Indigenous peoples and local communities scored perhaps the most tangible progress as the 16th United Nations, or COP16 concluded after three days of final negotiations in Rome on 28 February 2025.
This completes the two-week session that began in Cali, Colombia, in mid-October, 2024.
“COP16 has been a great success and is historic for us,” Viviana Figueroa, a global technical coordinator with the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, told Mongabay from Rome.
“We had a big achievement in Cali with the adoption of a new program of work on traditional knowledge and direct participation in negotiations. And here in Rome, we see there will be resource mobilization through the Cali Fund.”
The new fund was launched on Feb. 25 in Rome, after parties agreed to establish it while in Cali. Officially titled the ‘Cali Fund for the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from the Use of Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources’ (DSI), it is to receive contributions from industries such as pharmaceuticals and bio-agriculture that use nature-based genetic information for commercial products. Fifty per cent of the funds raised will be allocated to the self-identified needs of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
COP16 President Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s former environmental minister, was forced to close the Cali session prematurely last fall as final decisions involving international finance targets to meet the global framework to protect biodiversity were not complete on the meeting’s final day. Delegations rushed to catch flights home but agreed to reconvene in Rome to finish the biennial meeting.
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The fund is a crucial tool to ensure the benefits the private sector accrues from nature are shared equitably; it’s time for businesses to value nature and act at scale.
Eva Zabey, CEO, Business for Nature
Issues surrounding finance targets were decided in Rome, but the question of whether the multi-billion-dollar biodiversity goals can be reached by 2030 remains murky.
Money from the United States, a significant contributor to biodiversity conservation, will be cut as the Trump Administration dismantles the US Agency for International Development through which support flows. The US had representatives in Cali; it had none in Rome.
For Indigenous peoples and local communities, though, they were already on a path to unprecedented progress after Colombia, sources told Mongabay. That momentum was extended in Italy.
“There is hope now that countries start implementing these new programs of work,” Figueroa said.
The final text from Rome also includes language regarding “planning, monitoring, reporting and review,” a process by which countries will start tracking progress on specific targets next year.
These annual reports are to be produced by countries. But given the topics described – restoring ecosystems, protecting endangered species, engaging with women and youth – Indigenous peoples and local communities will be called on to report to national leads on progress connected to the Cali Fund.
Recognizing Indigenous guardians
For years, even as research and evidence accumulated that Indigenous peoples who live in native forests and jungles are key to include in biodiversity conservation, they have long been relegated to the back of international negotiating rooms as observers and not participants. Funders and policymakers have promised financial resources but rarely delivered.
However, at COP15 in Montreal in 2022, the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework established four goals and 23 targets to “halt and reverse biodiversity loss” by 2030. Target 22, now adopted, aims to ensure that Indigenous peoples and local communities are fully represented and active participants in all conservation decision-making.
Importantly, Target 22 includes land tenure — returning traditional lands to Indigenous peoples and local communities for their management — as a conservation goal and a means of assessing progress toward biodiversity protection.
“This progress is totally new,” Figueroa said. “We have been working for many years to achieve this through conversations, exchanges, and dialogue with many countries. And we have finally gotten to the point where all countries agree to this approach.”
Andrew Deutz, World Wildlife Fund’s director of Global Policy and Partnerships, explained the progress further: “COP16 established a full-on working group on Indigenous issues [in Cali]. That sounds like a technical, bureaucratic thing, but the way these processes work, those technical, bureaucratic things where you upgrade the status of the body, is how you signal that this is really important. It’s a recognition of the empowerment of Indigenous people in this process.”
The promise of DSI and the Cali Fund
In recent years, science has achieved the cataloguing and digitizing of the genetic makeup of a large number of wild plant and animal species around the world. Industry sectors, ranging from pharmaceuticals to biotech and cosmetics, have plumbed these open-source genetic databases for free, with many firms profiting handsomely from new groundbreaking products.
For example, DSI from hundreds of respiratory viruses used by Moderna, the US pharma giant, enabled it to quickly develop its Covid-19 vaccine during the global pandemic, which generated billions in sales over the last three years. While investors profited, nature was not paid a dividend, say environmentalists.
COP16 delegates approved language that says companies that profit from nature’s genetics “should” contribute to a UN-controlled fund that will be used to protect biodiversity. The amount: 1 per cent of company profits tied to DSI usage, or 0.1 per cent of revenue (Moderna would have paid US$30 million out of US$30 billion in Covid-19 vaccine sales, for example).
Industry lobbyists pressed for contributions to be voluntary, and technically they are. However, the Cali Fund language that industry “should” contribute is stronger than “may” contribute, which lobbyists preferred.
The fund is now empty. But it is estimated to generate US$1 billion annually, half of which will flow to Indigenous peoples and local communities for projects they identify. Unlike most nature-finance mechanisms, which require difficult-to-maintain government donations, the Cali Fund could prove self-sustaining provided companies pay their share each year.
“The fund is a crucial tool to ensure the benefits the private sector accrues from nature are shared equitably; it’s time for businesses to value nature and act at scale,” said Eva Zabey, CEO of the NGO Business for Nature. “As a next step, we urge governments to establish practical frameworks ensuring the funds work effectively and benefit Indigenous peoples and local communities.”
Marcos Neto, UN assistant general secretary, said in a statement, “Success of the Cali Fund will be critical for providing finance to people on the ground who are the custodians for species and genetic diversity.”
For her part, Figueroa, the Indigenous leader, says she will return home to Argentina more optimistically than ever after an international meeting like COP16.
“There is so much evidence of the contribution of Indigenous peoples to the conservation of biodiversity,” she said. “We all need biodiversity to live, and also for the mitigation of climate change. For this, we really hope these agreements lead soon to supporting us on the ground.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
