At COP16 take two, delegates aim to finalize funding for biodiversity

Delegates are gathering in Rome Feb. 25 through 27 to finalize the most important aspects of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, or CBD COP16, which took place in October in Cali, Colombia. The conference last October left all the important negotiations until the last minute, and a lack of consensus pushed talks two days past the scheduled end date. By the end of the weekend, many developing country delegates were forced to take flights home, leaving the conference without the quorum needed to reach a consensus. The three days in Rome this week won’t have the same pomp and circumstance as Colombia, but the discussions will be far more concentrated and experts say they are feeling hopeful about the outcomes. “I think we're all feeling fairly optimistic that we'll be able to come together and set out a road map for how the post-2030 resource mobilization architecture will look and so I'm feeling pretty hopeful,” said Linda Krueger, director for biodiversity and infrastructure policy at The Nature Conservancy. This optimism is largely the result of a document released on Feb. 14 by COP16 President Susana Muhamad, illustrating the country negotiations she’s been conducting in recent months. It updates readers on the status of negotiations, describes remaining areas of contention, and provides potential pathways to consensus on biodiversity financing. On Monday, Feb. 24, the European Union Commission announced in a news release that it would be “pushing for all pending decisions to be agreed.” The commission reiterated previous funding commitments and said it would be leveraging additional funding from domestic or private sources to develop green bonds, guarantees, and other financial tools. It also mentioned directing additional finance to support investments in biodiversity and integrating biodiversity into other funding programs, though the brief did not go into details on how. Not all signs point up, however. An investigation by Carbon Brief and The Guardian, also published on Feb. 24, found that more than half of countries have not committed to protecting 30% of their land and sea for nature by 2030 in plans submitted to the U.N. — despite signing a global agreement to do so less than three years ago. The conference in Rome will focus on resource mobilization and monitoring frameworks, including the so-called “30 by 30” referenced in the investigation. We will see this week whether this gap in commitments will be addressed. In the meantime, here’s a cheat sheet on what they’ll be discussing: Mobilizing the money The first issue on the agenda is finalizing how funding will be organized. This includes questions of a single or multiple funds, and whether they should fill existing funds or start a new one. Parties have agreed to secure $200 billion by 2030 from a range of sources to support biodiversity worldwide. This includes a goal of $20 billion per year in official development assistance by 2025 and $30 billion per year by 2030. They also agreed to reduce harmful incentives by at least $500 billion per year by 2030. Currently, the CBD relies on resources from bilateral agreements, private funds, and philanthropic sources, as well as dedicated funds. Those include the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, or GBFF, which was created at COP15 in 2022. GBFF is housed under the Global Environment Facility, or GEF, and receives contributions from governments, the private sector, and philanthropies. It finances projects in developing regions, with an emphasis on supporting countries with fragile ecosystems, such as small island states and economies in transition. So far, 11 donor countries as well as the government of Quebec have pledged nearly $400 million to the GBFF Fund, with $163 million of that pledged during COP16. Funds are also mobilized by the Kunming Biodiversity Fund, or KBF, which was launched at COP16 with a $200 million contribution from China. The goal of KBF is to accelerate action toward the 2030 and 2050 targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, or KMGBF, which was the historic agreement in 2022 that committed nations to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. The framework, considered the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris Agreement, commits 196 countries to tackling nature loss. However, not everyone is happy with this design. Global south countries want a new fund to organize the money rather than the GEF. They argue that it’s slow, bureaucratic, and difficult for local communities to access. Instead, they are pushing for a mechanism similar to the Green Climate Fund for climate finance. Global north countries oppose a new fund, arguing it would fragment existing financial efforts and make coordination harder. They would prefer to strengthen and reform the GEF instead. These countries are also concerned that a new fund would require more contributions from wealthier nations, increasing financial burdens. Countries also disagree on who will contribute how much. Developed nations pledged $20 billion per year by 2025, rising to $30 billion per year by 2030, but actual progress is slow, with current pledges to the GBFF far below targets. Developing countries demand more financial commitments from wealthier nations, while the latter point to economic challenges as the source of their reluctance to do so. As far as other sources of money, all parties agree that public funding alone is not enough and that private sector finance is necessary. However, developing countries worry that too much focus on private finance will let governments off the hook for public biodiversity funding. Richer countries, meanwhile, want more emphasis on private investment, biodiversity credits, and corporate contributions. Krueger says that the focus of these discussions is going to be on the architecture of how this funding is gathered and disseminated, rather than how much funding is officially going to be secured from each source. “From TNC’s perspective, what’s more interesting to us is, where is the money coming from?” Krueger said. “But we’re not even having that conversation in Rome.” Instead, the conversation will be all about how that money is distributed — the governance structure and the architecture for how the various institutions will collect and disseminate funding. One of the targets — to mobilize $20 billion annually by 2025 — is not on track. As of November 2024, a total of $383 million had been pledged to the GBFF by 12 contributors. “Right now, I think nobody wants to have that conversation just because of everything going on in the world,” Krueger