The UN meeting COP16 on biological diversity ended in November without resolving any of the most important issues. The negotiations in Cali, Colombia, dragged on and when several delegates had to leave to catch their booked flights home, there were too few left to make decisions.
Now that the meeting resumes for three days in Rome, starting on Tuesday, the key issue is about money. If they can just resolve the financing, the other issues will fall into place, believes Ankin Ljungman, delegate for WWF International on site in Rome.
Losing momentum
If they fail to agree, there is a great risk that the implementation of the global framework for biological diversity will lose momentum.
We must both stop and reverse the loss of biological diversity by 2030 to address the nature crisis. Therefore, it is so important that financing is in place so that implementation can be accelerated.
Reaching an agreement on financing and mobilizing resources to support the framework for biological diversity has not become easier since the meeting in Cali, says Björn-Ola Linnér, professor of international climate policy at Linköping University.
It's about mobilizing resources, both public funds and private, to support implementation. But you also need to get predictability in financing. How will the funds be distributed, under what conditions, who will get a share of them?
New fund
The major stumbling block is whether to establish a separate fund within the framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
You can say that there is a difference between developing countries and the EU and Canada, where developing countries have a distrust of the current system, says Karin Lexén, Secretary-General of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.
Instead, they want to establish a completely new fund, directly under the biodiversity convention, rather than the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which they believe would strengthen their own influence.
Prior to the meeting, the secretariat of the convention and the presidency have been sounding out where the blockages lie and trying to see how today's fund can be managed to become more open and fair.
Next year, countries will report on the implementation of goals, measures, and progress for the first time. Another issue that was not resolved at the meeting in November was how reporting should be done and summarized, who should contribute information, and how the results should be used.
A permanent body was established to represent the interests of indigenous peoples and local communities in the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
They decided to create a fund to distribute the benefits from digital genetic information. The information can be used to create new products – food, medicine, and cosmetics – and the developers can earn billions. The fund aims to share a certain portion of the profits with the communities from which the species originate.
