6th March 2025
COP16 was held in Cali, Columbia in October 2024, but ended in disarray when the conference ran out of time before agreement was reached. The conference was resumed and concluded in Rome, Italy in February 2025 with some progress on how countries will track progress and deliver finance.
In 2022, at COP15 a landmark agreement was reached by countries to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 delivered via the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – referred to as ‘the Paris Agreement for Nature’. At COP16, countries were expected to submit National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) to show how they planned to deliver, but more than 75% have failed to do so. Research by Carbon Brief and the Guardian has also revealed that half of nations that have submitted their plans do not commit to the GBF target of protecting 30% of land and seas for nature by 2030.
At the resumed COP16 meeting in Rome, Parties failed to agree a process for a global review of NBSAPs at COP17 (2026) and COP19 (2030).
With so few countries having submitted their NBSAPs, those that have submitted not committing to the agreed targets, and no process for reviewing progress, it is difficult to see how the goal will be met.
Finance was a key focus of the resumed talks in Rome. Here, countries agreed to set up a permanent arrangement for providing biodiversity finance to developing nations, which was a welcome step. Countries also agreed on a roadmap to develop the financial mechanism for how funds will be allocated and mobilise funding to close the $200bn per year biodiversity funding gap.
With the world’s largest biodiversity donor, the US, recently withdrawing most of its nature funding in a foreign aid freeze and many European countries who signed the agreement cutting their aid budgets, the international dialogue of ministers of environment and finance from developing and developed countries that will be established to progress deliver of the biodiversity finance agreement will present challenging discussions.
It is critical that ministers involved in these discussions are acutely aware of the long term costs of inaction on the protection of biodiversity on a global scale for minimising the impacts of climate change and protecting health.