- Luke Taylor
- Cali, Colombia
A United Nations summit on biodiversity that aimed to halt the collapse of nature has ended largely in disappointment as countries failed to present plans on how to save the natural world or to reach consensus on funding.
The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity followed the historic COP15 in Montreal in 2022, where UN member nations agreed to take urgent action to save the world’s flora and fauna, including protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030. As part of that agreement 196 nations agreed to find $200bn (£155bn; €186bn) a year by 2030 to protect and restore nature, with $20bn of that pot to be banked by 2025.
COP16 was dubbed the “implementation COP”: the moment for countries to agree on exactly how to reach the targets set two years previously. But negotiators failed to reach consensus on setting up a new biodiversity fund or monitoring the world’s progress, and only an additional $160m was pledged for nature, leaving countries even further adrift from their targets for 2030.
“In the midst of a …
