- When the COP16 U.N. biodiversity summit ended without a final agreement in October 2024 in Cali, Colombia, negotiators agreed to meet in Rome, Italy, in February. There, the parties mapped a sweeping permanent plan on how to raise $200 billion annually by 2030 to reverse global species extinctions and conserve life on Earth.
- In Rome, the parties approved mechanisms for raising, tracking and reporting on that huge sum, with funding potentially coming from nations, philanthropies, banks and even corporations. The Achilles’ heel of this agreement is that no funding commitment made by any party now or in the future is legally binding.
- Even as participants celebrated this funding strategy breakthrough, two major powers dealt blows to finance targets. The U.S. under President Donald Trump abandoned USAID conservation financial commitments abroad, while the U.K. announced a shift in priorities away from climate and biodiversity foreign aid to military spending.
- The final Rome agreement also reduced the likelihood that trillions of dollars paid out by the world’s nations in “perverse subsidies” to industries that do the greatest harm to life on Earth would be redirected in a timely way to global biodiversity goals.
Delegates and observers applauded, with caveats, the delayed conclusion of the 16th United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16, in Rome on Feb. 28. The big takeaway was an agreement by the world’s nations to a multiprong pathway to raising $200 billion annually by 2030 to help reverse the rate of global species extinctions and biodiversity loss.
Wealthy countries committed in Rome to “mobilizing at least $200 billion a year by 2030, including $20 billion a year in international flows by 2025, rising to $30 billion by 2030,” according to a U.N. statement. The initial goal was set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework approved in 2022 at COP15 in Canada. The strategies for such ambitious fundraising were described as permanent, even if outcomes fall short of the goals and actual needs.
Funds committed in Rome are to come not only from national and subnational governments, but also from private philanthropies, multinational banks and new funding mechanisms.
One new funding mechanism, for example, urges corporations to pay in a percentage of their profits derived from commercial products that use genetic material and other information found in nature.
These nature-based fees constitute the new Cali Fund, which is tied to the corporate use of databases brimming with genetic digital sequence information. It’s hoped that a host of industries, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biotechnology and bio-agriculture, will voluntarily pay their fair share for the innovations nature provides for free.
While the Cali Fund, which launched Feb. 25, is currently empty; it’s expected to raise $1 billion annually — assuming companies pay into it, which they are urged but not required to do. Half the money raised will go to Indigenous peoples and local communities for conservation programs and strategies they determine.
“The road map agreed to here in Rome is a plan to future-proof nature finance beyond 2030,” Georgina Chandler, head of policy and campaigns for the Zoological Society of London, told Mongabay. “Governments must fulfill their commitment to $30 billion per year and corporations must pay into the Cali Fund for the nature they benefit from.
“With only five years left to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, securing the necessary funds to accomplish this mission is more essential than ever,” she added.
It’s important to note that none of these commitments made by nations, banks, philanthropies, corporations or other parties is legally binding, as is routine in these international meetings. There is no enforcement authority and no penalty for failing to make promised payments, a fact that has hamstrung U.N. climate change loss and damage fundraising for years.
From Colombia to Italy
COP16 began in Cali, Colombia, in mid-October 2024 but ended before critical finance issues were ironed out in the final hours of the two-week meeting. Thousands of delegates agreed to reconvene in Rome for three days, from Feb. 25-27, to complete the biennial negotiations.
COP15 in Montreal was deemed historic for its ambitious goals and 23 targets to “halt and reverse” biodiversity loss by 2030. The goal of COP16 was to determine how to pay for those plans.
“From the food on our tables to the supply chains that power global business, every aspect of our lives depends on the natural world,” said Jill Hepp, Conservation International’s policy lead. “In Rome, countries broke through a long-standing policy deadlock and agreed to a time-bound plan that will result in the selection of a permanent financial mechanism to help ensure funding reaches the most biodiverse places on Earth.”
To that end, delegates in Rome agreed to tracking and reporting mechanisms with which to follow restoration progress tied to the Kunming-Montreal goal of putting at least 30% of degraded freshwater, marine and land ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030.
This ambitious 30×30 initiative aims to protect global biodiversity, improve ecosystem services and strengthen climate resilience.
The US and UK cut support
Top environmental groups and NGOs were largely complimentary of the outcomes achieved in Rome under the leadership of COP16 President Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s former environment minister. However, there remains the practical reality that it is far easier to devise financial strategies than it is to fill coffers with cash.
“State parties have taken a step in the right direction,” said Efraim Gomez, World Wildlife Fund International’s global policy director. “However, this necessary step is not sufficient. It remains a point of concern that developed nations are not on track to honoring their commitment of raising $20 billion by 2025 for developing nations.”
According to research by The Nature Conservancy, the world already faces at least an annual $700 billion finance gap in biodiversity and environmental-protection funding.
Now, fundraising will be made more difficult by two recent political developments.
In dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, the administration of President Donald Trump quickly signaled its intent to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. support for nature conservation projects abroad, while also starting to claw back billions in environmental and climate funds committed by the Biden administration. With Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement for the second time, and with the United States still not a signatory of the Convention on Biological Diversity, it seems clear that the U.S. cannot be trusted to contribute to global environmental initiatives under the current administration.
The United Kingdom is also reducing its overseas budget — some of which flows to climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation — in order to increase military spending (prompted by the U.S. about-face regarding its Ukraine commitments), an announcement made by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer just as COP16 was reconvening in Rome.
“When we’ve just had the hottest January on record and humanitarian crises are at an all-time high, the UK government’s decision to slash its [overseas development assistance] budget is deeply shameful,” Teresa Anderson, of ActionAid International, told the U.K.’s Climate Home News.
Harmful subsidies redirection
A key hope of observers in Rome was that negotiators would make real progress toward a major goal of Kunming-Montreal’s Target 18, explicitly targeting trillions of dollars paid out in so-called “perverse subsidies” by the world’s nations to industries that harm land, air, water and species and would redirect those funds to biodiversity protections.
Instead, the language of Target 18 was softened between Cali and Rome. It originally read: “Identify by 2025, and eliminate, phase out and reform incentives, including subsidies, harmful for biodiversity …”
It now reads: “Urges Parties to continue and enhance their efforts towards achieving Target 18 by eliminating, phasing out …” harmful incentives and subsidies. Importantly, 2025 was erased as a time stamp, removing urgency from this provision.
One observer from Panama was overheard during negotiations, saying, “Harmful subsidies must go. Target 18 is not optional. Governments must redirect these funds to real biodiversity solutions.”
According to Business for Nature, an international coalition of eco-oriented corporations and organizations, the fossil fuel industry receives at least $640 billion in direct global subsidies annually, industrial agriculture $520 billion, and forestry, including support for forest biomass production and the burning of wood pellets, $155 billion.
Countries have proved either unwilling or unable to reduce support for the very industries doing the most environmental damage.
Such are the difficult and complex realities of a voluntary international process that requires consensus among all participating nations for any language to be finalized.
Catherine Weller, director of global policy for Fauna & Flora, a British NGO, acknowledged as much. “The global political context for fighting nature loss has never been more challenging, but this task has also never been more urgent,” she said. “In times like these, nature needs commitment, compromise and agreement. What we need now is to stay on track and for developed countries to stick to their commitments to deliver promised finance for nature.”
Banner image: COP16 President Susana Muhamad. Top environmental groups and NGOs were largely complimentary of the outcomes achieved in Rome under the leadership of Muhamad. Image by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis.
Justin Catanoso, a regular contributor to Mongabay, is a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He covered COP16 in Cali, Colombia.
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COP16 biodiversity meeting recap: Progress made, but finance lags
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