Environmental leaders from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Colombia to assess historic commitments to halt and reverse the loss of nature.
The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) starting on Monday is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed an ambitious global treaty, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to protect biodiversity.
Delegates in Cali will debate how they can save nature from the current rapid rate of destruction and how they will live up to the 2022 accord’s demands.
These include countries setting 30 percent of their territories aside for conservation, slashing subsidies for businesses that harm nature and mandating that companies report their environmental effect.
Countries were expected to submit their biodiversity plans, known as NBSAPs, by the start of the summit that runs till November 1. As of Friday, 31 out of 195 countries had filed a plan to the UN biodiversity secretariat.
On Sunday, Colombia’s Environment Minister and COP16 President Susana Muhamad described the conference as an opportunity “to collect the experience that has passed through this planet from all civilisations, from all cultures, from all knowledge … to generate livable, relatively stable conditions for a new society that will be forged in the light of the crisis.”
COP16 agenda
Wealthy nations agreed at 2022’s COP15 to contribute at least $20bn annually starting in 2025 towards helping developing countries
