Countries agreed to raise $200 billion a year by 2030 to help developing countries conserve biodiversity at the resumed Conference of Party (COP16) of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Rome last week. 

The deal marks a major breakthrough after negotiations over a finance package were suspended last November in the closing hours of COP16 in Cali, Colombia, over funding disagreements.

In Rome, more than 140 nations who are parties to the Convention also pledged to raise $20 billion a year from international donors for the new effort, by 2025, and $30 billion by 2030 to support developing nations’ conservation efforts.  

Although actually reaching those financial goals poses a huge challenge, the commitment marks a major milestone in implementing the landmark 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). The Framework aims to ensure the conservation or restoration of at least 30% of the planet’s lands, freshwater, and ocean resources by 2030. Currently, only 17% and 10% of the world’s terrestrial and marine surfaces are protected, respectively. The first ever multilateral nature agreement, the Kunming-Montreal framework’s overarching goal is development in “harmony” with nature by 2050.

“Montreal was about the ‘what’ — what are we all working towards together?” Georgina Chandler, of the Zoological Society London,was quoted as saying  to the Independent. “Cali was supposed to focus on the ‘how’ — putting the plans and the financing in place to ensure we can actually implement this framework.” 

Before talks in Colombia broke down, countries did manage to reach agreement on a voluntary “Cali Fund” for sharing the genetic benefits derived from genetic resources. And they approved a groundbreaking “health and biodiversity action plan” – as a voluntary mechanism for countries to incorporate health considerations into nature protection plans.

But sharp disagreements between developed and developing countries over funding support for other conservation efforts in developing countries emerged in the final hours of the two-week session. As the meeting ran into overtime, the departure of delegates left the COP without a quorum to reach a decision.   

Resources for reaching key CBD goals

Now, last week in Rome, the parties to the CBD finally managed to agree on a way forward for mobilizing significant resource flows to developing countries, whose action is critical to realizing the big aims of the Kunming-Montreal framework. It provides for a structured mechanism to raise funds through a mix of public and private financing, and establishes a permanent arrangement for financing biodiversity conservation in developing nations beyond 2030. Finally, the Rome agreement includes other provisions for planning, monitoring, reporting, and review required to implement the Kunming-Montreal framework  – the Paris Accord equivalent for nature.

The accord was reached despite the relatively poor showing of delegates – around 40 of the 196 nations that are party to the convention failed to show up. The agreement also comes despite the fact that the United States, historically the world’s largest donor to biodiversity, recently halted most such funding as part of the Trump Administration’s broader foreign aid freeze. The US has never been a formal party to the CBD but had previously played a behind-the-scenes role in advancing the its goals. 

But while many hailed it as a diplomatic victory, concerns linger over implementation, accountability, and the absence of key nations and specific financial commitments from leading donor states in a time of turbulent global rhetoric around conservation.

“We live in a very different world now, and only a handful of countries have sent ministers,” said Arthur Wyns, a climate research fellow based in Melbourne, on a social media post. All in all, the Rome talks boasted only a fraction of attendance of November’s Cali conference, which saw 1,000 delegates in attendance, compared to the 23,000 in Cali.

Financing details pushed to 2028

However, the final agreement deferred a key decision on whether the Global Environment Facility (GEF) would remain the CBD’s primary biodiversity finance mechanism or if a new fund would be created. African and Latin American nations had pushed for a dedicated biodiversity fund, but the decision on that was postponed until at least 2028.

The GEF is already managing finances for several other global environmental conventions, such as the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. And it manages the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), dedicated to implementing the Kunming-Montreal targets. The Fund has issued over $3 billion in biodiversity finance since its creation in 2022.   

Meeting ambitious targets

With the Trump administration freezing most nature-related foreign aid and European nations cutting their aid budgets, doubts persist over how the ambitious financial targets for this new fund will be met.

More than 75% of nations have yet to submit their national biodiversity plans, as per the 2022 Kunming-Montreal agreement, despite the October deadline passing four months ago. 

Even among those that have submitted plans, over half fail to include the KMGBF’s headline goal of protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030.

Additionally, nations with biodiversity hotspots, notably Brazil and those in the Congo Basin, failed to adopt at least one national CBD target.

