COP16 Convention on Biological Diversity

Nov 18 2024 By Amministratore Biodiversity ClimateChange 0 Comments

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP16 , held in Cali, Colombia, from 21 October to 1 November 2024, brought together representatives of over 190 nations, NGOs, scientists and private sector organizations. The event focused on reviewing progress on the Kunming-Montreal Global Framework for Biodiversity, which aims to protect 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030, ensure sustainable use of living resources, reduce pollution and ensure that the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources are equitably distributed, reducing the financing gap for biodiversity protection.

Main objectives of the 16th Conference of the Parties on Biodiversity.

Protect 30% of our lands and oceans by 2030:
Known as the 30×30 goal, this ambitious plan aims to safeguard critical and vital ecosystems to effectively counteract biodiversity loss. The initiative focuses on conserving natural habitats, promoting protection strategies that involve local communities and governments to ensure long-term sustainability.

Pollution Reduction:
Implementation of stringent regulatory limits to reduce contamination from plastics and harmful chemicals. The main goal is to protect biodiversity, ensuring a healthier and more sustainable environment for all life forms and preventing irreversible damage to ecosystems, while promoting more responsible practices in the use of toxic materials.

Strengthening financing:
Introducing new financing and commitments to provide economic support to developing countries.

Ecosystem Protection:
Develop and implement advanced strategies to enhance the protection of threatened habitats, including forests, wetlands and other essential ecosystems, which play a key role in maintaining biodiversity and conserving endangered species.

The conference concluded with renewed commitments to support the Kunming-Montreal Framework and underlined the importance of international collaboration, shared responsibility and continuous monitoring of progress as crucial to addressing the biodiversity crisis and mitigating its global impacts. It addressed important global issues on biodiversity protection but concluded with mixed results .

Results and Commitments

Indigenous Peoples’ Rights:
A new body has been established to ensure permanent representation of indigenous peoples and local communities in the Convention’s decision-making processes. This commitment strengthens the role of indigenous knowledge and practices in biodiversity management and promotes respect for human rights in conservation activities.

About Digital Sequence Information (DSI) ¹ :
The “Cali Fund” was established, an initiative designed to collect voluntary contributions from companies that benefit from digitized genetic information (DSI) obtained from biodiversity in the Global South. Although this fund represents a step towards corporate accountability, contributions remain voluntary. Furthermore, there is no control mechanism to verify how DSI is actually used, which raises significant concerns about the lack of concrete and binding commitments from the companies involved.

A central theme of the conference was financing for biodiversity protection .
Many developing countries, led by Brazil and Congo, called for the creation of a new dedicated fund, with more inclusive governance, to better support biodiversity goals. However, developed countries, including the European Union, preferred to maintain the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), established in 2022 at COP15 with centralized management under the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which already administers several environmental funds, with defined allocation and management criteria, over which developed countries maintain significant influence.

The European Union and other developed countries consider that the GBFF is sufficient to finance the objectives of the Global Biodiversity Framework, avoiding duplication and ensuring effective control over the funds allocated to biodiversity protection.

The Fund for Nature requested by developing countries is proposed as an autonomous fund from the GBFF, with a governance model that would give more voice and control to developing countries, which are often those with the richest natural resources but also with the fewest resources to protect them.

This would be a fund exclusively dedicated to the needs and challenges of biodiversity conservation, taking into account the specificities of megadiverse countries such as Brazil and African nations.

Proposing countries see this new fund as a tool to ensure a more equitable distribution of funding, without being dependent on the priorities of developed countries and the limitations of the GBFF, which may not address all urgent financing needs for biodiversity.

The divergences between these two visions have blocked the approval of a new autonomous fund, with the European Union, Switzerland and Japan rejecting the proposal to avoid fragmentation of funding. This disagreement has generated criticism, as many believe that the current structure of the GBFF does not guarantee equitable access to funds for developing countries, putting the implementation of conservation objectives at risk.

Disagreements over finance and the slow adoption of new national biodiversity plans (NBSAPs) highlight the challenges of implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Negotiators stressed that the lack of a concrete agreement on financing risks compromising the goal of halting biodiversity loss by 2030.

This official video of COP16 highlights Costa Rica’s commitment, particularly in the Nicoya Peninsula, to the preservation of Forests and Biodiversity and the implementation of the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP)

THE FOREST FACTOR – The conservation, restoration and sustainable management of forests are crucial to understanding the connection between biodiversity, climate change, hunger and poverty in order to achieve the objectives set. 

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1. 
   Digitized genetic information (DSI) refers to genetic data of organisms (such as plants and animals) that have been digitized and made easily shareable and usable. This data may include DNA sequences, genetic information, and other genetic characteristics that can be used in various fields, such as scientific research, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry ↩︎