Delegates from nearly 200 countries will gather in Colombia at the end of this month for the COP16 biodiversity summit, in what observers call “a temperature check” for the world’s pledges on nature, amid political divisions on finance mobilisation threatening to hamper the implementation of the landmark Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) 16th Conference of Parties (COP), due to be held in Cali over Oct. 21-Nov. 1, marks the first UN biodiversity conference since the GBF was signed two years ago at COP15 in Montreal, Canada.

Countries will be tasked with adopting a number of decisions that are critical to putting the 2022 agreement into action, as well as showing progress on their commitments on nature through updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).

“This COP is a temperature check for global ambitions on biodiversity,” Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC), told Carbon Pulse.

“What’s going to be really critical is looking at the big picture about how countries are grappling with the implementation process.”

Talks will focus on three priorities outlined by the Colombian presidency – defining financial mechanisms to mobilise resources, finalising and adopting a monitoring and reporting framework for the implementation of the GBF, and accelerating progress on access and benefit-sharing while actively involving Indigenous Peoples.

In the background of the headline targets are other goals regarding mainstreaming nature protection across major economic sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, fishery, and transport, and aligning climate and biodiversity financing.

“The difference between this COP and the previous one is that Montreal was negotiating a whole of society framework. Now we’re really in implementation mode,” Jessica Smith, nature lead at the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), told Carbon Pulse.

“The key question is: how can finance support countries now to take action?”

FUNDING SPAT

One of the most daunting jobs for negotiators is advancing efforts to plug the annual $700-billion funding gap to address biodiversity loss, including with bigger contributions from governments and the private sector.

“Resource mobilisation will be very contentious, very thorny, and it risks upending the progress of the GBF if we don’t get some resolution at this COP,” said Krueger of TNC.

A big stumbling block is that some countries are unhappy with the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), established after COP15 to catalyse financing towards nature conservation, administered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

“Even though the fund is supposed to have streamlined access, there’s concern about the GEF and its processes, especially among developing countries. And then also the GBFF has not been fully funded,” said Krueger.

The GBFF, which will be operational until Dec. 2030, has only raised $226.8 bln from the UK, Canada, Spain, Japan, Germany, and Luxembourg, plus an undisclosed contribution from New Zealand.

A large group of nations, including Brazil, South Africa, and Kenya, have repeatedly advocated for the establishment of a separate vehicle under the authority of the COP.

“African countries in particular want a new fund, and they want it now, but I don’t think there’s another $100 bln out there of new money, certainly not to capitalise a new fund. It’s a difficult situation right now,” said Krueger.

Even if the GBFF mandate was to be confirmed, delegates at COP16 would have to start laying the groundwork for a post-2030 financing mechanism.

Many observers, including TNC, argue the new mechanism should not be project-based like the GBFF, but instead deliver funding automatically according to a formula related to the biodiversity that is being protected in each country.

As well, parties are expected to agree on a separate mechanism to share benefits derived from products that leverage the use of the DNA sequences of plants, animals, and microbes, known as digital sequence information on genetic resources (DSI).

If approved at COP16, the DSI fund would contribute to equitably and fairly sharing with developing countries and Indigenous Peoples some of the multi-trillion dollar revenues generated from products such as drugs, cosmetics, and agricultural biotechnology that have been developed by reading and understanding genetic resources.

Although its establishment is considered as one of the top priorities of COP16, negotiations are moving slowly, with parties still weighing several options in terms of who precisely should share the benefits and to what extent they should contribute.

“This mechanism would be an important part for supporting the broader goals of the CBD, specifically around benefit sharing,” Krueger said.

PRIVATE SECTOR AT CROSSROADS

Alongside discussions on the GBFF and DSI, talks in Cali will address the role of the private sector in ramping up financing for biodiversity conservation, amid loud calls for increased participation.

An unprecedented number of corporate and finance actors are set to descend on Cali, as the summit will host the second-ever dedicated finance day, first seen two years ago in Montreal.

“At COP15, we heard from lots of companies talking about new commitments. Now we need to see them coming back and actually having taken some action and made some progress,” said Leo Murphy, impact manager at Climate Asset Management.

“It’s a really strong time for the private sector to say, we are a genuine, credible partner in delivering the GBF,” he told Carbon Pulse.

To meet a growing interest from the finance sector, UNEP FI will host together with the Finance for Biodiversity (FfB) Foundation and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) a finance pavilion to discuss the alignment of financial flows with biodiversity goals.

“We’ll have two weeks of conversations between the public and private sectors on how the financial institutions can support the GBF implementation and the uptake of nature-based solutions,” said Smith of UNEP FI.

According to Smith, market-based mechanisms, such as non-offsetting biodiversity credits, are among the most powerful tools to channel private funds towards biodiversity.

“I think that an international voluntary market could be helpful since it could actually create the North-South transfers that we need,” she said.

“At the moment, the demand is concentrated in domestic compliance markets, but at the same time, we still need the international markets to channel resources towards the Global South.”

