UN biodiversity summit making ‘very good progress’ – officials

Colombian Environment Minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad (center) speaks during a press conference next to Astrid Schomaker (left), Executive Secretary of CBD and Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, at the blue zone of the COP16 summit in Cali, Colombia on Friday, October 25, 2024. – Officials said the UN biodiversity summit is making “very good progress” as the meeting marked its halfway point. (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / Agence France-Presse)

CALI, Colombia — Crunch UN talks on ways to “halt and reverse” species loss by 2030 have made “very good progress,” officials said Friday, as the summit in Colombia marked its halfway point.

The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity opened Monday, October 21, in the city of Cali, and runs until November 1.

Themed “Peace with Nature,” it has the urgent task of coming up with monitoring and funding mechanisms to achieve 23 UN nature protection goals agreed in Canada two years ago.

COP16 president Susana Muhamad, environment minister of Colombia, said Friday there had been “very good progress in the negotiations,” adding “a lot of work has advanced during this week.”

Resource mobilization remains “one of the most difficult issues,” she told reporters in Cali, “because of the very different views from parties.”

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On Sunday, UN chief Antonio Guterres had urged the 196 signatories to the biodiversity convention to “convert words into action” and fatten a Global Biodiversity Framework Fund created last year to meet the UN targets.

So far, countries have made about $250 million in commitments to the fund, according to monitoring agencies.

Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework finalized in 2022, countries must mobilize at least $200 billion per year by 2030 for biodiversity, including $20 billion per year by 2025 from rich nations to help developing ones.

A key goal of the Cali COP is to agree on a mechanism for sharing the profits of genetic information taken from plants and animals – for medicinal use for instance – with the communities they come from.

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On this issue, Muhamad said, “the parties are coming together into a common vision.”

About 23,000 delegates, including nearly 180 government ministers and seven heads of state, are accredited for what is the largest-ever biodiversity COP.

With about a million known species worldwide estimated to be at risk of extinction, delegates have their work cut out.

There are only five years left to achieve the target of placing 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection by 2030.

“The reason why we are here today is because we understand that we are losing biodiversity at a speed that is unsustainable,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

“Progress in Cali will give impetus” to the process going forward, she added.