Delegates from nearly 200 nations on Monday began two weeks of talks on how to implement the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), with questions around how to raise more funds to reverse nature loss and from who quickly taking centre stage.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the official opening ceremony on Sunday called on countries to make significant investments in nature to make sure the world meets the GBF funding goal of the Global North raising $20 billion by 2025 – now only months away – and $50 bln by the end of the decade.

COP President and Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad continued in the same vein when briefing journalists at the COP16 venue in Cali on Monday morning.

“A financial pact must mean not only the goal we already have in the Kunming-Montreal Framework, but also how we create an institutional financial architecture that is transparent and effectively accumulates resources,” she said.

Much of the $20-bln funding structure is supposed to come via the GBF Fund, which was operationalised earlier this year, but so far the GEF-led fund has received less than $250 mln from donor nations.

That has strengthened long-standing calls for a separate fund to be established, especially by African nations and Brazil, who have objected to the way GEF administers funds and would like to see a mechanism that allows Indigenous Peoples and local communities gain more say in how the money is spent.

However, some Global North nations remain opposed to an additional fund, preferring instead to rely on existing frameworks, even though pledged contributions so far are not materialising.

This split is set to make the next two weeks more difficult for negotiators, with some observers unhappy about the impact it has on the work to address the nature and biodiversity crisis.

“We think the important thing is that this stand-off ends and that countries start to talk to each other and find a solution that lasts,” Bernadette Fischler Hooper, head of international advocacy at WWF UK, told reporters.

“We need to get more, more, more money quick, quick, quick.”

FALSE SOLUTION OR HELPING HAND?

The lack of ready government funding has been among the main drivers of increased focus on nature and biodiversity markets over the past couple of years.

Such markets are expected to draw a lot of attention at COP16 with a number of major announcements set to be made.

Host country Colombia upped the ante further on Monday when it released its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), unveiling strategies to actively use both biodiversity and carbon credits in order to meet its domestic nature finance target.

That follows recent comments by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the nascent nature credit market could become a key mechanism to attract nature funding in the future.

However, while speaking to journalists Monday, EU delegates would not go into further detail on the types of polices the block might develop on environmental markets.

“The European Commission has been working for years to get a better understanding of what are the opportunities and what we can get out of that for biodiversity conservation,” chief negotiator Hugo-Maria Schally said.

“But we understand there are dangers and challenges.”

The EU still expects to arrive at some clarity on its biodiversity market policy next year.

“In regards to resource mobilisation, we are focusing on clearly outlining approaches that could help all countries to mobilise resources from all sources – private and public, domestic and international,” said Schally.

The increasing focus on biodiversity markets has drawn criticism as well, with several reports in the run-up to the COP warning against greenwashing, abuse of human rights, and the commodification of nature.

NGO Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) – one of the most vocal opponents of nature and biodiversity markets – issued a statement Monday, warning against relying on what it called “false solutions”, referring to the use of credits for offsetting purposes.

“Keeping nature-based solutions out of the climate and biodiversity decisions is crucial. We want to ensure that all climate policies undergo thorough assessments to evaluate their impact on biodiversity,” said Nele Marien with FoEI’s forest and biodiversity programme.

“Whenever they are found to have a detrimental impact on the environment, we call for an immediate moratorium to be established.”

While calling for greater integration of environmental services in macroeconomic indicators, however, Colombia’s Muhamad also delineated limits.

“Today, there is no macroeconomic valuation – which is not the same as commodifying nature – of the environmental functions that biodiverse countries lend to [the rest of the world].”

The ‘commodification’ of nature has historically been a hot-button issue in Latin America, alienating Ecuador and Bolivia from carbon markets full stop, until recent legislative and judicial efforts formally legalised carbon trading in both countries.

Also, the Gustavo Petro administration’s inclination toward market regulation has prompted voluntary carbon market (VCM) observers to decry the Colombian government as “anti-offsetting” and “anti-market”.

MUCH MORE

While finance is getting a lot of attention, a series of other issues are also on the agenda in Cali and could provide potential stumbling blocks for negotiators.

Going into the talks, there are almost 1,500 brackets in the text left from the previous session, many of them deemed highly contentious.

Countries were supposed to submit their NBSAPs to outline how they will meet their targets ahead of COP16, though Colombia’s presented on Monday morning was only the 35th, according to the WWF NBSAP Tracker.

Just over 100 countries have submitted targets.

A number of additional plans, including that of India, are expected to be released during the two-week event, but is nowhere near everybody’s submissions.

Meanwhile delegates are also trying to sort out a framework for monitoring, reporting, and reviewing progress towards the GBF, benefit-sharing from use of genetic resources, and the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

By Stian Reklev and Alejandra Padin-Dujon in Cali – news@carbon-pulse.com

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