COP16 ended with an agreement in Rome, where a second round of negotiations was held after the failure in Cali (see EUROPE 13517/15).
The agreement proves that multilateralism still “works”, “despite a fragmented geopolitical landscape”, declared the European Commissioner for the Environment, Jessika Roswall, on Friday 28 February.
A first global stocktake of progress in implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – adopted at COP15 in Montreal in 2022 – will take place at COP17 in Yerevan in 2026.
In Rome, the Parties reached agreement on planning, monitoring, reporting and reviewing, as well as on the set of indicators for measuring progress. The review framework will enable the parties to measure their progress against common criteria. In addition to governments at Yerevan in 2026, indigenous peoples, civil society, the private sector and local communities will have access to planning, monitoring reporting and review mechanisms (PMRRs).
A roadmap has been devised up to the point of COP19 in 2030 with the aim of closing the biodiversity funding gap, which is “estimated at $700 billion”, according to Greenpeace. The parties have pledged to mobilise at least $200 billion a year by 2030, including $20 billion a year in international flows by 2025 ($30 billion by 2030).
In addition to public funding from countries, private and philanthropic resources, multilateral development banks, other sources of funding such as mixed funding and other approaches have been identified.
Mobilisation of resources. The main issue in the Rome discussions was the decision to create a new financing mechanism, which was postponed until COP18 in 2028, without any guarantees. There is nothing to indicate that the permanent financial instrument will be the subject of a new fund from 2030 onwards in the way in which the developing countries would like. According to article 21, the management of the financial mechanism may “be entrusted to one or more entities, new, reformed or existing”.
Developed countries maintain that the effectiveness of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which is part of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), needs to be assessed before a new instrument is created. This is a small victory for southern countries, which are critical of the governance of the GEF: the management of the financial mechanism will have to be “placed under the authority and guidance of the Conference of the Parties”. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)