'Unacceptable,' Advocates Say as COP16 Ends Without Biodiversity Fund Deal

Officials at the international biodiversity conference that began in October were forced on Saturday to suspend talks without reaching an agreement on a key issue of the summit—a detailed finance plan for a dedicated biodiversity fund—after the meeting went into overtime and delegates began leaving.

The failure to reach an agreement on biodiversity finance was denounced by the head of environmental group Greenpeace's delegation at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which took place over two weeks in Cali, Colombia.

"Governments in Cali put forward plans to protect nature but were unable to mobilize the money to actually do it," said An Lambrechts. "Biodiversity finance remains stalled after a deafening absence of credible finance pledges from wealthy governments and unprecedented corporate lobbying... Closing the finance gap was not merely some moral obligation but necessary to the protection of people and nature that grows more urgent each day."

Lambrechts added that with international leaders now preparing to attend the 2024 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan this month, "the non-decision on a fund damages trust between Global South and North countries."

The conference was aimed at ramping up progress toward meeting goals set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in Canada in 2022. That framework calls for the protection of 30% of land and sea areas and the restoration of 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.

In Canada, delegations also agreed to phase out subsidies that are harmful to nature and to provide $200 billion per year for the protection of biodiversity by 2030, including $30 billion per year that would be transferred from rich to poor countries. A larger goal of ultimately generating $700 billion to protect nature was also part of the agreement.

About $15 billion was transferred in 2022, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and nations have pledged about $400 million to a Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.

But in Cali in recent days, Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad offered a draft proposal for the establishment of a dedicated biodiversity fund—a priority for developing nations at the conference—only to have delegations including those from the European Union, Switzerland, and Japan reject the proposal.

"Two years ago, we made a commitment to do better and be better," said Jiwoh Abdulai, minister of environment and climate change for Sierra Leone. "This COP has neither delivered that additional funding nor given us confidence that governments will work together to deliver it in a transparent and urgent manner."

The Forests & Finance Coalition—which includes Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and Friends of the Earth U.S., among others—called the result of finance discussions at the meeting "disappointing."

"This latest development makes it all the more critical that banks and investors are stopped from financing destructive sectors that continue to drive nature loss and human rights abuses," said Tom Picken, RAN's forests and finance director.

Lambrechts acknowledged that "big pharma and big agribusiness failed to block a game-changing deal on corporate responsibility to pay up for nature protections."

COP16 delegates devised a plan to create a fund that would share the profits generated from digitally sequenced genetic data taken from plants and animals with the communities—mostly in the Global South—that the species come from.

Companies that make money from cosmetics, medicines, and other products that use digitally sequenced genetic data would pay into the fund, but the final agreement made participation voluntary, saying only that companies "should" contribute.

Indigenous delegates celebrated the creation of a permanent body within the CBD to represent the interests of Indigenous groups—a "historic victory," according to Leila Salazar-López, executive director of the nonprofit Amazon Watch.

A work plan was approved by the convention to expand the role of Indigenous people, local communities, and Afro-descendant people in the protection of biodiversity.

"Thanks to this new body and work plan approval, future COPs will work, amongst many other important issues, on land tenure, traditional knowledge and governance by Indigenous Peoples," said Isaac Rojas, forests and biodiversity coordinator for Friends of the Earth International (FOE). "It's a milestone in the struggle of Indigenous peoples for their rights. We congratulate them and share their joy following this win. But we have to remain vigilant, because these achievements may turn out to be empty words in view of the push for several false solutions."

FOE warned that false solutions, particularly biodiversity offsetting, were pushed heavily by corporations at the conference.

Corporate interests called for biodiversity credits—"tradeable assets intended to represent 'measurable outcomes'—such as protecting or restoring certain species or ecosystems, or parts of them," according to FOE. "Similar to carbon credits, they allow corporations to buy and sell these, to meet regulations or voluntary sustainability claims."

Nele Marien, forests and biodiversity co-coordinator for FOE, said Saturday that "corporations were here pushing very hard for all kinds of false solutions, for example on biodiversity offsetting, which had a lot of traction."

"They argue that they can keep pushing into new territories, and destroying these ecosystems, promising that they will compensate for this," said Marien. "This is simply impossible, because we don't have space in the world to compensate for these losses. Biodiversity offsetting is a mechanism that further perpetuates destruction, undermines human rights, and damages environmental justice."

A spokesperson for the CBD, David Ainsworth, told reporters that the conference would resume at a later date.

Estefania Gonzalez, deputy campaign director for Greenpeace Andino, said delegates were "able to take advantage of COP16 to bring much of the priority agenda of the Global South to the center of the negotiations, fighting to the last minute to reach agreements on financing."

But she added that "the resource mobilization committed by developed countries must be fulfilled immediately without further excuses."

"It is unacceptable that rich countries, besides failing to meet the $20 billion commitment," she said, "were unwilling to seek consensus on one of the most crucial issues: financing."