After suspending the sessions in November last year, the 16th Conference of the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity reconvened in February at the Food and Agriculture Organization’s headquarters in Rome, with the aim of reaching consensus on some of the key items that were left open for further discussion.
Getting an agreement on the finances
During the resumed sessions, the most prominent and controversial issue was the establishment of a new financial mechanism operating under the Convention and how to mobilize the necessary financial resources. There was broad agreement that such a mechanism is critical to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was adopted at the 2022 conference, and which aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by protecting at least 30% of the planet’s land and seas by 2030.
During the three days of negotiations, it became clear that the need to find consensus on the financial issues is central to the achievement of the framework. The Presidency, in particular, worked extensively to bring home an agreement, despite the current levels of distrust around international cooperation. With the closing of the negotiations pushed well into the evening of the third and final day, the countries agreed on a roadmap, with 2030 as the deadline for both fulfilling the mandate of article 21, which specifies the provision of a financial fund for the Convention, and for closing the financial gap by mobilizing at least 200 billion dollars a year for nature protection.
A crucial moment for Biodiversity
The 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16), held in Colombia, represented a critical move forward in the UN’s global efforts to mitigate and reverse biodiversity loss.
The clock is ticking…but there’s still much work to be done
Of course, the work will not stop after these three days of discussion and negotiation, and there is still much to decide on during the intersessional meetings of the Convention’s subsidiary bodies, one of which will meet in October this year. However, a couple of key issues emerged that require further discussion in the upcoming months.
Firstly, ProVeg welcomes Bolivia’s emphatic position, expressed by its negotiator Juan Carlos Alurralde Tejada, that the negotiations had failed to take into account “all the animals, plants, and woods who don’t have a voice”. If nature could express its concerns, he argued, it would stress the urgency for real action: biodiversity loss is continuing to accelerate at an unprecedented rate and there is no time for procrastination, given the urgency of the planetary crisis we are facing. We need to have a clear and effective plan for how to protect biodiversity, including all the planet’s plants, animals, and ecosystems – and this plan needs to bridge the gaps and enhance collective efforts between the world’s different regions and countries.
Secondly, now that the roadmap on how to close the global biodiversity finance gap has been established – by agreeing on the need to improve financial flows from public finance, private and philanthropic funds, multilateral development banks, and blended finance – it is clear that the amount of capital needed to protect the planet’s biodiversity and achieve the Global Biodiversity Framework is much higher than the agreed 200 billions dollars, and is in fact closer to 700 billion dollars.
In order to generate the funds needed annually for the framework, the countries need to consider the full potential of resource mobilization, and make use of all possible tools and mechanisms. As restated in the final agreement, the additional 500 billion dollars a year could come from repurposing all the subsidies that are directly or indirectly harmful to the environment, including incentives that drive land-use change and are often associated with animal agriculture.
We are happy that France and the EU group raised this topic, and we call on other countries in the Global North to further discuss this path of action in terms of concrete measures. As such, it is vital that the harmful financial flows that lead to land-use change (by supporting the meat and dairy industry) be redirected.
The need to focus on food systems is increasingly evident
Addressing the adverse impact on nature of the current food system, which is largely reliant on animal-based product consumption in developed and some developing countries, would unlock huge benefits: in addition to ensuring that biodiversity is protected and thriving, it would also support food security in countries where hunger and malnutrition are still a priority issue, by enhancing the resilience of regional food systems.
There is a growing recognition across the different international policy processes and discourse of the potential of food systems to help tackle all three planetary crisis (climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss). At ProVeg, we are committed to supporting and accelerating these critical discussions during the upcoming events, including the Bonn Climate Change Conference, the 2nd UN Food System Summit Stocktake, and COP30, and we hope that the topic will also be increasingly addressed in discussions about biodiversity conservation. Echoing the words of Bolivias’ Juan Carlos Tejada, the stakes are truly planetary, and the time to act is now.
