In the final stretch of COP16 there is little progress and many vital issues at a standstill

Cali, Colombia. There is only one day left until the end of the COP16 and the issues of financing, participation of indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as genetic resources and digital sequencing remain stalled in negotiations.

The issue of debt-for-nature swap, proposed by Colombia, came out of the discussion text, as well as the phrase “direct financing”, which caused quite a bit of discomfort to the representatives of indigenous peoples who have been advocating, for several years now, for resources to reach them directly.

Another issue that does not leave a positive balance is the lack of compliance by nations to deliver their biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAP, for its acronym in English). Before COP16 began, only 34 countries submitted their NBSAPs and almost two weeks after the summit, only six more nations have completed their task.

“(The countries’) positions are becoming tougher, not softer,” said one of the observers who has access to the private meetings. This predicts that the talks will extend into the nights of October 31 and November 1.

Protected areas on the high seas

In the midst of the lack of consensus on the most sensitive issues (financing and genetic resources), The countries approved an agreement on marine areas of ecological or biological importance (EBSA), which establishes a scientific and technical process to identify these areas that are outside the maritime jurisdiction of any country.

This is a significant moment, as this issue has been debated since COP13 in 2016, and faces political, technical and legal challenges. The decision will be essential to implement several objectives of the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, while supporting the High Seas Treaty.

The president of COP16 and Minister of the Environment of Colombia, Susana Muhamad, celebrated the agreement as a first great step in the objectives of the conference: “The commitment that we have assumed today represents the spirit of cooperation and responsibility that promotes COP16. “This agreement will allow us to protect key areas for the planet, ensuring that the oceans, our great climate regulators and source of life, have a solid and global defense.”

The EBSA International Advisory Group, created with the agreement, must establish scientific guidelines for voluntary review to guarantee transparency in the identification of areas of ecological interest.

Some of the most important points have to do with the recognition of the technical nature of the process. This means that the description of these marine areas will be carried out exclusively under scientific and technical criteria, without implications on territorial sovereignty, maintaining neutrality and respect between nations. It should also promote the active participation of indigenous peoples, local communities, women and youth in analysis and decision-making, integrating fundamental traditional knowledge.

To achieve these objectives, countries such as Germany, Belgium, Canada, Norway and Sweden will hold scientific and technical workshops that will bring together scientists and community representatives to adjust the descriptions of the EBSAs.

Indigenous participation

Another advance of the negotiations in Cali has been the approval of the work program on Article 8J of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which establishes that each country will respect, preserve and maintain the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities that entail traditional lifestyles relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. In addition to promoting a broader application of this knowledge and the equitable distribution of its derived benefits.

However, Ramiro Batzín, a Mayan Kaqchikel indigenous person from Guatemala and coordinator of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (FIIB), assures that It is crucial that the new work program is strongly linked to a permanent subsidiary body that allows recommendations to be made to the CBD, to guarantee the inclusion of indigenous opinions in all decisions.

The problem is that, in the document that develops article 8J and that will be discussed in plenary for final approval, everything related to the subsidiary body is in parentheses. That is, it will have to go to a vote and that is where there is a high probability that there will be no consensus, so there is a risk that all references to the subsidiary body will end up being eliminated.

“In the last two days there is usually a crisis, because it is very difficult to achieve the consensus of almost 200 countries. That is where we will see the hand of the COP Presidency. Susanna [Muhamad] will have the challenge of leading the process well, conducting it and generating consensus,” says Manuel Pulgar Vidal, former Minister of the Environment of Peru and leader of the WWF Global Climate and Energy Practice.

Connection between climate and biodiversity

Throughout the Biodiversity Summit in Cali, scientists and civil society organizations have expressed the urgency of creating a convergence between the climate and biodiversity agendas.

Manuel Pulgar remembers that in 1992, at the Rio Summit, fragmented agreements were signed and there was a lot of criticism about them. “That is, climate change on the one hand, biological diversity on the other and, the same year a little later, the convention on desertification. “We were talking about issues that had just come to the table; we must remember that in 1992 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had only been in existence for four years.”

However, Pulgar believes that taking into account the current context, it is necessary for the climate and biodiversity agendas to talk to each other. In fact, he believes that some steps have already been taken, since goal 8 of the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework refers to climate change.

“Climate change and biodiversity must be connected but not united, because we are not at a time of sufficient maturity to say that we can make a single convention of the three that exist. [cambio climático, biodiversidad y desertificación]. The conventions still need to follow their independent path,” says Pulgar.

As an argument to insist on the independence of the conventions, Pulgar mentions an example: if Latin America does not have enough resources to execute the action plans of the three agendas in a fragmented manner, it is much more difficult for it to have the resources to address everything at once. time in a single agenda.

For her part, Paula Caballero, executive director for Latin America of TNC and considered the creator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), is convinced that the three agendas must come together.

“Humans have a tendency to put everything in compartments, to lock everything up, and that is not the way the world, nature and economies work,” says Caballero.

For her, the reason there are three different agendas is that they emerged from very different processes, “but they are the same agenda and the reality is that everything we do to improve the issue of climate catastrophe will really result in benefits for the community.” biodiversity and vice versa.