Sawt Falasteen - Big guns descend on Cali for final push in UN biodiversity talks

The 16th so-called Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has the urgent task of coming up with monitoring and funding mechanisms to achieve 23 nature protection goals agreed in Canada two years ago.

Themed "Peace with Nature," the summit has been bogged down in disagreement about modalities of funding, as well as sharing the profits of digitally sequenced plant and animal genetic data -- used in medicines and cosmetics -- with the communities they come from.

Delegates have no time to waste.

There are only five years left to achieve the 23 UN targets, which include placing 30 percent of land, water and ocean under protection by 2030.

A report issued by nature watchdogs said Monday that only 17.6 percent of land and inland waters, and 8.4 percent of the ocean and coastal areas, are within documented protected and conserved areas.

"This leaves a land area roughly the size of Brazil and Australia combined, and at sea an area larger than the Indian Ocean, to be designated by 2030 in order to meet the global target," said the Protected Planet Report.

Also on Monday, an update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened animals and plants found more than one in three species of tree are at risk of extinction worldwide.

These include many that provide humans with timber, medicine, food and fuel.

More than 46,000 plant and animal species out of more than 166,000 assessed for the Red List were found to be threatened with extinction.

- 'More money' needed -

The COP16 has attracted a record 23,000 registered delegates and some 1,200 journalists to Cali, according to organizers, making it the biggest yet.

Thousands of activists and residents have flocked to its so-called "green zone" set up for cultural activities, demonstrations and celebrations.

COP president Susana Muhamad, Colombia's environment minister, told AFP on Monday the summit had placed biodiversity loss "on an equal footing" with the climate change crisis.

But she lamented that a Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) created to help bring about the targets set out two years ago "needs more money."

So far, countries have made about $400 million in commitments to the fund set up to give effect to the targets under the so-called Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in 2022.

This included pledges of $163 million announced Monday by Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the Canadian province of Quebec.

The Kunming-Montreal framework determined that countries must mobilize $20 billion per year by 2025 from rich nations to help developing ones. The GBFF is just part of this funding.

Of the $20 billion goal, $15 billion a year was reached for 2022, according to the OECD.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Guterres will join the heads of state of Colombia, Armenia, Bolivia, Guinea Bissau, Haiti and Suriname as well as 115 government ministers and 44 deputies in Cali.

The ministers will hopefully "help us make movement on some of these issues," said CBD spokesman David Ainsworth.

If an issue is "really tight and intractable, negotiators would normally go back to their capitals but if the minister is there, decisions can be made fairly quickly."

The COP16 runs until Friday.

R.Halabi--SF-PST