Posted on September, 11 2024

As the world’s eyes turn to Colombia for the UN Biodiversity Conference COP16, WWF sets out its expectations for the international meeting, hosted in the beautiful city of Cali, Colombia between 21 October and 1 November 2024.

With biodiversity loss showing no signs of abatement, and suffocating heat waves, droughts and floods gripping communities around the world, COP16 must serve as a moment to bolster equitable action, foster solutions and increase political backbone to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.

We have only five years left to deliver.

As per the latest updates from the UN Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity, a total of 61 Parties to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) have submitted national targets, and 15 have published National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).

With COP16 approaching, WWF is seriously concerned about the low number of submissions to date.

We know change isn’t easy and some countries are facing challenges such as a lack of data, political instability or insufficient finance, particularly for Global South nations, but a worrying ambition gap persists between what countries committed to in Montreal, and the action taken so far to recover nature. 

WWF urges countries to speed up the delivery of their own nature targets and step up support to other countries to do the same.

Nature remains our greatest ally in tackling the climate crisis, and it underpins our economies, livelihoods, health and wellbeing – strong implementation at the national level across nature and climate is needed to bolster sustainable economic development.

WWF’s five key expectations for COP16:

1. NBSAPs: COP16 must call on parties, who haven’t done so, to initiate or speed up NBSAPs and finalise, as well as implement them. Parties must also agree on the monitoring framework and the procedures for the global review.
2. Finance: COP16 must create greater confidence in the delivery of financial resources for KMGBF implementation; secure adequate, timely, accessible funding to Indigenous Peoples and local communities and other rights-holders; and encourage processes that align public, private and other financial flows.
3. Human-rights: COP16 should put in place concrete measures to mainstream biodiversity and address the drivers of biodiversity loss as well as include a whole-of-society and human-rights based approach in decisions about accountability.
4. Build synergies: COP16 has to pave the way to further integrate nature into climate actions at upcoming climate COPs and recognise the links between nature peace and conflict.
5. Equitable benefit sharing: COP16 should finalise the multilateral mechanism for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from nature’s genetic information (known as ‘DSI’).

Implementation of the KMGBF is not only the work of environment ministries, meaningful change requires all of government bodies, businesses, civil society, communities and everyone in between to engage by taking transformative action to address unsustainable consumption that is driving nature loss.

2030 is just five years away, with key global goals on nature, climate and sustainable development coalescing.

Putting in place ambitious nature action plans that at their core are inclusive and respectful of human rights, is the first step to delivering a fairer, more peaceful world – so we cannot fall at the first hurdle.