When COP16, the 16th Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, sputtered to a halt on Saturday November 2, a lot of work was left unfinished.
Friday’s marathon all-night session failed to yield a consensus on establishing a biodiversity fund to help less-developed countries protect habitat. By morning, many of the delegates had departed, and the session no longer had enough members to continue.
This year’s Convention on Biodiversity in Cali, Colombia built on the Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at COP15. That conference, held in Montreal in 2022, adopted a conservation goal of “30×30” – protecting 30% of land and water and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030. An interim goal required the member countries to draw up plans showing how they would hit that target.
More than half the member countries did not submit those plans. Many less-developed nations stipulated that they lack the capacity to hire teams to conduct ecosystem surveys and research. Canada submitted its biodiversity blueprints earlier this year, along with a $15 million pledge for Birds Canada to support migratory bird habitat and healthy ecosystems with the Conserva Aves initiative in Central and South America.
Vancouver-based Ecojustice hosted a panel of Indigenous women leaders on implementing global biodiversity goals using a rights-based strategy that includes Indigenous legal traditions and safety for women. The panel included Lauren Terbasket, lead negotiator with the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, Yakawilas Coreen Child from Kwakiutl First Nation, and Cleo Reece, knowledge holder with Fort McMurray First Nation.
Vancouver Island’s Awi’nakola Foundation took the opportunity to highlight the looming threat of biodiversity offsets. “We should be making leaps and bounds away from false nature-based solutions like biodiversity offsetting schemes and carbon markets and instead developing pathways for the rights of nature to respect flora, funga, and fauna,” said campaign director Mark Worthing. The foundation calls for returning land to Indigenous people and a moratorium on logging primary old growth forests in Canada.
At the COP16 “Green Zone,” dozens of groups held press conferences, rallies, and protests to raise awareness and press for change. Peace Brigades International reported on rallies denouncing biodiversity credits, dispossession of Indigenous people, and state-sponsored violence against environmentalists, for example.
Protected areas can come at a cost to Indigenous people, the Swift Foundation pointed out before Montreal’s COP15. “How it’s working right now is a militarized form of conservation. You have guards with guns, people imposing fines, building fences, and kicking people out of their traditional lands.”
But by the end of the two-week conference, Indigenous environmentalists were celebrating the creation of a new Subsidiary Body for Indigenous Peoples on traditional knowledge, formalizing what was an ad-hoc working group for two decades. The new agency gives Indigenous people a standing committee at biodiversity COPs for the first time.
