Nations agree on plan to finance nature protection, at second attempt

A gathering of countries in Rome this week agreed a plan to generate $200bn (R3.72-trillion) in finance a year by 2030 to halt and begin to reverse the destruction of the natural world.

The UN's COP16 talks on biodiversity began last October in Colombia but failed at that time to reach an agreement on key elements, including who would contribute, how the money would be gathered and who would oversee it.

US President Donald Trump is scaling back the involvement of the world's biggest economy in development finance, so the agreement late on Thursday night was a welcome boost for global deal-making.

Led by negotiators from the so-called Brics countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the final deal saw delegates agree on a plan to find at least $200bn per year from a range of sources to protect nature.

COP16 president and Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad heralded the agreement as a triumph for nature and for multilateralism in a year when the political landscape is increasingly fragmented and diplomatic frictions are growing.

"From Cali to Rome we have sent a light of hope that still the common good, the environment and the protection of life and the capacity to come together for something bigger than the national interest is possible," she said.

Delegates also agreed to explore whether a new biodiversity fund needed to be created, as requested by some developing countries, or whether an existing fund like the one run by the Global Environment Facility would be enough. The GEF has provided more than $23 billion to thousands of nature projects in the past 30 years.

"Everyone with the spirit of compromise made concessions, and in general for developing countries the result was very positive," Maria Angelica Ikeda, director of the department of environment at the Brazilian ministry of foreign affairs, told Reuters as the plenary wrapped up on Thursday night.

"I come out of the meeting happy and optimistic."

The need for action has only increased in recent years, with the average size of wildlife populations down 73% since 1970, data from the WWF's 2024 "Living Planet Report" shows.

Although the US was never a signatory to the biodiversity convention, it was one of the biggest funders of nature and biodiversity efforts. Its current freeze on foreign aid has had broad impacts, from anti-poaching efforts suspended in South Africa to funding cuts at big conservation NGOs.

The cuts are also raising concerns the US will not participate in the next round of replenishments for the GEF, which are under way.

The spectre of aid cuts was also felt in negotiating rooms, fuelling frustration among some countries from Brazil to Egypt and Panama that rich nations were not fulfilling their obligations to deliver grant money.

Latest OECD data estimates a total of $15.4bn (R286.52bn) of international biodiversity finance was disbursed in 2022, with 83% of this coming from public sources.

The Zoological Society of London's policy head Georgina Chandler urged governments to fulfil their commitment to $30bn (R558.16bn) per year by 2030 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

The deal in Rome helps lay out the steps needed to implement the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) deal, agreed in 2022 and which committed countries to a range of environmental targets.

Countries also agreed a set of technical rules for monitoring progress towards the GBF and secured a commitment for countries to publish a national report on their biodiversity plans for the COP17 nature talks.

The talks come at the start of a busy year for international climate diplomacy as countries meet at various events to discuss plastics pollution, preserving the oceans and meeting global development goals, ahead of the COP30 climate talks in November.

Reuters