Biodiversity talks at the end of Rome

While the Trump administration in Washington was cutting environmental programs, delegates in the United Nations biological diversity talks in Rome made modest progress on Thursday a series of measures to support nature.

Governments gathered to address the losses of global biological diversity that are It has never been unprecedented in the history of mankindPayed by the ways around the world.

Seismic geopolitical changes have been overwhelmed in the horizon in recent weeks around the talks where countries have been negotiated in a large conference hall, fighting for small steps towards consensus. The delegates negotiated hard on the language of diplomatic texts even as Britain Discounts in development aid abroad announced And the United States She continued to cut international aid programs.

“We have sent a light of hope,” said Susanna Mohamed, Minister of Environment, who is leaving in Colombia, who chaired the meeting. “The public good – the environment, the protection of life and the ability to gather for something greater than every national interest – is possible.”

Many developing countries are rich in biological diversity but economically poor, and three days of tense negotiations focus on whether a new fund will be part of a plan to fill 200 billion dollars annually to finance nature by 2030.

African countries and Latin America have called for a new box, on the pretext that the way they currently enable them to reach multilateral funds are unfair and ineffective. But many donor countries have fought their proposed fund, saying that it will be charged with creating and managing, and transferring money that can be spent on the same conservation. In the end, the delegates agreed to a process to report if a new box will be created. However, it was a hard compromise and the room erupted in applause.

The delegates also approved a framework to monitor the progress of countries on The obligations of biological diversity provided in Montreal in 2022Which included an agreement to maintain 30 percent of global land and water.

“We now have a road map to secure the financial affairs required to avoid the biological diversity crisis, and the monitoring and review of progress,” said Martin Harper, CEO of Birdlife International, a scientific and invitation group. “These decisive steps must now be supported with real money from developed countries.”

The two countries have realized the $ 700 billion biological diversity gap per year. In a historical agreement in 2022, they agreed to mobilize at least $ 200 billion annually by 2030 from public and private sources and to find $ 500 billion a year by 2030 by gradually getting rid of subsidies or repairing nature. It is a large amount of money to be found in five years, even in the most suitable political climate.

The talks with one country are clearly absent: the United States.

“I cannot remember the last time the United States has not appeared, but it has been very long,” said David Einsworth, a spokesman for the Secretariat, who runs the United Nations Biodiversity Treaty, which is behind the talks.

A long time ago, the United States has played an embarrassing role, but nevertheless influencing global biological diversity negotiations. It is the only country in the world, with the exception of the Vatican, which has not ratified the treaty. However, the United States has a great impact for a long time From the talks of conversations.

Now, all that has been asked is a question. In recent years, at least 385 million dollars has been transferred from the financing of American biological diversity through the International Development Agency, which is dismantled by the Trump administration. Other currents of financing biodiversity in the United States are also at risk.

The White House did not answer questions about its plans to finance biological diversity or why he did not send a delegate to the conversations.

Monica Medina, who held the position of biodiversity envoy in the Biden administration, described the American absence in Rome “silent silence” and said that the cuts in financing biological diversity may lead to devastating extinction.

“American funding was a very important part of how we have preserved some biological diversity that we all love – elephants and whales alone and only – from extinction,” said Ms. Medina. “We may not be able to keep some of these amazing animals for our children and grandchildren without some of this financing.”

The meeting in Rome was an appeal of the talks held last autumn in Cali, Colombia, and officially called the Sixteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16. after Access to a pioneering agreement In additional time on a new way for companies to compensate the countries for their use of genetic materials, the talks lost the quorum and were suspended.

One of the most promising results of the Rome talks, according to stakeholders, was a step to start an international dialogue of the environment and financial ministers from developed and developing countries.

Over the course of the negotiations, some delegates presented sympathetic appeals.

“Biodiversity cannot wait for a bureaucratic process that lasts forever, while the environmental crisis continues in the worse,” said a government representative from Bolivia for the nations that were collected on Wednesday. “Forests are burned, rivers in torment and animals disappear.”