said. “I think that it would be really hard to have that conversation right now.” Biodiversity’s global stocktake Next, delegates will iron out the details of the Planning, Monitoring, Reporting and Review Mechanism, or PMRR, which will dictate how progress on the KMGBF is reviewed at COP17. The PMRR spells out how the global stocktake for biodiversity will work. Krueger said that she thinks this is “fairly close” to being finished. The stocktake has to answer questions such as: Are countries making enough progress? Are they achieving the national targets? And do the national targets add up to the global targets? PMRR will decide who is going to gather that information, and it will stem solely from country reporting data or whether other supporting sources might also be considered. This year, parties are expected to determine how commitments from players other than national governments can be included in the mechanism, including civil society, the private sector, and subnational governments. Imperfect indicators Delegates will also work on finalizing the Monitoring Framework, which Krueger describes as an annex to the PMRR. The Monitoring Framework was drafted and agreed to at COP15 in Montreal and it is meant to be a yardstick for measuring progress against the 23 targets, such as protecting 30% of the world’s land and marine areas by 2030, restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems, and ensuring biodiversity is incorporated into national policies, strategies, and action plans. This framework outlines the indicators used to measure progress. There are approximately 100 of them and include measurements like the percentage of land and sea areas effectively conserved, trends in the population of pollinators, or the number of countries implementing national biodiversity strategies and action plans. These types of measurements with biodiversity are even more complicated than indicators in the climate world, where a carbon dioxide equivalent metric can be compared across different activities. “In biodiversity, there’s so many different components that have to be measured and they are not really fungible,” said Krueger. She added that the framework is still imperfect, but it helps us get “one step closer to actually being able to measure outcomes reliably.” To GEF or not to GEF The last big decision is referred to as the financial mechanism and centers on the role of the Global Environment Facility. In addition to its role housing the GBFF, which will be discussed in the resource mobilization conversations, the GEF also provides financial resources for developing countries and transition economies to implement the CBD. This includes helping countries meet conservation obligations under the CBD, capacity building and technical assistance, and leveraging additional resources by attracting other resources and expertise. Developing countries are dissatisfied with GEF’s efficiency in channeling funds to biodiversity hot spots and ensuring access for Indigenous peoples and local communities. They advocated for a new fund with more equitable governance structures. But wealthy countries pushed back, saying that this could further fragment biodiversity funding efforts. Parties didn’t come to a consensus in Cali. Developing countries are also unhappy with the effectiveness of the funding, with some countries arguing that they focus on isolated interventions rather than addressing systemic drivers of biodiversity loss like unsustainable agriculture, deforestation, and overexploitation of resources. Lower-income countries also say there’s an imbalance of power: Richer countries that contribute more to the fund have more decision-making sway. However, changing the structure would mean developing new funds. Muhamad is in favor of financial system improvement at GEF rather than the creation of a new fund. She said that the conversation needs to be more about simplification and ensuring the money actually gets down to the ground. “There are all these biodiversity funds out there, and having more funds doesn't necessarily solve the problem of not having enough money,” Krueger said. “Each of them comes with an administrative overhead and burden and staff and process.” GEF declined to comment for this article. The Cali fund Despite the impasse, there were notable advancements in Cali, including the creation of a fund for companies to share benefits derived from the use of genetic data and the establishment of a body to recognize Indigenous rights in biodiversity conservation. The Cali fund, which is meant to direct the monetary benefits of the use of genetic data back to the countries and the local communities that host this information, was agreed to in Cali but will be officially launched on Feb. 25 at the sidelines of the resumed COP. The U.N. Environment Programme will sign a memorandum of understanding with the CBD secretariat, UNDP, and the Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office. A path forward Muhamad’s document outlines ways to achieve a middle ground. She says there needs to be agreement on an improved finance architecture by 2030, instead of immediately creating a new fund. She also suggests defining broad criteria for the financial system to meet the needs of both high- and low-income countries. She also wants delegates to create a road map leading to COP19 in 2030 that allows for gradual improvements while preserving existing institutions such as GEF. However, she recommends that GEF must reform its role to better align with biodiversity needs. Finally, she says there’s a need for financing mechanisms that can tap into private sector contributions, innovative finance tools, and south-south cooperation. Is there wisdom in waiting? Muhamad was criticized during the COP16 in Cali for leaving the most important topics to the end when the time was running out and delegates were exhausted. But this is typical of COP events — COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, extended into the early hours of an extra day and several topics were not concluded. Delegates arrive in Rome having had months of opportunity to negotiate the details of their disagreements, without the distraction of the side events that accompany the official conference. This concentrated event could create the environment needed to make productive decisions. “I've heard that countries are sending really small delegations, there are maybe going to be one or two side events, and there are only a few agenda items really,” said Krueger. “You're not going to have all the dog and pony shows going on, and so you'll just be able to have a real conversation about what it is we're there to talk about. That’s kind of exciting.”