While Trump’s administration in Washington has reduced environmental protection programs, delegates at the UN biological diversity talks on Thursday made modest progress in a series of measures for nature support.
Governments collected to deal with global losses of biodiversity that are unprecedented in human historyguided by ways in which people transformed the world.
Seismic geopolitical changes in recent weeks have passed during the conversation as the countries have negotiated at a large conference room, fighting for small steps towards consensus. Delegates have painstakingly negotiating about the language of diplomatic texts even as Britain announced a decrease in your foreign assistance for development And as the United States continued cutting their international assistance programs.
“We sent a light of hope,” said Susana Muhammad, an environmental minister in Colombia, who chaired the meeting. “The common good is possible – the environment, the protection of life and the ability to gather because of something greater than any national interest.”
Many developing countries are rich in biodiversity, but poor economic, and three days tense negotiations is focused on whether the new fund will be part of a $ 200 billion mobilization plan for a year to finance nature by 2030.
African and Latin American countries have requested a new fund, claiming that the way they currently get access to multilateral money is unjust and ineffective. But many donors have struggled about their proposed fund, saying that it would be expensive to establish and manage, diverting money that could otherwise be spent on the preservation itself. In the end, the delegates agreed on the decision -making procedure for a new fund to be created. Still, it was a hard -to -win compromise and the room erupted with applause.
Delegates also approved a framework for the progress of nations control Obligations for biodiversity taken in Montreal 2022which included an agreement on the conservation of 30 percent of the world country and water.
“We now have a folder of the way to ensure the finances needed to prevent the crisis of biodiversity and the funds for monitoring and progressing,” said Martin Harper, CEO of Birdlife International, science and advocacy groups. “These key steps must now be substantiated by the actual money of developed nations.”
The countries recognized the gap in financing biodiversity of $ 700 billion a year. In a significant agreement in 2022, they agreed to mobilize at least $ 200 billion a year by 2030. From public and private sources and find an additional $ 500 billion a year by 2030. By abolishing or reforming the non -nature damage. It is a huge amount of money in five years, even in the most favorable political climate.
The conversations took place with one country visibly absent: the United States.
“I can’t remember when they didn’t show up now, but it’s been a very, very long time,” said David Ainsworth, a secretary spokesman that governs the state diversity of the United Nations, which is basically a conversation, the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The United States has long held an unpleasant but still influential role in negotiations on global biological diversity. It is the only country in the world, with the exception of the Vatican, has not ratified the contract. Still, the United States has long had a significant impact with a brand of conversation.
Now all that has called into question. In recent years, at least 385 million US financing of biodiversity has been stripped of in international development, which Trump’s administration has been dismantling. Other flows of financing biodiversity of the US are also in danger.
The White House did not answer questions about its plans for financing biodiversity or why she did not send delegates to conversations.
Monica Medina, who was the envoy of the biodiversity in the biden administration, called the American absence in Rome “deafening silence” and said that reduction of the financing of biodiversity could result in devastating extinction.
“The US funds were a very important part of the way we kept some of the biodiversity we all love – elephants, whales, rhinos and polar bears – to get extinct,” Mrs. Medina said. “We may not be able to keep some of these amazing animals for our children and grandmothers without some of these funds.”
Meeting in Rome was a continuation of the interview held last fall in Cali, Colombia, officially called the 16th Party Conference Convention on Biological Diversity or Cop16. After achievement of a revolutionary agreement In extension in a new way to companies to compensate for the country to use their genetic material, the conversations lost the quorum and suspended.
One promising outcome of the conversation in Rome, according to stakeholders, was a move to begin the international dialogue of environmental ministers and finances from developed and developing countries.
During the negotiations, some delegates sent a scary petition for nature.
“Biological diversity cannot wait for a bureaucratic process that lasts forever, while the environmental crisis is still getting worse,” the Government Delegate from Bolivia said on Wednesday. “The forests are burning, the rivers are in agony and the animals disappear.”
