UN COP16 nature talks may not reach deal on funding

CALI, Colombia: Countries are unlikely to reach a major new funding agreement for nature conservation during this week’s United Nations COP16 biodiversity summit, with delegates talking on Wednesday about pushing their negotiations beyond the summit’s end. The financing discussion follows on a pledge made by wealthy countries two years ago to ensure $20 billion in annual conservation financing for developing nations by 2025, with that rising to $30 billion annually by 2030.

These amounts represent a modest increase from the $15.4 billion that was put toward conservation financing in 2022, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Countries at COP15 in 2022 agreed to create the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund to help catalyze financing to reach nature goals, but the fund so far has raised only about $400 million.

This year’s summit had aimed to ramp up sources of conservation financing, but reached an impasse over whether to create yet another fund for nature. “It’s obvious that the discussions here will not be a full conclusion,” said spokesperson David Ainsworth of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity secretariat, which organizes the talks. Delegates already have “discussed what is going to be the way forward in the intersessional period,” he said.

Failing to reach a new financing deal would likely slow efforts to pay for conservation, amid the rapid decline of nature from habitat destruction, pollution and climate change.

Brazil and other developing countries said they wanted more oversight on nature financing, saying the existing Framework Fund was dominated by rich nations. They also said they worried the money would be disbursed too slowly. “Biodiversity finance should be flowing to where biodiversity is,” Brazil’s chief negotiator Andre Correa do Lago said last week, in calling for the creation of the new fund.

“The voice of countries bearing a greater burden should count more than it does,” Correa do Lago said. Wealthy nations have pushed back against that idea. “It’s not enough to always discuss a fund, a new fund,” Florika Fink-Hooijer, the head of the European Union’s Directorate-General for the Environment, said on Monday. “We have the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund … so I don’t think we should distract ourselves of going, ‘Oh, now we need a different fund.’”

Countries are now evaluating options to continue discussions post-COP16, including whether to create a new group to negotiate the issues or to hold discussions through an existing U.N. body, Ainsworth said. “I don’t know if we would call it a failure. It would be disappointing that we don’t have a clear agreement out of this COP,” said Marcos Neto, global director of policy for the UN Development Programme. He said that countries are reworking the way they approach financing for the environment to bring together public, private and multilateral sources and that takes time.

“I do think it’s an innovation. Sometimes it takes longer for us to figure out how to put all these pieces together,” Neto said. Countries would need to figure out how a new fund would fit in with existing ones as well as how it would be used not just to funnel public money but to incentivize private investment in activities that benefit nature.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he remained hopeful for a strong COP16 agreement. “There was a huge will to find a successful result and a huge will of compromise in the pending issues,” Guterres told a news briefing. “So I’m quite optimistic that it will be possible to reach a consensus.” — Reuters

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