‘A People’s COP’: UN Chief Urges COP16 Delegates to ‘Convert Words into Action’ to Save Dwindling Biodiversity

Guterres said the world is not on track to meet the Global Biodiversity Framework pledges and targets agreed upon at the last UN biodiversity summit in 2022 as more than 80% of countries are yet to publish their action plans.

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As global biodiversity keeps vanishing at an alarming rate, it is time for governments to “convert words into actions” and deliver on their nature conservation pledges, the UN chief said during the opening ceremony of the UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia.

Some 15,000 attendees, including a dozen heads of state, 103 ministers and over 1,000 international journalists flocked to the city to attend the summit, also known as COP16. It is the first summit since countries adopted the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) two years ago.

The GBF includes four overall goals for mid-century and a series of 23 more urgent and elaborate targets to meet by 2030 set the path to “halt and reverse nature loss” and safeguard global biodiversity in the coming decades.

Among the targets is a framework known as the 30×30 goal, which requires at least 30% of terrestrial, inland water, and of coastal and marine areas “effectively conserved” or otherwise restored from degraded states by 2030. Countries also pledged to mobilize $20 billion in nature financing per year.

In his opening remarks, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged delegates to present “clear plans” on how they plan to achieve the framework’s targets.

Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) were slated to submit their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) before the commencement of the summit. But as of Sunday, only 32 out of the 193 CBD Parties – including the European Union – had submitted their revised and updated plans.

“Your task at this COP is to convert words into action,” Guterres said in a video message. “That means countries presenting clear plans that align national actions with all the Framework’s targets. It means agreeing a strengthened monitoring and transparency framework. And it means honouring promises on finance — and accelerating support to developing countries.”

Only five of the 17 megadiverse countries, which together are home to about 70% of the world’s biodiversity, produced NBSAPs: Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico. Canada, Italy, France and Japan were the only G7 countries to submit plans. The UK and Germany did not submit a plan, while the US is not a signatory.

Colombia, this year’s summit host, also failed to meet the submission deadline but said it would present its plan during the meeting. 

COP16 Agenda

Aside from evaluating global progress on the biodiversity framework and set out priorities going forward, a big focus of the Cali summit will be finance.

So far, countries have made about $250 million in commitments to the Biodiversity Framework Fund, a fund dedicated to supporting investments in global biodiversity and financing for the biodiversity framework, Al Jazeera reported. This is far off the $20 billion per year pledge made two years ago.

“We must leave Cali with significant investment in the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, and commitments to mobilize other sources of public and private finance to deliver the Framework in full,” said Guterres.

Indigenous communities are another central pillar of the summit.

Indigenous peoples and local communities are often described as the “guardians” of the planet. Research shows that while the world’s 370 million Indigenous peoples make up less than 5% of the world’s total human population, they manage over 25% of the world’s land surface, and support 80% of the world’s biodiversity. 

Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) calls for special protections to be given to Indigenous group and local communities that embody traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, stressing these communities’ role in protecting nature.

COP16 will look to finalise a new programme for including traditional knowledge in national conservation plans and decisions.

“The CBD Secretariat remains committed to pursuing efforts with Parties to ensure meaningful participation of indigenous peoples and local communities and the adequate integration of their traditional knowledge systems both in process and outcomes,” Astrid Schomaker, the executive secretary of the CBD, said in August. 

Dilys Roe, a Principal Researcher on biodiversity at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), ahead of COP16 warned that Indigenous peoples “hardly” get any say in decision-making processes and their “shrinking” territories lack protection from encroachment by industry.

“To have a better chance of meeting the 30×30 target, governments should get more cash to the local level and run conservation projects more as equitable partnerships than as top-down, funder-knows-best operations,” Roe said.

More on the topic: Indigenous People Are Essential for Preventing Biodiversity Loss. They Mustn’t Be Sidelined

Leaders in Cali are also expected to establish a global multilateral system to facilitated access to data concerning nature. Negotiators in August said an agreement is expected by the end of the summit, spelling out when payments are required, by whom, and where the money should go, Reuters reported.

On Monday, Guterres said developing countries are not granted fair access to technologies such as digitized DNA and urged delegates to “operationalise the mechanism that has been agreed — to ensure that when countries share genetic information, they share benefits — equitably.”

Colombia’s environment minister and president of COP16 Susana Muhamad told local media this month that one of the conference’s main objectives is to deliver the message that “biodiversity is as important, complementary, and indispensable as the energy transition and decarbonization.”

In her opening remarks, Muhamad said the summit represents an opportunity “to collect the experience that has passed through this planet from all civilizations, from all cultures, from all knowledge … to generate livable, relatively stable conditions for a new society that will be forged in the light of the crisis.”