At the recent Biodiversity COP16 in Colombia, global leaders made strides towards protecting our planet’s rich biodiversity, including the establishment of a groundbreaking conservation fund. Yet, critical agreements fell short and challenges remain — leaving a mixed legacy for the summit.

How are global efforts to preserve the rich variety of life on our planet faring? More to the point, how is the international treaty that seeks to foster this shaping up?

We are referring to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a United Nations-backed agreement whose member states meet every two years to draft plans and set priorities for conserving biodiversity.

The most recent of these meetings, the 16th in a series of the Convention of the Parties, drew to a close in Cali, Colombia, last month. It’s known colloquially as the Biodiversity COP to distinguish it from the more famous (and complementary) UNFCCC COP climate treaty and its summits.

Well, to answer our opening questions, were it a schoolboy, Biodiversity COP16’s end-of-year report might read: Shows promise, but can do better. Increasingly thoughtful in interactions with others, but lacks focus and follow-through.

Certainly, speakers at Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation’s 28th Tipping Points webinar felt there was plenty about the summit to both pan and praise.

Katy Roxburgh, the facilitator of the 27 November webinar, who was also in Cali, noted that after two weeks of negotiations, the international gathering had to be suspended. Delegates ran out of time and with the quorum in the main meeting hall lost, a “number of critical agreements were not finalised”.

Roxburgh is the director of communications for the Campaign for Nature, an organisation that coordinates an initiative to safeguard natural spaces and to advance the interests of indigenous people.

The Campaign for Nature’s Katy Roxburgh says turning the broad goals of the latest Biodiversity COP into reality will be a tough task. (Photo: Supplied)

Key pledge

She said the COP16 summit faces the demanding task of turning the 22 broad goals agreed at the previous Biodiversity COP, in 2022, into reality.

Targets to protect specific areas needed to be implemented along with the 30×30 goal. The 30×30 goal refers to a pledge, now by more than 190 countries, to secure the protection and management of 30% of the world’s land, fresh waters and oceans by 2030.

With a record 23,000 people from 200 countries at the summit, reaching consensus on what must be done to achieve the target over the next five years was always going to be a big task.

Key highlights

However, Roxburgh felt “there were definitely some key successes” at COP16.

Joining her at the webinar to reflect on the summit were Angus Middleton, executive director of the non-government Namibia Nature Foundation; Solange Bandiaky-Badji, president and coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative; and Jason Dozier, senior programme officer for political mobilisation at the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People.

The webinar was titled Is Biodiversity COPing it again?, and Middleton addressed it directly, asking whether indeed conservation was being punished.

“I’m not so sure we did,” he said.

Angus Middleton, executive director of Namibia Nature Foundation. (Photo: Supplied)

Tough talking

He acknowledged there had been disagreement at the summit over who should pay for conservation and the mechanisms for this. He noted too that delegates had been unable to strike a conclusive deal on other important matters, including resources, mobilisation, planning and monitoring. He reminded the webinar of the severity of the biodiversity crisis and “existential threat” facing the world, mentioning insects as an example and citing a study that suggested 40% of insects were in decline, with grave consequences for food production.

“We really are in the race for our lives,” said Middleton.

Big business presence

However, he drew hope from the strides made at COP16 towards ocean conservation, while he welcomed the “tough but collegial” spirit of the talks.

This, he said, stood in happy contrast to the adversarial and polarising debates that often gripped the Climate COPs and CITES, the multilateral treaty and summits that deal with trade in endangered species.

Middleton also found some consolation in the “huge presence of big business” at Cali.

It represented a “genuine interest” from the sector, but he acknowledged it also raised controversy about, for example, levies on pesticides as well as “around issues like credits and offsets”.

Monetary value

He was referring to financial instruments that put a monetary value on conservation activities so that credits might be bought and sold, including to developers and industry who sought to compensate for their sometimes destructive or polluting activities and the biodiversity loss this caused.

