World agrees hard-fought nature funding plan at UN talks

ROME – Nations cheered a last-gasp deal to map out funding to protect nature on Feb 27, breaking a deadlock at United Nations talks seen as a test for international cooperation in the face of geopolitical tensions.

Rich and developing countries hammered out a delicate compromise on raising and delivering the billions of dollars needed to protect species, overcoming

stark divisions that had scuttled their previous meeting

in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.

Delegates stood and clapped in an emotionally charged final meeting that saw key decisions adopted in the final minutes of the last day of rebooted negotiations at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation headquarters in Rome.

Ms Susana Muhamad of Colombia, president of the 16th Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP16), hailed the fact that countries worked together for a breakthrough, enabling progress “in this very fragmented and conflicted world”.

“This is something very beautiful because it is around protecting life that we have come together, and there cannot be anything higher than that,” she added.

The decision comes more than two years after a landmark deal to halt the rampant destruction of nature this decade and protect the ecosystems and wildlife that humans rely on for food, climate regulation and economic prosperity.

Scientists have warned that action is urgent.

A million species are threatened with extinction, while unsustainable farming and consumption destroy forests, deplete soils and spread plastic pollution to even the most remote areas of the planet.

‘Hope’

The agreement on Feb 27 is seen as crucial to giving impetus to the 2022 deal, in which nearly 200 countries that are party to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed to protect 30 per cent of the world’s land and seas by 2030.

Talks were also seen as a bellwether for international cooperation.

The meeting comes as countries face a range of challenges, from trade disputes and debt worries to the slashing of overseas aid – particularly by new US President Donald Trump.

Washington, which has not signed up to the CBD, sent no representatives to the meeting.

“Our efforts show that multilateralism can present hope at a time of geopolitical uncertainty,” said Mr Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

Mr Ousseynou Kasse of Senegal, speaking on behalf of the Africa Group of Negotiators, also threw the group’s support behind global cooperation.

“We believe that this is the way that can save the world, and we must continue down this path,” he said.

Countries must be “accountable to our children, to the generations to come”, he added, saying he was thinking of what he would tell his own son when he returns home.

“I will give him good news that we have a compromise, we have a deal.”

The failure to finalise an agreement in Cali was the first in a string of disappointing outcomes at environmental summits in 2024.

A climate finance deal at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November was slammed by developing countries, while separate negotiations about desertification and plastic pollution stalled in December.

Ms Muhamad, who has resigned as Colombia’s environment minister but stayed on to serve until after the Rome conference, was given a standing ovation as the talks drew to a close in the early hours of Feb 28.

‘Key milestone’

Countries have already agreed to a goal to deliver US$200 billion (S$269.7 billion) a year in finance for nature by 2030, including US$30 billion a year from wealthier countries to poorer ones.

The total for 2022 was about US$15 billion, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The main debate in Cali and, later, Rome, was over developing countries’ calls for the creation of a specific biodiversity fund. This has seen pushback from the European Union and other wealthy nations, which have argued against multiple funds.

On Feb 27, there were intense closed-door talks based on a “compromise attempt” text that Brazil put forward on behalf of the Brics country bloc that includes Russia, China and India.

The agreement reached in Rome leaves it to the 2028 COP meeting to decide whether to set up a specific new fund under the UN biodiversity process, or name a potentially reformed existing fund to play that role.

Ms Georgina Chandler, head of policy and campaigns at the Zoological Society of London, said the finance road map was a “key milestone”, but stressed that money is needed urgently.

Other decisions sought to bolster monitoring to ensure countries are held accountable for their progress towards meeting biodiversity targets.

One achievement in Cali was the creation of a new fund to share profits from digitally sequenced genetic data from plants and animals with the communities they come from.

The fund, officially launched on Feb 25, is designed for large firms to contribute a portion of their income from developing products like medicine and cosmetics using this data.

Delegates in Cali also approved the creation of a permanent body to represent the interests of indigenous people. AFP