China calls for agreement on 'difficult issues' at key biodiversity summit

Two giant banners shouting "Biodiversity versus Billionaires" were unfurled on Thursday in Montreal, Canada, near a landmark UN biodiversity conference, where money is a stumbling block towards reaching a global action plan to protect the planet’s species.

Negotiations between delegates from 200 countries at the COP15 summit have been stuttering along, even stalling, over key issues since it opened a week ago, but a walkout on Monday night shifted the pace.

Developing countries — whose leaders and representatives walked out of negotiations in the early hours of Monday morning — rejoined the talks late on Tuesday, said David Ainsworth, UN Environment Programme information officer. The walkout did change the tone of the meeting, he said, prompting a “flexibility not seen before”.

At a meeting into the early hours of Tuesday morning on “resource mobilisation” — summit speak for the contentious issue of financing — delegates discussed the “establishment of a new global biodiversity trust fund” said Ainsworth, who could not give further details.

“Significant negotiations are needed,” he said, of the first potential step towards a new fund. Developing countries, home to most of the biodiversity and intact ecosystems on earth, are calling on the developed world to meet a biodiversity funding gap estimated at trillions of rand.

South Africa’s support for key targets at the summit such as 30x30 — protecting 30% of the lands, oceans and inland waters — depends on financing being made available for implementation, said Nomfundo Tshabalala, director-general at the department of environment, forestry and fisheries.

“We need a comprehensive package for immediate implementation in support of the Global South,” Tshabalala said in an interview at the summit.

Chinese minister of ecology and the environment, Huang Runqiu, on Thursday appealed in a plenary session to ministers who flew into the city the previous day to help resolve the increasing number of disagreements between countries.

China holds the presidency of COP15 — twice delayed by the pandemic from taking place in China — and Canada is the host country.

“The key to the success of COP15 will be agreement on a package of issues comprising some of the most complex and difficult issues linked to the global biodiversity framework itself,” said Huang, listing thorny issues including:

• The global biodiversity framework itself
• Resource mobilisation
• Digital sequence information on genetic resources

“I am committed to ensuring that we are able to adopt all decisions before or on Monday,  December 19 2022,” Huang said. “I count on support for all parties and observers here at COP to play your part.”

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