As the COP16 summit resumes, countries are under pressure to finalise a $200 billion nature finance deal, even as many fail to meet key biodiversity targets
The 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16), which began in Cali, Columbia in October 2024, will resume on February 25 in Rome, Italy. Delegates from around 150 nations plan to overcome differences and work toward achieving 2030 targets to prevent catastrophic nature loss, according to Bloomberg. The meeting, which will run till February 27, will focus on generating $200 billion annually to help preserve global biodiversity.
In October 2022, the countries struck a landmark deal to stop nature loss by 2030 – the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework- countries coordinated in the Columbian city of Cali and agreed to set up a fund to collect money from companies that profit from the genetic data contained in nature – the ‘Cali Fund’. However, negotiators struggled to agree on who else should pay and how the money should be managed as the summit ran out of time to agree significant elements of the implementation of the agreement.
There is an urgent need for action as vertebrate wildlife populations declined 73% since 1970, the non-profit World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stated.
According to a new analysis by Carbon Brief, 70 out of 137 countries or 51% of those who submitted plans to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity failed to commit to protecting 30% of their land and sea by 2030. Another 10 countries have unclear commitments and 61 countries are yet to submit any plans.
These findings add to growing concerns that another decade of international failure on nature may be on the horizon. Governments have never met a single target in the history of UN biodiversity agreements, despite a major push to make this decade different, reported The Guardian.