AFP, CALI, Colombia
The world’s biggest nature protection conference opened in Colombia yesterday with the UN secretary-general calling for nations to “convert words into action” and fatten a fund seeking to address biodiversity loss.
On the eve of the official start of the conference, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged “significant investment” in the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) created last year, as well as “commitments to mobilize other sources of public and private finance.”
“Those profiting from nature must contribute to its protection and restoration,” Guterres said in a video played to delegates gathered in the western city of Cali, where authorities were on high alert after threats from a guerrilla group.
A woman poses for a photograph as she waits to participate in the opening event of the 16th UN Biodiversity Summit (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, on Sunday.
Photo: Reuters
The GBFF was created last year to help nations achieve the goals of the so-called Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in Canada in 2022 with 23 targets to “halt and reverse” the loss of nature by 2030.
So far, nations have made about US$250 million in commitments to the fund, according to monitoring agencies.
The fund is part of a broader agreement made in Montreal two years ago for nations to mobilize at least US$200 billion per year by 2030 for biodiversity, including US$20 billion per year by 2025 from rich nations to help developing ones.
Guterres highlighted that destroying nature increases conflict, hunger and disease, fuels poverty and negatively impacts economic growth.
“A collapse in nature’s services — such as pollination and clean water — would see the global economy lose trillions of dollars a year, with the poorest hardest hit,” he said.
About 12,000 delegates from nearly 200 nations, including 140 government ministers and a dozen heads of state, are expected at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which runs until Friday next week.
Themed “Peace with Nature,” it has the urgent task of coming up with monitoring and funding mechanisms to ensure the 23 UN targets can be met, but Colombia’s EMC rebel group, a splinter of the FARC guerrilla army that disbanded in 2017, has cast a shadow over the event by urging foreign delegations to stay away and warning the conference “will fail.”
The threat came after EMC fighters were targeted in a military raid in the southwest Cauca region, where the group is accused of engaging in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
Cali is the nearest large city to territory controlled by the EMC, which has been engaged in fraught peace negotiations with the government.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro also addressed Sunday’s ceremonial event, two days after saying he was “nervous” about security.
However, Cali Mayor Alejandro Eder said that the authorities had matters under control.
“We have been working since February to safeguard the city of Cali,” he said. “We have more than 10,000 police officers, we also have detachments of the Colombian Armed Forces guarding the entire perimeter of the city.”
The delegates have their work cut out for them, with just five years left to achieve the target of placing 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection by 2030.
World-renowned primate expert Jane Goodall of Britain ahead of the COP16 summit said that there is little time to reverse the downward slide.
“The time for words and false promises is past if we want to save the planet,” Goodall said.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which keeps a red list of threatened animals and plants, more than one-quarter of assessed species — about 1 million altogether — are threatened with extinction.
Taking over the presidency of the COP, held every two years, Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Susana Muhamad told delegates that the goal of “peace with nature, implies a conceptual change in values.”
“Nature is not a resource. Nature is the fiber of life that makes our own existence possible,” she said.
