How are global efforts to preserve the rich variety of life on our planet faring? More to the point, how is the international treaty that seeks to foster this shaping up?
We are referring to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a United Nations-backed agreement whose member states meet every two years to draft plans and set priorities for conserving biodiversity.
The most recent of these meetings, the 16th in a series of the Convention of the Parties, drew to a close in Cali, Columbia, on 1 November. It’s known colloquially as the Biodiversity COP to distinguish it from the more famous (and complementary) UNFCCC COP climate treaty and its summits.
Well, to answer our opening questions, were it a schoolboy, Biodiversity COP 16’s end-of-year report might read: Shows promise,but can do better. Increasingly thoughtful in interactions with others,but lacks focus and follow-through.
Certainly, speakers at Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation’s 28th Tipping Points webinar felt there was plenty to both pan and praise about the summit.
Katy Roxburgh, the facilitator of the 27 November webinar, who was also in Cali, noted that after two weeks of negotiations the international gathering had to be suspended. Delegates ran out of time and with the quorum in the main meeting hall lost, a “number of critical agreements were not finalised”.
Roxburgh is the director of communications for the Campaign for Nature, an organisation that coordinates an initiative to safeguard natural spaces and to advance the interests of indigenous people.
She explained the COP 16 summit faced the demanding task of turning the 22 broad goals agreed at the previous Biodiversity COP, in 2022, into reality.
Targets to protect specific areas needed to be implemented along with the 30×30 goal. This refers to a pledge, now by more than 190 countries, to secure the protection and management of 30% of the world’s land, fresh waters and oceans by the year 2030.
With a record 23,000 people from 200 countries at the summit, reaching consensus on what must be done to achieve the target over the next five years was always going to be a big ask. However, Roxburgh felt “there were definitely some key successes” at COP 16.
Joining her at the webinar to reflect on the summit, were Angus Middleton, executive director of the non-governmental Namibia Nature Foundation; Solange Bandiaky-Badji, president and coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative; and Jason Dozier, senior programme officer for political mobilisation at the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People.
The webinar took for its title, “Is Biodiversity COPing it again?”, and Middleton addressed it directly, questioning whether indeed conservation was being punished.
“I’m not so sure we did,” he said
He acknowledged there had been disagreement at the summit over who should pay for conservation and the mechanisms for this. He noted too that delegates had been unable to strike a conclusive deal on other important matters, including resources, mobilisation, planning and monitoring. And he reminded the webinar of the severity of the biodiversity crisis and “existential threat” facing the world, mentioning insects as an example and citing a study that suggested 40% of insects were in decline, with grave consequences for food production.
“We really are in the race for our lives,” said Middleton.
However, he drew hopes from the strides made at COP 16 towards ocean conservation, while he welcomed the “tough but collegial” spirit of the talks. This, he said, stood in happy contrast to the adversarial and polarising debates that often gripped the Climate COPs and CITES, the multilateral treaty and summits that deal with trade in endangered species.
Middleton also found some consolation in the “huge presence of big business” at Cali.
It represented a “genuine interest” from the sector, but he acknowledged it also raised controversy on, for example, levies on pesticides and “around issues like credits and offsets”.
He was referring to financial instruments that put a monetary value on conservation activities so that credits might be bought and sold, including to developers and industry who sought to compensate for their sometimes destructive or polluting activities and the loss to biodiversity it caused.
The NGO boss welcomed a new benefit-sharing mechanism, the “Cali Fund”, which arose from a summit agreement on digital sequencing information. This “should see payments going in, particularly for the use of genetic resources”.
The agreement was voluntary for now, he said, but rules would follow at subsequent COPs.
For now, he said, it was important that we followed those rules to “make sure that local people, and particularly indigenous communities, who are really the stewards of wildlife and biodiversity” get access to this fund with fewer conditions than we currently face.
On COP 16 as a whole and in particular the summit’s strong recognition of the role of local and indigenous people in conserving nature, Middleton said, “We are going in the right direction.”
Bandiaky-Badji, whose organisation focuses on just such communities, including people of African descent in the Caribbean and Latin America, counted the adoption of Convention Article 8(j) as one of the summit’s big successes.
It establishes a system of protected areas to conserve biological diversity, with guidelines for this, while requiring those involved to respect and preserve the knowledge and practices of traditional people, especially so far as it supports conservation and the sustainable use of nature.
“It means that now there’s a formal, permanent space for indigenous peoples to participate in decision making on biodiversity,” said Bandiaky-Badji, adding that this should improve community access to funding and other resources.
It was also good news for people of African descent who were now recognised for their role in protecting nature, opening access to resources and finance.
“This is really also a major development during COP 16. It was not easy to get there. But finally, at least something came out of this conversation.”
It would be the work of future summits to implement this extension of rights, especially as it applied to women and young people, but the adoption of the article ensured Cali would be remembered as the “COP of the people”, she said.
Bandiaky-Badji felt that the people who were protecting natural spaces – particularly in Latin America where environmental defenders were most at risk of being killed – should have received more attention from the summit.
These, often indigenous, people were “contributing a lot to preserving biodiversity and helping us achieve our global goals”.
She welcomed the summit’s rights-based focus but said implementing these rights remained very much on the to-do list, with a minority of countries having completed national action plans.
Of Cali she said: “There have been some positives, there have been some setbacks, but a lot more that needs to be done in the future.”
Dozier briefed the webinar on work done by the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People ahead of and during COP 16.
Although the focus at COPs was mainly on negotiations, the summits provided a rare opportunity “to get to the representatives of the countries, to get to meet them, and to actually concretely start working on projects”.
He explained that the coalition was an intergovernmental group of 120 countries which had as its main aim, advocating for the adoption of 30×30 targets.
The coalition had a busy COP, meeting members and matchmaking – bringing together people who needed assistance with those able to provide it.
“So far we have nine requests from five countries, and we have more than 117 offers of assistance from 23 assistance providers within our matchmaking platform,” he said.
He mentioned Madagascar which had sought help with drafting its 30×30 national roadmap as well as appeals from Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Dozier, who was part of the coalition team that won an Earthshot environmental innovation prize in Cape Town on 6 November, was “very pleased” to see the Cali Fund coming to fruition after more than 10 years of discussion on how the private sector could contribute.
He hoped its establishment would spark further discussion on how to finance protected areas, a subject that did not receive adequate attention because it did not fit with the “economic language of the private and finance world”.
He said US $1-billion was needed a year for protected areas and other conservation measures.
Human resources were lacking too, particularly rangers, and this was true of both developing and developed countries. “If we really want to avoid paper parks, we would need over 1-million rangers to implement 30×30,” said Dozier.
He felt this vital issue was “not really dealt with” at COP 16.
He was also “very, very disappointed” by the lack of a review on reporting and monitoring at the summit
During the webinar’s question-and-answer Roxburgh wanted to know of Middleton how future COPS could be made more fair and effective.
Middleton stressed the importance of keeping the lines of communication open and cordial.
Involving indigenous and local communities was vital too.
“The real success came from just trusting people to do the right thing. Give them the rights; they’ll do the right thing, and I think that we really started to feel some of that at COP 16,” he said. – Roving Reporters
- This story was produced with the assistance of Jive Media Africa, science communication partner to the Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation (OGRC).
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