Every two years, leaders from around the world gather to discuss the state of life on Earth, negotiate agreements to preserve biodiversity and stop the destruction of nature. This week representatives from 196 countries are meeting in Cali, Colombiafor the 16th UN Conference of the Parties Summit (Cop16).
This is the first biodiversity-focused meeting since 2022, when governments a historic agreement to stop the destruction of ecosystems. Scientists, indigenous communities, business representatives and environment ministers from nearly 200 countries will discuss progress towards the targets and negotiate how it will be monitored. Here are the main things to look out for during the summit.
Is this decade’s big deal for nature still alive?
Police summits are defined by the large, multi-country agreements they negotiate. For climate Cop meetings, it is the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sets out what countries must do to keep global warming 1.5C (2.7F) below pre-industrial levels. For nature and biodiversity it is the Kunming-Montreal Agreementhammered out in Canada two years ago, which set out 23 targets and four goals to conserve nature this decade.
Now the challenge is whether countries will implement those agreements. Since its inception, the UN’s biodiversity process has been caught in a cycle of underachievement. Despite urgent scientific warnings about the state of nature, countries never hit a target they set for themselves. This decade is meant to be different. In Colombia, governments are required to present national strategies on how they plan to achieve the targets known as National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).
Initial indications are that more than 80% of governments will arrive empty-handed, although some have good excuses: countries with enormous biodiversity such as Brazil say they are coming up with a complex, multi-decade strategy.
Nevertheless, the number of NBSAPS at the end of the summit will give a good idea of how seriously governments take the agreement.
Read more: Are countries keeping their promises to save nature?
where is the money
While commitments to protect and restore nature are the headlines of the agreement, money will be crucial to its success. During tense Cop15 negotiations in Montreal in 2022, developing countries said they needed more money to implement conservation targets and demanded a dramatic increase in funding as part of the final agreement.
Governments have finally agreed to provide at least $30bn (£23bn) a year in nature finance by the end of the decade, with an interim target of $20bn by 2025. With less than a year to go before the first milestone, new financial commitments from rich donor countries such as the UK and EU member states in Cali will indicate whether governments keep their word.
Can countries agree on biopiracy?
The world’s coral reefs, rainforests and other rich ecosystems are full of information that can aid future commercial discoveries. Nature’s genetic codes have become a new frontier of the AI industrial revolution, feeding hungry statistical models trying to create the next big thing in medicine, food and materials science.
But anger is growing in the global south over how profits from these discoveries are shared, with many countries warning they are not being paid their fair share. They compare the companies that take genetic information without acknowledging its source to “biopirates”.
At Cop16, countries will negotiate a world-first agreement on this issue. If they succeed, funding the natural world’s genetic data could become a new and potentially lucrative revenue stream for conservation.
Read more: Who wins from nature’s genetic bounty? The billions at stake in a global ‘biopiracy’ battle
Will indigenous groups play a role in decisions?
Indigenous peoples are mentioned 18 times in this decade targets to halt and reverse biodiversitysomething that was celebrated as a historic victory. This followed decades of exclusion and mistreatment by the conservation sector. The importance of the indigenous role in decision-making has become a common slogan in the nature sector in recent years – but many indigenous communities are waiting to see what this means in practice. In some communities, there is considerable skepticism about what some of this decade’s nature restoration targets might mean for land rights and uses.
Can Colombia use the meeting for peace with its rebels?
As host of Cop16, Colombia’s first left-wing government under its president, Gustavo Petro, sought to use the international summit as a catalyst for domestic peace. Despite the Latin American country’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), conflict with guerrilla factions continues in parts of the country.
One group, Central General Staff (EMC), issued threats against the summit in response to a major security deployment of 12,000 soldiers and police for this month’s meeting, but its leader later backed off. Cop16’s president, Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s Minister of Environment, said Cop16 is also an opportunity to draw a line under the violent conflict and was part of the motivation for the summit theme of “Peace with Nature”.
How do we measure progress?
While governments have already finalized their goals, they have not yet decided how success will be measured. Measuring land protection and finance is relatively easy: official bodies at the UN and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development monitor progress towards these targets.
But measuring the decline of species, biodiversity density and sustainable resource management is much more difficult and debates continue about how to track progress.