“That’s why I think the most exciting things will come from the voluntary space.”

Biodiversity credits are expected to be widely discussed during side events at COP16, with a growing number of initiatives poised to be launched during the two-week summit.

REFORMING SUBSIDIES

While the GBF stressed the need to unlock private resources, a range of different measures must be deployed to scale biodiversity financing, according to Murphy, including reforming and redirecting subsidies harmful to nature, estimated at some $1.7 trillion per year in 2022.

“We need to look at how we transition existing sectors, not just rely on new projects that end up in sustainability reports,” he said.

“The transition can be financed in a number of ways, and reforming subsidies is a crucial part of this wider strategy.”

Target 18 of the GBF recognised harmful subsidies as one of the main indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, calling for a reduction of at least $500 bln per year.

A report published last year by the World Bank estimated that harmful agricultural subsidies alone are responsible for the loss of 2.2 mln hectares of forest annually, equivalent to 14% of global deforestation.

Of the 78 countries and regions that have submitted national targets prior to COP16, 40 specifically committed to reform or reduction of harmful subsidies and incentives, including Canada, India, China, South Korea, Mexico, Kenya, and the EU.

This figure does not count national targets specific to agriculture or fisheries reform, which fall under separate targets of the GBF.

Colombia and Costa Rica are also leading the way on the topics of subsidies and policy coherence, according to TNC’s Krueger, though many other countries are still lagging behind.

“Overall, I would be very cautious about predicting any grand success here,” she said.

“What I do think is really useful, though, is that a lot of countries do at least have commitments to analyse subsidies in their NBSAPs and national targets.”

NBSAP REVIEW

NBSAPs are national documents outlining how countries intend to meet biodiversity conservation targets, similar to nationally determined contributions in the UN climate talks, and are supposed to be accompanied by separate Biodiversity Finance Plans that identify sources of funding.

Many of the few plans that have been published to date do not go far enough, as they are lacking across topics of whole-government participation, human rights, and tracking, according to a recent WWF study.

Just over 20 revised NBSAPs have been submitted out of 196 participating regions, though Krueger argued this is not necessarily a bad sign.

“From our perspective, that’s okay, because what we’re seeing is that some of the countries that are taking a little bit longer are taking this issue with a lot of seriousness,” she said.

To ensure that governments report on the implementation of the commitments included in their NBSAPs, during COP15 parties agreed to establish a monitoring framework that leverages a number of indicators related to each of the 23 GBF targets.

This framework is expected to be adopted in Cali, although experts said there are still a lot of gaps.

“Specifically, the indicator for Target 14 on mainstreaming is very weak, but we have a good starting list [of indicators], so let’s just get on with it,” said Krueger.

“Negotiations on the monitoring framework will be an important indicator of whether parties are serious about implementation.”

INDIGENOUS PARTICIPATION

Indigenous organisations, including the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, have long advocated for ensuring the participation of native communities in the development and implementation of the monitoring framework.

Indigenous communities preserve about half the world’s land, including 36% of its intact forests, and provide vital data and information on the status of biodiversity and land use.

Yet, their land rights are frequently unrecognised and unprotected.

According to Crystal Davis, global director for the food, land, and water programmes at the World Resources Institute (WRI), countries must boost their efforts to acknowledge the value of Indigenous Peoples in biodiversity protection.

“There’s been a generally positive trend in terms of recognition of Indigenous land rights over the past 10 years,” she told Carbon Pulse.

“However, this process is slow, and we’re still a long way to go.”

In this context, the environmental minister of Colombia in August signed an agreement with delegates of Indigenous groups from the nine countries of the Amazon Basin.

Under the agreement, the government committed to working together with the Indigenous Peoples during the COP16 negotiations, in a bid to mobilise resources towards communities.

As well, the government will recognise Indigenous territories of the Colombian Amazon as conservation areas under their management by 2030, aligning with targets 1 and 3 of the GBF.

Davis stressed the need to broaden the conversation to include not only land rights but also the right to self-determination, governance, decision-making about land and natural resource management, and improved access to finance and technology.

“To make sure those goals are pursued, ensuring Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities are present during high-level negotiations is not enough,” she said.

“Negotiation processes are technocratic, and it is challenging to be deeply involved even for big organisations like WRI, who has been engaging in these processes for many years.”

“We need to figure out when and how to engage them in the conversation meaningfully, and I think civil society organisations can play an important role in that.”

SAME COFFERS

Safeguarding Indigenous Peoples’ rights is also among the targets outlined in a letter penned by a group of scientists ahead of COP16, which called for increased alignment between CBD and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

As halting biodiversity loss is increasingly regarded as key to addressing the climate crisis, talks in Cali will mark a crucial preliminary step ahead of the COP29 UN climate summit, to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November.

“The level of ambition and commitment that we see at COP16 could be indicative of what we’ll see at COP29,” Davis said.

“Ultimately, it’s the same coffers that we’re trying to tap for both of these.”

By Sergio Colombo and Giada Ferraglioni – news@carbon-pulse.com

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