Global talks to protect biodiversity have restarted with a call for humanity to come together to “sustain life on the planet” and overcome a fight over funding that caused the previous meeting last year to end in disarray.
More than two years after a landmark deal on biodiversity – including a pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030 – nations are still haggling over the money needed to reverse the destruction that scientists say threatens a million species.
Negotiators meeting at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome are tasked with resolving a deadlock between rich and developing countries over whether to create a specific fund to finance nature conservation.
Disagreement over the issue saw the previous UN COP16 talks in Cali, Colombia in November stretch hours into extra time and end without a deal.
Speaking at the opening of the talks in Rome on Tuesday, many developing nations urged the meeting to unblock funds and called on wealthy countries to make good on their pledge to provide $20bn a year for poorer nations by 2025.
“Without this, trust might be broken,” Panama’s representative said, urging the international community to ensure that overall financing beyond 2030 reflects the “urgency of the biodiversity crisis”.
“This is a matter of survival for ecosystems, economy 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.”
Global wildlife populations have plunged on average by 73 percent in 50 years, according to an October report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London.
The talks come as countries face a range of challenges from trade tensions and debt worries to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While Washington has not signed up to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, new US 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 probably is the most important purpose of humanity in the 21st century, which is 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, has said she was “hopeful” of a resolution in Rome.
Far from the record 23,000 participants at the Cali conference, the talks resumed in a smaller format, with 1,400 people accredited and just a few 100 country representatives at the opening plenary in a hall overlooking the rain-drenched ruins of Rome’s Circus Maximus.
Countries launched straight into closed-door negotiations that will stretch into Tuesday evening.
They have until Thursday to hammer out a plan over a promised $200bn a year in finance for biodiversity by 2030, including $30bn a year from wealthier countries to poorer ones.
The total for 2022 was about $15bn, according to the OECD.
The debate mainly centres on the way in which funding is delivered.
Developing nations – led by Brazil and the African group – want the creation of a new, dedicated biodiversity fund, saying they are not adequately represented in existing mechanisms.
Wealthy nations – led by the European Union, Japan and Canada – say setting up multiple funds would fragment aid.
On Friday, the COP16 presidency published a new text that proposed postponing the ultimate decision on a new fund to future UN talks, while suggesting reforming existing financing.
Oscar Soria, chief executive of The Common Initiative, a think tank specialising in global economic and environmental policy, was pessimistic about raising a great deal more money and said 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 in which people will actually bring the right resources, and the happy ending of bringing their money, could actually end up being a tragic Italian opera, where no one actually agrees to anything and everyone loses.”
New fund launched
One achievement in Cali was the creation of a new fund to share profits from digitally sequenced genetic data from plants and animals with the communities they come from.
The fund, officially launched on Tuesday, is designed so that large firms can contribute a portion of the profit or revenue they generate from developing things like medicine and cosmetics using this data, which can add up to billions of dollars.
The AFP news agency quoted Ximena Barrera of WWF Colombia as saying the fund would ensure “direct benefits for those who have safeguarded ecosystems for centuries” and was an important milestone for corporate contributions for nature.
The failure to finalise an agreement in Cali was the first in a string of disappointing outcomes for the planet at UN summits last year.
A climate finance deal at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November was slammed as disappointing, while separate negotiations about desertification and plastic pollution stalled in December.