After two weeks of tense negotiations, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) adjourned on 2 November with little progress made on securing developed countries’ contributions to the Global Biodiversity Fund for the Global South.
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However, a landmark agreement was secured to include Indigenous voices in key decisions on biodiversity, marking a win despite funding setbacks in Cali, Colombia.
Before the talks were suspended as the number of party country representatives present dwindled, CBD member states ratified a permanent body to implement Article 8(j) – a measure that calls on member states to preserve the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous peoples.
The new body is expected to enhance the engagement and participation of IPs and local communities in all convention processes.
“This is a watershed moment in the history of multilateral environmental agreements,” said International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) negotiator Jennifer Tauli Corpuz in a statement, noting that the body will provide a high-level platform to recognise the contributions of IPs in the protection of the planet.
Indigenous communities collectively manage or hold tenure rights over a quarter of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, encompassing around 40 per cent of protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes worldwide, according to The Nature Conservancy, a conservation group.
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Rich nations are still dodging their financial commitments under the convention, and downplaying the importance of public finance. We can’t afford any more delays.
Catalina Gonda, campaigner, Climate Action Network
Ambition problem
Dubbed the “Paris Agreement for Nature”, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was adopted by all 196 countries party to the United Nations CBD at COP15 in 2022.
With a central ambition of protecting at least 30 per cent of the globe’s land and oceans by 2030, the framework requires countries to develop national strategies and programmes for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.
However, little progress has been made since the conclusion of COP15 in 2022. So far only 17.6 per cent of land and inland waters and 8.4 per cent of the ocean and coastal areas globally are within documented protected and conserved areas, according to the Protected Planet Report 2024 published last week by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and nonprofit International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
This represents a rise of less than 0.5 per cent in protected land and ocean since the Kunming-Montreal GBF was passed two years ago. It means that a land area roughly the size of Brazil and Australia combined – and at sea, an area larger than the Indian Ocean – will be designated as protected areas by 2030 to meet the global target.
“With only six years remaining, the window is closing for us to equitably and meaningfully conserve 30 per cent of the Earth,” said IUCN director general Grethel Aguilar in a statement. “Crucially, Indigenous people must be supported to act as stewards of their lands, their voices and knowledge must be heard and valued.”
Colombia environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad (centre) leads a plenary at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Cali. Image: UN Biodiversity, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Flickr.
Conservation, decarbonisation
Souparna Lahiri, a campaigner for civil society coalition Global Forest Coalition, said that the “commodification of nature” is largely the root cause of widescale global biodiversity loss – undermining solutions championed by Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Ahead of the COP16 kickoff in her home country, Colombia environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad highlighted that “conservation and care of biodiversity [should be] positioned on the same level as decarbonisation and energy transition.”
In Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Indonesia, the link between extractive industries, fossil fuels and biodiversity loss is readily apparent.
On Indonesia’s Natuna Island in the Riau archipelago, oil leaks and mineral mining activities pose risks to marine biodiversity and threaten the livelihoods of local coastal communities.
“With the extractive projects of oil and gas or mineral mining, [Natuna] island will disappear or be destroyed, and all of the fishing areas will also be destroyed,” said Dwi Sawung, campaign manager of infrastructure and spatial planning at WALHI, Friends of the Earth Indonesia.
In the Philippines, this year saw a rise in typhoons running aground barges ferrying fossil fuels and coal around the archipelago.
“Fossil fuel projects are dirty, deadly, and costly in more ways than one – triggering worse climate disasters and directly polluting the environments and communities that host them,” said Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED) executive director Gerry Arances.
“After hundreds of thousands of litres of oil were spilled in the Verde Island Passage last year and in Manila Bay earlier this year, we’re now seeing these disastrous coal barge accidents. All of them came about from severe weather events. They are a terrible yet stark reminder that,” he added.
“With [fossil fuel-driven] climate change exacerbating environmental stress, the destructive impacts of drilling, spills and pollution are becoming more severe,” said the Center for International Environmental Law in a post-COP16 statement.
Ahead of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the group is calling on world leaders to adopt a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty as a means to achieve both conservation and decarbonisation.
“Oil and gas activity threatens biodiversity at every stage – from exploration and production to transportation and end-use. The industry’s operations and the use of its products disrupt fragile ecosystems, destroy habitats, and pollute air, water, and soil – pushing countless species to human-induced extinction,” it read.
‘Can’t afford delays’
The CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework Fund – launched after COP15 – targets at least US$200 billion annually for biodiversity protection by 2030. Developed nations pledged a minimum of US$20 billion per year to the Global South by 2025, rising to US$30 billion annually by 2030.
Wealthy nations have largely fallen short of these financing pledges, with COP16 ending in a stalemate without mechanisms in place for developed nations to meet these targets.
“Rich nations are still dodging their financial commitments under the convention, and downplaying the importance of public finance,” highlighted Climate Action Network campaigner Catalina Gonda.
“We can’t afford any more delays. Countries must urgently pick up these discussions and finalise outstanding issues to ensure the Global Biodiversity Framework stays on track to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030,” she added.
An Indigenous people representative attends the inauguration of the Maloka Amazonica exhibition at COP16 in Cali, Colombia. Image: UN Biodiversity, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Flickr.
The United Nations Biodiversity Conference’s counterpart to the Paris Agreement’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the pledges of member states are submitted to the CBD in the form of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).
Of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) member states, only Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam submitted their updated conservation commitments before talks concluded in Cali.
The CBD’s media portal shows that so far only 44 out of 196 of its party nations have submitted their post-Kunming-Montreal GBF commitments.
On the sidelines of COP16, the Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) launched the Asean Biodiversity Plan – a framework that outlines how Asean member states can scale up the implementation of their NBSAPs to contribute to global biodiversity ambitions.
“While essential frameworks are in place to help us ‘make peace with nature,’ the greater challenge is now in implementing these plans,” said Dr Theresa Mundita Lim, executive director of the ACB.