Cali Fund for profit-sharing of profits made from genetic resources launched 

The Rome COP also saw the launch of the Cali Fund, a new voluntary initiative to facilitate voluntary corporate profit-sharing of revenues generated from the use and development of indigenous genetic resources, or genetic Digital Sequence Information (DSI), into new foods, cosmetics or pharma products.

Big food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies worldwide now harness and use genetic resources, captured as DSI, across far-flung borders, to create new products worth billions of dollars annually. Developing countries have long maintained that they are left out of the loop of benefits that come from the harvesting of new genetic resources in their regions. The new plan marks the first global attempt to address the imbalance. 

The initiative, agreed to last November in Colombia targets companies meeting two of three thresholds: annual sales exceeding $50 million, profits over $5 million, or assets above $20 million. These firms “should” contribute either 1% of revenue or 0.1% of profits generated from the use of indigenous genetic material to the new “Cali Fund” to support developing country biodiversity preservation and restoration. The rates remain “indicative” and the arrangement “voluntary”, according to the agreement – whose details still need to be worked out.   

“Success of the Cali Fund will be critical for providing finance to people on the ground who are custodians for species and genetic diversity. We are proud to be a founding partner for this groundbreaking Fund,” said Marcos Neto, Director of UNDP’s Sustainable Finance Hub, in a press statement, upon the launch of the new scheme. 

‘Not Charity’

The Cali Fund is not for “charity from companies,” but “fair payment for use of global biodiversity,” as Susana Muhamad, CBD president and former Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development said in a press conference.

Furthermore, “at least 50% of the Cali Fund resources will be allocated to indigenous peoples and local communities, recognizing their role as custodians of biodiversity,” the UN said in a statement, building upon agreements in Cali that gave Indigenous peoples and local communities a stronger voice in conservation matters.

Pharmaceutical companies have also warned that the initiatives such as the Cali Fund also risks taking the world down a slippery slope that “stifles” easy access to genetic material and to medical innovation – particularly if something now framed as a voluntary measure eventually becomes mandatory.

“The pharmaceutical industry has long supported the Convention on Biological Diversity’s objective to protect our natural world,” said David Reddy,  Director General of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), in a statement following November’s Cali round. 

But “[t]he ability to rapidly use scientific data known as “digital sequence information” (DSI) is essential for developing new medicines and vaccines,” he warned. “Any new system should not introduce further conditions on how scientists access such data and add to a complex web of regulation, taxation and other obligations for the whole R&D ecosystem – including on academia and biotech companies. 

“Ahead of COP17, it is critical that governments work to ensure the implementation of any new mechanism on digital sequence information does not stifle medical research and innovation that can bring the next wave of medical progress to people around the world.”

Biodiversity continues to declines 

The new financial agreements come at a critical time in which biodiversity loss continues to accelerate. Global wildlife populations have declined by 73% since 1970, with more than one million species at risk of extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report. This means that a quarter of species are threatened – and only the ones researchers were able to study. 

Along with the conservation and/or restoration of 30% of the world’s degraded ecosystems (Target 2), the Kunming-Montreal accord’s 23 targets also include: 

• Target 6 – reduction of invasive species by 50%; 
• Target 12 – enhancement of urban greenspaces; 
• Target 13 – increasing the sharing of benefits from genetic resources, digital sequence information and traditional knowledge.

“The results of this meeting show that multilateralism works and is the vehicle to build the partnerships needed to protect biodiversity and move us towards Peace with Nature,” said Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the CBD. “As we do this and implement the other supporting elements for resource mobilization, the world will have given itself the means to close the biodiversity finance gap.

Meanwhile, the decision reached in Cali on a health and biodiversity framework also gives countries a clear framework for integrating health more squarely into biodiversity planning. The framework calls for health impact assessments in land-use planning, disease surveillance where habitat loss is rapid, and stricter wildlife trade rules vital to preventing pathogens spreading from wild animals to human communities and food markets.

But that still doesn’t go far enough to protect people from the risk of spill-over events, critics say.

“Our health cannot be separated from the health of the planet and its many species,” UN Environment chief Inger Andersen told delegates in Cali last November. “We must adopt this action plan and implement it with a holistic, systemic approach that unifies action across health, environment, finance, industry and agriculture.”

Nations are set to reconvene next year in Yerevan, Armenia, for COP17. 

See more Health Policy Watch coverage of Cali and biodiversity here.

Image Credits: Oleksandr Sushko, Rainforest Foundation and Earth Insights, 2022, IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis, Earth.org.