Member countries of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) will tomorrow in Rome, Italy, resume discussions that were suspended at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia last November.

The biodiversity summit is the world’s most important meeting that seeks to create harmony with nature and save humanity, and planet Earth, from a looming climate catastrophe.

Four key issues stick out in the reconvened talks at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome that collapsed at the eleventh hour in Cali due to lack of quorum after tense negotiations ended in a deadlock.

Progress stalled in Colombia on several issues, particularly on finance for biodiversity. Old divisions emerged, revolving around the issue of finance to fund the protection of nature and humanity from biodiversity loss. 

However, countries agreed on an expanded role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in saving biodiversity, reaching a ground-breaking agreement on the operationalisation of a new global mechanism to share benefits from digital genetic information.

In Rome, the 196 member countries will address the four pending agenda items after the Cali meeting, beginning with resource mobilisation for the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), adopted in Montreal in 2022.

The second item on the agenda is how the financial mechanism of the CBD can deliver adequate resources effectively and rapidly to implement the KMGBF. Third, delegates will discuss the monitoring framework, the yardsticks, to be used to assess progress in implementing the KMBGF.

Fourth is the planning, monitoring, reporting and review (PMRR) mechanism, which will provide clarity on how these four crucial activities will be undertaken ahead of the global stocktake of the KMBGF implementation at COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia in 2026.

Resource mobilisation

Parties to the CBD in Rome will work towards the adoption of a strategy for resource mobilisation to help secure US$200 billion annually by 2030 from all sources to support biodiversity initiatives worldwide.

This includes the mobilisation of at least US$20 billion a year in official development assistance (ODA) by 2025, and US$30 billion a year by 2030, in line with Target 19 of the KMBGF.

Target 18 of the KMBGF addresses the reduction of harmful incentives by at least US$500 billion per year by 2030. Parties will also discuss work towards a dedicated global financing instrument for biodiversity, including a roadmap to this effect until 2030.

To date, the CBD has been able to count on resources mobilised to support the goals and targets of the KMBGF through a variety of bilateral arrangements, private, and philanthropic sources, as well as dedicated funds such as the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).

Agreed at COP15 and established in less than a year by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the GBFF accepts contributions from governments, the private sector and philanthropies. It finances high-impact projects in developing regions, supporting countries with fragile ecosystems, such as small islands and economies in transition.

To date, 11 donor countries as well as the government of Quebec have pledged nearly US$400 million to the GBFF, with US$163 million pledged during COP16. The Kunming Biodiversity Fund (KBF) was launched at COP16, with a US$200 million contribution from the government of China.

The KBF supports accelerated action to deliver the 2030 Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets, and 2050 goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, particularly in developing countries.

Parties to the CBD are expected to complete a crucial step by finalising the monitoring framework agreed upon at COP15 in Montreal. The monitoring framework is essential to the implementation of the KMBGF because it provides the common yardsticks that member countries will use to measure progress against 23 targets.

On the planning, monitoring, reporting and review mechanism, member states are expected to make important decisions on how progress in the implementation of the KMBGF will be reviewed at COP17 as part of the planned global stocktake.

They are expected to determine the way in which commitments from actors other than national governments can be included in the PMRR mechanism – including commitments from the youth, women, IPLCs, civil society, the private sector and sub-national governments.

In addition, the national reporting template, which includes the headline indicators of the monitoring framework, must also be finalised.

Further, CBD members are expected to endorse the achievements of the GEF, encourage further contributions to the GBFF, and provide additional guidance on the GEF, considering its upcoming replenishment negotiations.

Cross-platform cooperation

Decisions on cooperation with other conventions and international organisations, CBD’s multi-year programme of work, and the adoption of final reports from COP16, the Cartagena Protocol (COPMOP 11) and the Nagoya Protocol (COPMOP 5), will also be made in Rome.

The Cali Fund on sharing benefits from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) from genetic resources will be launched tomorrow at the resumed COP16. The signing of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) among UNEP, the CBD Secretariat, UNDP and the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office, will mark the Cali Fund’s official opening.

The Cali Fund is innovative and revolutionary in that it is a private sector-led fund established by the CBD to harness monetary benefits from the use of DSI. This will flow back to nature and the self-determined rights of IPLCs towards achieving the third objective of the CBD, that of a monitoring framework and yardsticks to be used to assess progress in implementation.

With billions of people depending on nature’s contributions, threats to biodiversity intensifying, and financial resources in short supply, the stakes at COP 16 were certainly high, and they won’t be any lower in Rome.

Developing countries will robustly take up the issue of finance for climate change mitigation and adaptation and loss and damage compensation at the Rome CBD summit. Unlocking more and better finance was one of the main issues at Cali COP16, although new money has been scarce.

A group of eight developed countries pledged an additional US$163 million for nature conservation, which some observers called just “a drop in the ocean”.

Twenty ministers, mostly from Africa, expressed concern over the lack of substantial new funding commitments. Talks centred on what to do with the current biodiversity fund, without much headway either. Some countries want a new fund to replace the current one sitting in the GEF, while others think this would waste time.

Missed opportunities

GEF CEO Carlos Manuel Rodriguez told the authoritative UK-based Climate Home News that creating a new fund could lead to a “fragmentation” of biodiversity funds.

“Our main limitation is financial. If we had more resources, we would do more,” he noted.

Meanwhile, the other “huge” challenge confronting COP16 has been the need for more national plans to protect at least 30 per cent of the Earth’s land and water.

Only 44 countries have published their biodiversity plans, meaning there are still 150 countries that haven’t.

Negotiators at COP16 also weakened a draft decision on climate change and biodiversity, after removing a mention of the global commitment to “transition away” from fossil fuels agreed at last year’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

Campaigners said leaving out a stronger mention to fossil fuels was a “missed opportunity”.