COP16, the United Nations’ major environmental conference, began three days of overtime in Rome on Tuesday to resolve the North-South stalemate over funding to safeguard nature, “humanity’s most important mission in the 21st century,” urged the summit’s Colombian president.

A unifying policy amid global polarisation

The debates focus on “one of the policies that has the power to unify the world,” “which is no mean feat in a geopolitical landscape that is highly polarized, fragmented, divided, and conflict-ridden,” declared Colombian Minister Susana Muhamad, president of this 16th conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), at the opening ceremony.

What is at stake is “humanity’s most important mission in the 21st century, that is, our ability to sustain life on this planet,” she reminded those present at the opening of these extended proceedings, held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Initial disagreements surface

Around 10:00 a.m., some 300 representatives from 154 countries took their seats in the large hall overlooking the rain-drenched ruins of the Circus Maximus. However, as soon as they began to speak, Brazil, on behalf of several biodiversity-rich emerging countries, and Zimbabwe, for the Africa group, rejected the compromise proposed by the presidency to avoid a repeat of the failed negotiations in Colombia.

In early November, COP16 concluded in Cali without resolving a heated dispute between rich and developing countries over how to work together to raise the money needed to halt the destruction of nature by 2030.

This goal, set for 2022 in the Kunming-Montreal agreement, is accompanied by a roadmap of 23 targets to be achieved within the decade, designed to protect the planet and its living beings from deforestation, overexploitation of resources, climate change, pollution, and invasive species.

According to the UN, the flagship goal is to place 30% of land and sea in protected areas by 2030, compared with around 17% and 8% at present. Failure to meet this target poses a major risk to food resources, air quality, climate regulation, and the health of the planet’s ecosystems.

Three-quarters of the Earth’s landmass has already been altered by mankind—urbanized or converted to crops—and a quarter of species for which there is solid scientific data are threatened with extinction.

Debate over funding mechanisms

The Kunming-Montreal agreement set a target of $200 billion in annual spending on nature by 2030, including $30 billion in transfers from developed to poor countries (up from around $15 billion in 2022, according to the OECD).

But how is the money to be mobilized and distributed? In Cali, the latest text called for the creation of a fund to distribute public money from the major powers. However, in the absence of the United States, the latter—led by the European Union, Japan, and Canada- a non-signatory to the convention but a major donor—are radically hostile to the idea. They denounce a fragmentation of development aid, already weakened by budget crises and the ongoing effacement of Americans since the election of Donald Trump.

On Friday, the COP16 presidency published a compromise proposal to reform the various financial flows earmarked for nature conservation by 2030. The document calls for “improving the performance” of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Global Biodiversity Facility (GBFF), a modestly endowed temporary solution ($400 million). However, it also plans to “designate or establish a global instrument, or series of instruments” for financing nature conservation.

It sets the objective that “at least one instrument” should be placed under the authority of the CBD, a major demand from developing countries, who are calling for greater equity and transparency in access to funding. The first speakers from the developing world rejected this proposal on Tuesday, heralding three days of difficult discussions in a challenging geopolitical context, already marked by disappointing financial negotiations at COP29 on climate and the stalling of those on a treaty against plastic pollution.

Far from the 23,000 participants in Cali, the session resumed in a smaller format, with 1,400 accredited participants, mostly civil society observers and experts, and only 25 countries represented at the ministerial level.