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Nations Back $200 Billion-a-Year Plan to Reverse Nature Losses
Natasha White
5 min read
(Bloomberg) -- More than 140 countries adopted a strategy to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars a year to help reverse dramatic losses in biodiversity, though failed to decide on establishing a new global nature fund — a key demand of developing economies.
Nations attending the 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, in Rome deferred a decision on a new fund — intended to help accelerate the flow of financing to projects — until 2028. The talks followed a previous inconclusive summit in Colombia last year.
A finance strategy adopted Thursday, to applause and tears from delegates, underpins “our collective capacity to sustain life on this planet,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s outgoing environment minister and COP16 president. Negotiators faced a “very polarized, fragmented, divisive and conflicted geopolitical landscape” and demonstrated that “multilateralism can deliver.”
The agreement will guide countries on how to raise $200 billion a year by the end of the decade to meet the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a landmark nature pact adopted in December 2022, which range from safeguarding clean water to halving food waste to slashing use of harmful chemicals.
The decision represents a “balanced, compromise solution,” said Maria Angélica Ikeda, who is leading Brazil’s delegation. Brazil, which will host the next major UN climate summit in November, is “very happy,” she said.
Under the agreement, developed nations are urged to “enhance their efforts” to mobilize $20 billion annually for poorer countries by the end of this year. It also calls for a study on the relationship between debt sustainability and nature protection — an item observers have welcomed as novel and progressive — as well as better coordination between ministers of environment and finance.
Reaching a consensus on the plans “shows countries can come together and agree an ambitious outcome for nature,” said Georgina Chandler, head of policy at the Zoological Society of London, an international conservation charity. It “recognizes that government finance is not going to be enough,” and the need to diversify sources of funding over the next five years.
Global action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss has been challenged by a series of recent setbacks in environmental diplomacy, with emerging nations accusing developed countries at successive UN-backed summits of doing too little to raise the flow of funding. That’s been exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s moves to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, and to slash funding directed at tackling climate change.
Trump’s decision last month to freeze key sources of biodiversity finance, including funds for the US Agency for International Development, and the UK’s move this week to divert overseas aid to defense expenditure heaped pressures on negotiators in Rome. The US is not a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity and cannot directly influence the talks, but there’s usually an American delegation present. The seat allocated to US officials this week remained empty.
Some developing countries, who had demanded the creation of a new global nature fund, left Rome disappointed. Attendees agreed instead to a process to explore the possibility, with a final decision due in 2028.
“Forests are burning, rivers are in agony and animals are disappearing,” said Juan Carlos Alurralde Tejada, Bolivia’s lead negotiator. “Biodiversity cannot wait for a bureaucratic process that lasts forever.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Bolivia are among those that see the existing fund — the Washington DC-based Global Environment Facility’s Global Biodiversity Framework Fund — as dominated by rich nations who control the purse strings. Donor countries including the UK, Switzerland and New Zealand have resisted the call for an alternative, arguing that a new fund does not equate to more money and risks further fragmenting the biodiversity finance landscape.
Wall Street is expressing increased interest in biodiversity as an investment theme. Goldman Sachs Asset Management launched its first-ever biodiversity-focused bond fund on Thursday, citing growing demand.
A group of financial institutions and the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation this week announced an initiative to better incorporate nature loss into sovereign debt finance. Still, biodiversity remains an area that financial institutions have struggled to monetize, and they’ve reiterated they cannot act without clear government guidance and profitable opportunities.
Talks in Rome — attended by almost 1,000 participants — took place against a mostly drizzly, urban backdrop close to the Colosseum. The event was a much smaller-scale affair than usual, with no side events and few promotional booths. Negotiators, versed in marathon, multi-week sessions and regular all-nighters, made light work of the condensed three-day program — buoyed also by a decision to limit deliberations to 13-hour stints in order to better protect their health.
The final text called for funding from all sources, including from the private sector and financial institutions, and placed an emphasis on the use of “innovative schemes.” This includes biodiversity offsets, carbon credits and debt-for-nature swaps, deals by which governments refinance their debt and allocate any savings to environmental protection.
A series of further meetings will now take place on how to boost the effectiveness of global biodiversity finance before nations gather again for formal talks next year in Armenia. COP17 in Yerevan will assess progress against the Kunming-Montreal framework’s targets ahead of the end-of-decade deadline.
The newly adopted strategy and the global nature pact are not legally binding, and accountability against global environmental agreements has been notoriously slack. Still, in a separate decision adopted Thursday, nations agreed on measures to better track national progress.
It doesn’t amount to “perfect accountability, but it provides some blocks to build from,” said Juliette Landry, senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, a think tank.
