- Bruce Rich
- Environmental Forum
- Janauary/February 2025
- 21
In October, 2024 the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) took place in Cali, Colombia. Both the CBD and the U.N. climate convention emerged from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The conventions have been relatively ineffective in producing results commensurate with the interrelated challenges of global warming and biodiversity destruction. Problems include difficulty in reaching consensus on commitments, and when commitments are agreed, lack of adequate finance, lack of effective monitoring, and failure of national governments to confront vested economic interests and to undertake sometimes unpopular measures to deliver on commitments made. The conventions and COP commitments are voluntary: there’s no strong incentive to undertake fights against powerful lobbies and political pushback.
The U.S. is the only U.N. member that has not signed and ratified the CBD. Thus it has no official voice in negotiations and decision-making, and participates in the COPs as an observer—though in this role the U.S. still exerts influence. In 1992 various lobbies pressured the U.S. not to sign the CBD. Over more than three decades later their influence has increased: at Cali, the number of business lobbyists more than doubled from COP 15 to 1,261, representing the pharmaceutical, oil and gas, agrochemical, food, beverage and biotech industries.
The 16th CBD COP reviewed commitments made by 188 participating nations at COP 15 held in 2022 in Montreal, iterated in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Hailed as the biodiversity equivalent of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the GBF lists 23 targets to achieve by 2030, including conservation and management of 30 percent of the world’s land, coast, and marine areas, as well as reducing to near zero loss of areas with the highest biodiversity. Worldwide biodiversity harming subsidies are to be slashed by $500 billion annually, and funding for conserving biodiversity is supposed to increase to $200 billion annually from public and private sources, of which $30 billion a year would go to developing nations.
So what progress was seen in Cali? There were agreements to involve representatives of indigenous peoples more in future deliberations, and a finance mechanism was set up for the private sector to voluntarily pay nations for use of the genetic intellectual property obtained from biodiversity within their borders. But the likelihood of significant funding voluntarily flowing into this new “Cali Fund” from the world’s multinational pharmaceutical, biotech, and cosmetic corporations is questionable.
Alone, legally protecting more areas doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. Effective implementation is key. The British Natural History Museum released a study in advance of COP 16 that looked at the world’s most scientifically important biodiversity areas that account for 90 percent of existing and potential benefits to humans. Between 2000 and 2020, the study found, biodiversity in these critical areas that were not protected declined at a rate of 1.9 percent a year; in the protected areas, the rate of loss was actually higher—2.1 percent a year.
At COP 16 almost no progress was made in reducing biodiversity harming subsidies—e.g. state financial support for agricultural expansion, mining, deforestation and fossil fuel extraction. At COP 15 countries committed to prepare updated biodiversity plans that would enable them to report on the extent and reduction of these subsidies. But as COP 16 ended more than three quarters of the participating nations hadn’t submitted their plans.