The NGO boss welcomed a new benefit-sharing mechanism, the “Cali Fund”, which arose from a summit agreement on digital sequencing information. This “should see payments going in, particularly for the use of genetic resources”.

The agreement was voluntary for now, he said, but rules would follow at subsequent COPs.

For now, he said, it was important that those rules were followed to “make sure that local people, and particularly indigenous communities, who are really the stewards of wildlife and biodiversity” get access to this fund with fewer conditions than currently faced.

On COP16 as a whole and in particular the summit’s strong recognition of the role of local and indigenous people in conserving nature, Middleton said, “We are going in the right direction.”

Indigenous involvement

Bandiaky-Badji, whose organisation focuses on just such communities, including people of African descent in the Caribbean and Latin America, counted the adoption of Convention Article 8(j) as one of the summit’s big successes.

It establishes a system of protected areas to conserve biological diversity, with guidelines for this, while requiring those involved to respect and preserve the knowledge and practices of traditional people, especially so far as it supports conservation and the sustainable use of nature.

“It means that now there’s a formal, permanent space for indigenous peoples to participate in decision-making on biodiversity,” Bandiaky-Badji said, adding that this should improve community access to funding and other resources.

It was also good news for people of African descent who were now recognised for their role in protecting nature, opening access to resources and finance.

“This is really also a major development during COP16. It was not easy to get there. But finally, at least something came out of this conversation.”

It would be the work of future summits to implement this extension of rights, especially as it applied to women and young people, but the adoption of the article ensured Cali would be remembered as the “COP of the people”, she said.

Risky front line

Bandiaky-Badji said the people who were protecting natural spaces – particularly in Latin America where environmental defenders were most at risk of being killed – should have received more attention from the summit.

These, often indigenous, people were “contributing a lot to preserving biodiversity and helping us achieve our global goals”.

She welcomed the summit’s rights-based focus, but said implementing these rights remained very much on the to-do list, with a minority of countries having completed national action plans.

Of Cali, she said: “There have been some positives, there have been some setbacks, but a lot more that needs to be done in the future.”

Coalitions

Jason Dozier briefed the webinar on work done by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People ahead of and during COP16.

Although the focus at COPs was mainly on negotiations, the summits provided a rare opportunity “to get to the representatives of the countries, to get to meet them, and to actually concretely start working on projects”.

He said the coalition was an intergovernmental group of 120 countries whose main aim was to advocate for the adoption of 30×30 targets.

The coalition had a busy COP, meeting members and matchmaking – bringing together people who needed assistance with those able to provide it.

“So far we have nine requests from five countries, and we have more than 117 offers of assistance from 23 assistance providers within our matchmaking platform,” he said.

He mentioned Madagascar, which had sought help with drafting its 30×30 national roadmap as well as appeals from Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Dozier, who was part of the coalition team that won an Earthshot environmental innovation prize in Cape Town on 6 November, was “very pleased” to see the Cali Fund coming to fruition after more than 10 years of discussion on how the private sector could contribute.

He hoped its establishment would spark further discussion on how to finance protected areas, a subject that did not receive adequate attention because it did not fit with the “economic language of the private and finance world”.

Costly 

He said $1-billion a year was needed for protected areas and other conservation measures.

Human resources were lacking too, particularly rangers, and this was true of both developing and developed countries. “If we really want to avoid paper parks, we would need over one million rangers to implement 30×30,” Dozier said.

He felt this vital issue was “not really dealt with” at COP16.

He was also “very, very disappointed” by the lack of a review on reporting and monitoring at the summit.

Road ahead

During the webinar’s question-and-answer session, Roxburgh wanted to know from Middleton how future COPS could be made more fair and effective.

Middleton stressed the importance of keeping the lines of communication open and cordial.

Involving indigenous and local communities was vital, too.

“The real success came from just trusting people to do the right thing. Give them the rights; they’ll do the right thing, and I think that we really started to feel some of that at COP16,” he said. DM

This article was produced with support from Jive Media Africa, science communication partner to Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation.