Nearly 200 countries gather at COP16 to discuss meeting 2022 treaty pledges

Environmental leaders from astir 200 countries are gathering successful Colombia to measure historical commitments to halt and reverse the nonaccomplishment of nature.

The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) starting connected Monday is simply a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings wherever 196 countries signed an ambitious planetary treaty, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to support biodiversity.

Delegates successful Cali volition statement however they tin prevention quality from the existent accelerated complaint of demolition and however they volition unrecorded up to the 2022 accord’s demands.

These see countries mounting 30 percent of their territories speech for conservation, slashing subsidies for businesses that harm quality and mandating that companies study their biology effect.

Countries were expected to taxable their biodiversity plans, known arsenic NBSAPs, by the commencement of the acme that runs till November 1. As of Friday, 31 retired of 195 countries had filed a program to the UN biodiversity secretariat.

On Sunday, Colombia’s Environment Minister and COP16 President Susana Muhamad described the league arsenic an accidental “to cod the acquisition that has passed done this satellite from each civilisations, from each cultures, from each cognition … to make livable, comparatively unchangeable conditions for a caller nine that volition beryllium forged successful the airy of the crisis.”

COP16 agenda

Wealthy nations agreed astatine 2022’s COP15 to lend astatine slightest $20bn annually starting successful 2025 towards helping processing countries conscionable their quality goals, with the people rising to $30bn by 2030.

By 2022, $15.4bn had been raised, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“We person a occupation here,” Gavin Edwards, manager of the nonprofit Nature Positive, told the Reuters quality agency.

“COP16 is an accidental to re-energise and punctual everybody of their commitments 2 years agone and commencement to people close if we’re going to get anyplace adjacent to 2030 targets being achieved,” Edwards said.

UN main Antonio Guterres connected Sunday appealed for “significant investment” successful the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund that was acceptable up successful 2022.

“We indispensable permission Cali with … commitments to mobilise different sources of nationalist and backstage finance,” the secretary-general said successful a video played to COP16 delegates.

So far, countries person made astir $250m successful commitments to the fund, according to agencies monitoring progress.

Leaders astatine the world’s biggest quality extortion league volition besides beryllium looking astatine ways to simultaneously code clime alteration issues and biodiversity decline.

The complaint of quality demolition done activities similar logging oregon overfishing has not fto up, portion governments miss deadlines connected their biodiversity enactment plans, and backing for conservation is billions of dollars distant from gathering a 2025 goal.

Muhamad, portion of Colombia’s first-ever left-wing government, told section media that 1 of the conference’s main objectives is to marque wide that “biodiversity is arsenic important, complementary and indispensable arsenic the vigor modulation and decarbonisation.”

Colombian Indigenous radical of antithetic ethnicities enactment successful the opening of the 16th United Nations Biodiversity Summit successful Cali, Colombia, October 20, 2024 [File: Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters]

The acme aims to found a planetary multilateral strategy for paying for entree to information connected familial accusation taken from plants, animals and microbes, called integer series information.

Additionally, COP16 volition look to finalise a caller programme for including accepted cognition successful nationalist conservation plans and decisions.

The UN bureau for the Convention connected Biological Diversity – which oversees the implementation of the archetypal 1992 quality pact – has called for peculiar protections to beryllium fixed to Indigenous groups successful voluntary isolation, stressing these communities’ relation successful protecting nature.

Indigenous populations are good represented astatine biodiversity COPs but often look the astir disappointed by last decisions.

This year, they mean to usage the acme taking spot connected the borderline of the Amazon to person their rights and ancestral cognition recognised, aft years of marginalisation and forced displacement.

“A batch of sermon has been fixed astir the voices of section communities … Indigenous peoples truly playing a cardinal role,” Andrew Miller, advocacy manager astatine Amazon Watch, an organisation that protects the rainforest, told The Associated Press quality agency. “So that’s 1 of the things that we’ll beryllium looking for astatine COP16.”

In Colombia’s capital, Bogota, the region’s Indigenous radical person been preparing for months for COP16, said the caput of 1 organisation.

“This is simply a large accidental to marque the interaction that we request to show to each the actors that travel from different countries the value of Indigenous peoples for the world,” said Jose Mendez, caput of the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon.