The COP16 biodiversity summit was an enormous flop for safeguarding nature

Biodiversity loss is a disaster – and it’s now clearer than ever that the world just isn’t transferring quick sufficient to repair it. The COP16 summit in Cali, Colombia, fizzled out in additional time final weekend, with too few international locations nonetheless in attendance to agree on a worldwide plan to halt the decline of nature.

“Unfortunately, too many countries and UN officials came to Cali without the urgency and level of ambition needed to secure outcomes at COP16 to address our species’ most urgent existential issue,” says Brian O’Donnell on the Marketing campaign for Nature, an environmental advocacy group.

Indicators that progress was missing have been clear from the outset of the assembly, with practically all international locations lacking a deadline to submit official plans on how they are going to obtain the formidable biodiversity targets set two years in the past at COP15, together with defending 30 per cent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. A couple of extra of those plans trickled in in the course of the two weeks of the summit, together with these from giant international locations like India and Argentina, however most international locations’ methods are nonetheless lacking.

Going into COP16, it was clear the world just isn’t on monitor to hit these targets. Since 2020, the realm of the planet’s land and oceans below formal protections has elevated simply 0.5 per cent, in response to a UN report launched in the course of the summit. That may be a fee far too gradual to guard 30 per cent of the planet by the top of the last decade.

And people protections are sorely wanted. A report from the Zoological Society of London and the World Wildlife Fund, launched forward of the summit, discovered a median 73 per cent decline within the dimension of vertebrate animal populations since 1970, a rise of 4 share factors since 2022. One other stark report, which the Worldwide Union for the Conservation of Nature launched on the assembly, discovered 38 per cent of the world’s tree species are threatened with extinction.

Many lower-income international locations mentioned their failure to develop and submit plans by the deadline, not to mention to start carrying them out, was as a result of a dearth of monetary assets. COP16 did see higher-income international locations make pledges – totalling about $400 million – to assist these efforts, however funds stay billions in need of the $20 billion annual purpose promised by 2025.

A transparent plan to shut this finance hole, in addition to monitor progress in direction of the targets, was left unresolved because the talks bumped into additional time early Saturday morning. As delegates left, the variety of international locations in attendance dwindled beneath the minimal quantity required to make choices, and the assembly was suspended with out reaching a decision. The agenda will probably be taken up at an interim assembly in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2025.

“Nature is on life support and by not reaching a strong financial compromise here in Cali, the risk of its collapse increases,” says Patricia Zurita at Conservation Worldwide, a non-profit environmental organisation.

Though COP16’s failure to maneuver the needle on finance dissatisfied observers, the assembly did handle one key settlement: a deal on methods to gather income from merchandise developed utilizing the planet’s genetic information. Earlier than the assembly was suspended, international locations agreed to induce pharmaceutical and different biotech firms that use such “digital sequence information” to contribute 0.1 per cent of income or 1 per cent of earnings to a “Cali Fund”. This fund will probably be used to guard the biodiversity that’s the supply of such genetic information.

The deal, which comes after practically a decade of negotiations, was much less sweeping than the African Union and a few lower-income international locations had hoped, and the truth that it’s voluntary means a lot will rely upon how particular person international locations and firms reply. However UN estimates counsel the fund might increase as much as a billion {dollars} a yr for biodiversity. “It might raise some, but at nowhere near the scale or speed required,” says Pierre du Plessis, a long-time negotiator for the African Union. Forward of the assembly, he argued in New Scientist that the fund must be a lot bigger.

Indigenous individuals additionally noticed a victory earlier than the assembly was suspended, with the creation of a proper physique that can give them a stronger voice in biodiversity negotiations.

However the general temper was dour. “A real shame of COP16 is that [debates on] digital sequence information sucked up the last drops of energy and time,” says Amber Scholz on the Leibniz Institute DSMZ in Germany.

One motive for the obvious lack of urgency is that the world treats local weather change and biodiversity loss as two separate points. The annual international local weather summits are higher attended and obtain much more consideration than the biodiversity negotiation – solely six heads of state attended COP16, in contrast with the 154 who went to final yr’s local weather summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. That may be a downside when the two points are intertwined: local weather change is likely one of the essential threats to biodiversity, and essentially the most biodiverse ecosystems are sometimes additionally the most effective at storing carbon.

“I think the most important thing we need is to change what has been the permanent neglect of biodiversity, especially when compared to climate change,” UN Secretary-Basic António Guterres mentioned on the summit. “They are all interlinked and indivisible.”