The COP16 biodiversity ended this Saturday, November 2, with a bitter taste. The aim was to bring together rich and developing countries, whose positions on financial issues have been virtually unchanged since the summit opened on October 21. A North-South standoff relegating to second place the global road map to stop the destruction of living things by 2030. And on this aspect, COP16 failed. Negotiations were suspended in the morning by the Colombian president of the United Nations summit, Susana Muhamad, when she noticed that the quorum of delegates had lost, leaving to catch their plane after a sleepless night in plenary.
COP16, two years after the Kunming-Montreal agreement, had the mission of enhancing the world’s timid efforts to apply this road map intended to save the planet and living beings from deforestation, overexploitation, climate change and pollution, all caused by humanity. The agreement includes 23 objectives to be achieved by 2030, such as placing 30% of land and seas in protected areas, halving the risks of pesticides and the introduction of invasive species, reducing harmful subsidies to agriculture intensive or fossil fuels of 500 billion dollars per year…
The agreement also plans to increase annual global spending on nature to $200 billion. Of this amount, developed countries have committed to providing annual aid of $30 billion in 2030 – compared to around $15 billion in 2022, according to the OECD. But the way to mobilize this money and distribute it was the main point of tension at the summit.
Rich countries, in particular the European Union (in the absence of the United States, non-signatories of the convention), consider counterproductive the multiplication of funds which fragment aid without providing new money, to be found according to them from the private sector and emerging countries. “The Colombian government has mobilized a lot […] the Colombian people gave everything, […] but in the end it depends on the parties and the negotiation process,” the Colombian president said at the UN summit.
On the other hand, she is pleased to have obtained the adoption of decisions which she had made a priority: a reinforced status for indigenous peoples in the biodiversity COPs, a text on the recognition of “afrodescendants”, and the implementation of a multilateral fund.
A fund on sharing benefits from genetic resources
Indeed, the 196 nations of COP16 biodiversity adopted the implementation of a multilateral fund supposed to be supplemented by companies making profits thanks to the digitized genome of plants or animals from developing countries. The countries hope that this financial mechanism, called the “Cali Fund”, will raise billions of dollars intended to finance their nature protection commitments.
But the amount that will actually be collected, mainly through voluntary contributions, remains uncertain. The equitable sharing of benefits from “digital sequencing information on genetic resources” (DSI in English) is a sea serpent of the COPs on biodiversity. This data, often from species present in poor countries, is used in the manufacture of medicines or cosmetics, among others, which can bring in billions. But little of the benefit from this genetic data – uploaded to open-access databases – accrues to the original communities.
The fund should be supplemented by companies using DSIs and which “should pay a proportion of their profits or revenues to the global fund”. Those of a certain size should contribute indicative amounts of 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenues, according to the document. Placed under the aegis of the UN, the fund will distribute the money, half for the countries, half for indigenous peoples.
In addition, eight governments announced pledges bringing the global biodiversity fund to some $400 million. Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Canadian province of Quebec have pledged to contribute to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF). ) for an amount of $163 million, according to a press release.