World lags on 2030 nature goals headed into UN COP16 talks

The world reached its most ambitious agreement yet to stop the destruction of nature by the end of the decade in 2022.

Two years later, the country is already behind on meeting its targets.

As nearly 200 countries meet on Monday in Cali, Colombia for a two-week UN biodiversity summit, COP16, they will be under pressure to prove their support for the targets set out in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Agreement.

The biggest concern for countries and companies is how to pay for conservation, with the COP16 talks aiming to develop new initiatives that can generate revenue for nature.

“We have a problem here,” said Gavin Edwards, director of the nonprofit Nature Positive.

“COP16 is an opportunity to re-energize and remind everyone of their commitments from two years ago and start moving them in the right direction if we are going to get closer to the 2030 goals,” Edwards said.

The rate of destruction of nature through activities such as logging or overfishing has not decreased, while governments miss deadlines for their biodiversity action plans and conservation funding falls billions of dollars short of meeting the 2025 target. is far away.

The summit in Colombia, marking the 16th meeting of nations that signed the original 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, will be the largest biodiversity summit ever, with approximately 23,000 delegates registered to attend and with A large exhibition area is also open to the public.

It remains to be seen whether partnerships and pressure can motivate countries to take bolder conservation actions.

The clearest indication of the lack of effort is the fact that most countries have not yet submitted national conservation plans, officially known as National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), although they did at the start of COP16. Till had agreed to do so.

As of Friday, 31 out of 195 countries had filed a plan with the UN Biodiversity Secretariat.

Rich countries have been quick to file their plans ahead of many European countries, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and Canada.

The United States participates in negotiations but has never ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, so is not obliged to submit a plan.

As of Friday, another 73 countries had opted to file only a less ambitious submission that set out their national targets, without detailing how they would be achieved.

With so few plans filed, experts will have difficulty assessing progress in meeting the agreement’s hallmark “30 by 30” goal of conserving 30% of lands and oceans by 2030.

Colombia’s Environment Minister Susana Muhammad, who is also COP16 president, said the summit needed to assess the plans presented so far, but also explore why so many were late.

“For example, the funds may not be enough to be able to carry out the plans,” Muhammad told Reuters. He said even countries with newly elected governments may still be gaining momentum.

Bernadette Fischler Hooper, head of advocacy at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), said poor countries are having difficulty securing the funding and expertise needed to develop national biodiversity plans.

money for nature

In addition to committing countries to conservation policies and plans, a top priority of the COP16 summit is to find new funding sources for poor countries to meet nature targets.

During the COP15 talks in 2022, negotiators set a target of $20 billion annually by 2025 to help developing countries on biodiversity.

That doesn’t add up to the $15.4 billion per year that was already flowing to nature by 2022, according to OECD data published in September. While this makes the 2025 target more attainable, it also means the target could have been more ambitious.

“If you look at the new funding announced since (COP15) to implement this framework, it is very little,” said Brian O’Donnell of the Campaign for Nature advocacy group.

Because there is a two-year lag in the data, countries will not know how much is being spent on nature this year until the target is met.

The world moved quickly to establish a new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund within a few months following the COP15 agreement.

The fund was envisioned as one of the world’s major instruments to pay for conservation, with the goal of raising billions of dollars.

But some countries have contributed, with only $238 million collected so far, according to data compiled by the Campaign for Nature.

Muhammad said that, between financing talks and policy reviews, negotiators need to keep their eye on the nature crisis unfolding in the real world.

He also urged nations to consider their plans to tackle climate change as part of their biodiversity agenda, noting that the two are interconnected. For example, as global warming warms the oceans to unprecedented levels, the world is experiencing a mass bleaching event for the fourth time this year.

“The ultimate indicator is really what the reality of biodiversity loss is,” he said. “We are no better off now than we were two years ago.”