Each two years, leaders from around the globe collect to debate the state of life on Earth, negotiating agreements to protect biodiversity and cease the destruction of nature. This week, representatives of 196 international locations are gathering in Cali, Colombia, for the sixteenth UN Convention of the Events summit (Cop16).
It’s the first biodiversity-focused assembly since 2022, when governments struck a historic deal to halt the destruction of ecosystems. Scientists, Indigenous communities, enterprise representatives and atmosphere ministers from almost 200 international locations will talk about progress in the direction of the targets and negotiate how they are going to be monitored. Listed below are the principle issues to look out for through the summit.
Is the this decade’s huge deal for nature settlement nonetheless alive?
Cop summits are outlined by the massive, multi-country agreements that they negotiate. For local weather Cop conferences, that’s the 2015 Paris settlement, which lays out what international locations should do to maintain world heating 1.5C (2.7F) under pre-industrial ranges. For nature and biodiversity, it’s the Kunming-Montreal settlement, hammered out in Canada two years in the past, which laid out 23 targets and 4 objectives to protect nature this decade.
Now, the problem is whether or not international locations will put these agreements into motion. Since its inception, the UN biodiversity course of has been caught in a cycle of underachievement. Regardless of pressing scientific warnings in regards to the state of nature, international locations have by no means met a goal they set for themselves. This decade is supposed to be completely different. In Colombia, governments are anticipated to current nationwide methods on how they plan to fulfill the targets often known as Nationwide Biodiversity Methods and Motion Plans (NBSAPs).
Preliminary indications are that greater than 80% of governments will arrive empty-handed, though some have good excuses: international locations with huge biodiversity akin to Brazil say they’re developing with a fancy, multi-decade technique.
However, the variety of NBSAPS on the finish of the summit will give a good suggestion of how critically governments are taking the settlement.
Learn extra: Are international locations following by way of on their guarantees to save lots of nature?
The place is the cash?
Whereas commitments to guard and restore nature are the headlines of the settlement, cash shall be essential to its success. Throughout tense Cop15 negotiations in Montreal in 2022, growing international locations mentioned they wanted extra money to implement conservation targets and demanded a dramatic improve in finance as a part of the ultimate settlement.
Governments ultimately agreed to supply not less than $30bn (£23bn) a 12 months of nature finance by the top of the last decade, with an interim goal of $20bn by 2025. With lower than a 12 months to go earlier than the primary milestone, new monetary commitments from rich donor international locations such because the UK and EU member states in Cali will sign whether or not governments are maintaining their phrase.
Can international locations agree on biopiracy?
The world’s coral reefs, rainforests and different wealthy ecosystems are bursting with info that would assist future industrial discoveries. Nature’s genetic codes have develop into a brand new frontier of the AI industrial revolution, feeding hungry statistical fashions attempting to create the subsequent huge factor in drugs, meals and supplies science.
However anger is rising within the world south about how earnings are shared from these discoveries, with many international locations warning they don’t seem to be being paid their justifiable share. They liken the businesses taking genetic info with out acknowledging its supply to “biopirates”.
At Cop16, international locations will negotiate a world-first settlement on this concern. In the event that they get it proper, funds from the pure world’s genetic knowledge may develop into a brand new and probably profitable income stream for conservation.
Learn extra: Who wins from nature’s genetic bounty? The billions at stake in a world ‘biopiracy’ battle
Will Indigenous teams play a task in choices?
Indigenous peoples are talked about 18 instances on this decade’s targets to halt and reverse biodiversity, one thing that was celebrated as a historic victory. It adopted a long time of exclusion and dangerous remedy by the conservation sector. The significance of the Indigenous function in decision-making has develop into a standard slogan within the nature sector in recent times – however many Indigenous communities are ready to see what it means in follow. In some communities, there’s important scepticism about what a few of this decade’s nature restoration targets may imply for land rights and customs.
Can Colombia leverage the assembly for peace with its rebels?
As host of Cop16, Colombia’s first leftwing authorities beneath its president, Gustavo Petro, has sought to make use of the worldwide summit as a catalyst for home peace. Regardless of the Latin American nation’s 2016 peace settlement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), battle with guerrilla factions continues in elements of the nation.
One group, Central Common Workers (EMC), issued threats in opposition to the summit, in response to a serious safety deployment of 12,000 troopers and police for this month’s assembly, however its chief later backed down. Cop16’s president, Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s atmosphere minister, has mentioned Cop16 can be a possibility to attract a line beneath the violent battle and was a part of the motivation for the summit theme of “Peace with Nature”.
How can we measure progress?
Whereas governments have already finalised their objectives, they haven’t but determined how success shall be gauged. Measuring land safety and finance is comparatively straightforward: official our bodies on the UN and the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Growth oversee progress on these targets.
However measuring the decline of species, biodiversity density and sustainable useful resource administration are a lot trickier and debates are persevering with about the way to monitor progress.
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