More than 140 countries struck a deal on a strategy to raise and distribute billions of dollars to protect nature at a UN biodiversity summit that provided a “light of hope” amid rising geopolitical tensions and cuts to climate and science programmes by the US.
The agreement about how they would contribute $200bn a year by 2030 that was committed in principle at a meeting in Montreal was met with applause and tears in the final moments of UN COP16 on Thursday at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome. It followed the collapse of a previous summit in Cali, Colombia, in November, when countries failed to agree a funding strategy.
But a decision on the creation of a dedicated nature fund — one of the central issues of the negotiations — was postponed until 2028.
Instead, delegates settled on a framework for financing conservation efforts through to the end of the decade, building on the commitment in Montreal in 2022 to halt biodiversity loss by 2030, including protection of 30 per cent of the planet’s land and seas. The next summit will take place in Armenia.
“We have sent a light of hope that still the common good, the environment, the protection of life and the capacity to come together for something bigger than each national interest is possible,” said outgoing Colombian environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad.
“I find that remarkable in a year, 2025, when we are seeing so much political change globally, where actually fragmentation — conflict — is increasing,” added Muhamad, who has announced her resignation as Colombia’s environment minister but stayed in the post to oversee COP16.
“The results of this meeting show that multilateralism works and is the vehicle to build the partnerships needed to protect biodiversity and move us towards peace with nature” said Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
A sticking point remained about which institutions should manage and distribute any funds raised, with developing countries arguing for the creation of a new dedicated biodiversity fund against the pushback from rich nations, in what national representatives and non-profit organisations described as a symbolic tussle over the imbalance of power and resources.
Although the US, which has never ratified the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, did not send an official delegation to Rome, its political climate nonetheless loomed over the negotiations.
The shift in policy under President Donald Trump had transformed “the narrative around extracting resources, fossil fuels, even imperialism creates more tensions in discussions” between the global north and south, Muhamad told the Financial Times.
She said the changing geopolitical landscape had also “put a lot of pressure” on other rich countries, at a time when they were having to increase defence spending in order to prepare for the threat of war.
Poorer nations, on the other hand, believed richer ones and large corporations should foot the bill for biodiversity loss, Muhamad said, as the bigger economic powers had amassed wealth by extracting resources while causing environmental destruction in the process.
Maria Angélica Ikeda, director of the department of environment at the Brazilian ministry of foreign affairs, said that without a dedicated fund for biodiversity, the level of funding that had been attracted was “very far from what’s needed”.
The OECD estimates that actual flows in 2022 stood at just $15bn — far below the target needed to meet the 2030 goals.
Under the agreement reached in Rome, countries will establish a new permanent finance mechanism by 2030 while working to improve existing financial instruments. It allows for “innovative schemes” of funding, which would include biodiversity offsets, carbon credits and debt-for-nature swaps.
Businesses were largely absent from the near-1,000 in attendance in Rome, in contrast with the Cali meeting where so-called fees for nature were in the spotlight, and only industry lobby groups such as CropLife were present.
A new fund to protect biodiversity agreed in Cali was formally launched on Tuesday, which asks pharmaceutical companies and agribusinesses to voluntarily contribute either 1 per cent of their profits or 0.1 per cent of their revenues to cover their use of genetic data.
As of Thursday, no companies had reported making any contribution to the fund.
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