The 16th so-called Conference of Parties (COP16) to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) must make progress on the creation of monitoring and funding mechanisms to achieve 23 goals agreed in Canada two years ago to "halt and reverse" nature destruction.
Themed "Peace with Nature," the summit has been bogged down, however, in disagreement about modalities of funding.
Negotiators are also split on how best to share the profits of digitally sequenced plant and animal genetic data -- used in medicines and cosmetics -- with the communities they come from.
Delegates have no time to waste.
There are only five years left to achieve the 23 UN targets, which include placing 30 percent of land, water and ocean under protection by 2030.
"Every day, we lose more species. Every minute, we dump a garbage truck of plastic waste into our oceans, rivers and lakes. Make no mistake. This is what an existential crisis looks like," Guterres told delegates.
A report issued by nature watchdogs Monday said only 17.6 percent of land and inland waters, and 8.4 percent of the ocean and coastal areas, are protected and conserved.
And an update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened animals and plants found that more than one in three species of tree are at risk of extinction worldwide.
These include thousands that provide humans with timber, medicine, food and fuel.
More than 46,000 plant and animal species out of some 166,000 assessed are now threatened with extinction.
"What we are living through is worse than the apocalypse," COP16 host Gustavo Petro, the president of biodiversity-rich Colombia, told delegates.
- 'More money' -
Guterres said humans must make the switch from "plundering... to preserving" nature's bounty. Continued destruction would only increase "hunger, displacement, and armed conflicts."
"Nature is life. And yet we are waging a war against it," the UN secretary-general told COP16 delegates.
"No country, rich or poor, is immune to the devastation inflicted by climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and pollution. These environmental crises are intertwined," he added.
To this end, he urged the 196 countries signed up to the UN biodiversity convention to act on the commitments made two years ago when they adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This means adopting detailed national biodiversity protection plans, only 36 of which have been submitted to date.
Furthermore, "finance promises must be kept and support to developing countries accelerated," said Guterres, calling for new public and private pledges.
So far, countries have made about $400 million in commitments to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) created to meet the 23 targets.
This includes pledges of $163 million announced this week by Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the Canadian province of Quebec.
COP president Susana Muhamad, Colombia's environment minister, told AFP on Monday the GBFF needs "more money."
The Kunming-Montreal framework determined that countries must mobilize $20 billion per year by 2025 from rich nations to help developing ones. The GBFF is just part of this funding.
Of the $20 billion goal, $15 billion a year was reached for 2022, according to the OECD.
COP16 has attracted a record 23,000 registered delegates and some 1,200 journalists to Cali, according to organizers, making it the biggest UN biodiversity summit ever.
Tens of thousands of activists and residents have flocked to its so-called "green zone" set up for cultural activities, demonstrations and celebrations.
More than 10,000 police and soldiers were deployed to safeguard the event which had received threats from a Colombian guerrilla group. No incidents have been reported.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Guterres is in Cali with the heads of state of Colombia, Armenia, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti and Suriname, as well as 115 government ministers and 44 vice-ministers to add impetus to the talks that started with lower-level delegates on October 21.
The COP16 summit runs until Friday.
Earth's biodiversity crisis in numbers
Cali, Colombia (AFP) Oct 28, 2024 -
The experts' assessment is clear: humans are the major threat to Earth's land, seas and all the living things they shelter, including ourselves.
The COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, enters its second week Monday to assess, and ramp up, progress towards achieving 23 targets agreed in Canada two years ago to halt and reverse nature destruction by 2030.
The science in numbers:
- 2/3 of oceans degraded -
Three-quarters of Earth's surface has already been significantly altered and two-thirds of oceans degraded by humankind's rapacious consumption, according to the IPBES intergovernmental science and policy body on biodiversity.
Globally, over a third of inland wetlands declined from 1970 to 2015 -- a rate three times that of forest loss.
"Land degradation through human activities is undermining the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people," according to the IPBES's latest report.
But it highlights that not all is lost, and the benefits of restoration would be 10 times higher than the costs.
One of the 23 targets of the so-called Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is for 30 percent of degraded land, inland water, marine and coastal ecosystems to be under "effective restoration" by 2030.
- A million species threatened -
Over a quarter of plants and animals assessed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species risk extinction.
According to the IPBES, about a million species are at risk.
Pollinators, essential to the reproduction of plants and three-quarters of crops that feed humanity, are at the forefront, dying off fast.
Corals -- on which the food and labor of some 850 million people depend -- are another striking example.
These animals, whose reefs provide feeding and spawning grounds for a multitude of creatures, could all but disappear in a world 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial levels.
This is the upper limit of average planet warming the world is seeking not to exceed under the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing Earth-warming greenhouse gases.
- Five horsemen of the apocalypse -
For the UN, the biodiversity crisis has five causes, all human-induced and nicknamed the "Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
They are habitat destruction (for agriculture or human infrastructure), over-exploitation of resources such as water, climate change, pollution and the spread of invasive species.
Climate change is likely to become the main driver of biodiversity destruction by 2050, experts say.
- Half of GDP -
More than half (55%) of the world's gross domestic product, some $58 trillion, depends "heavily or moderately" on nature and its services, according to auditing giant PwC.
Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, the food and beverage industry and construction are the sectors most exposed to nature loss.
Pollination services, safe water, and disease control are other, nigh-incalculable, benefits derived from nature.
Indian economist Pavan Sukhdev, who led a research project entitled The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) had estimated that biodiversity loss comes at a cost of between 1.35 trillion and 3.1 trillion euros ($1.75 trillion and $4 trillion) per year.
- $2.6 billion in subsidies -
A report in September by the Earth Track monitor said environmentally harmful subsidies to industries were worth at least $2.6 trillion, equivalent to 2.5 percent of global GDP.
This dwarfs the Kunming-Montreal framework's target of mobilizing $200 billion per year by 2030 for nature protection.
Harmful industries that benefit from subsidies include fisheries, agriculture and fossil fuel producers.
Another target of the biodiversity framework is to reduce harmful subsidies and tax benefits by "at least $500 billion per year" by 2030.
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