms.
Oscar Soria, CEO of The Common Initiative, a think tank specializing in global economic and environmental policy, expressed pessimism about raising significantly more funds, noting that key sources of biodiversity finance are shrinking or disappearing. “We are completely off track in terms of achieving that money,” Soria told The Associated Press. “What was supposed to be a good Colombian telenovela, where people bring the right resources and the happy ending of delivering their money, could actually end up being a tragic Italian opera, where no one agrees to anything and everyone loses.”
### New Fund Launched
One achievement from the Cali talks was the creation of a new fund to share profits from digitally sequenced genetic data from plants and animals with the communities they originate from. Officially launched on Tuesday, the fund is designed so that large companies can contribute a portion of the profits or revenue they generate from developing products like medicines and cosmetics using this data, which can amount to billions of dollars.
Ximena Barrera of WWF Colombia told AFP that the fund would ensure “direct benefits for those who have safeguarded ecosystems for centuries” and marked an important milestone for corporate contributions to nature conservation.
The failure to finalize an agreement in Cali was the first in a series of disappointing outcomes for the planet at UN summits last year. A climate finance deal at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November was criticized as inadequate, while separate negotiations on desertification and plastic pollution stalled in December.
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