“This was the People’s COP! And nobody can take that from us.”

—Susana Muhamad, president of 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Colombia

COP16, held in Colombia in October 2024, had 23,000 attendees, the largest number ever in the history of these UN biodiversity conventions. If you wish to have a solid understanding of the key outcomes during the two-week conference, see https://tinyurl.com/cop-outcomes

A global agreement on stopping biodiversity loss cannot come soon enough, as the average size of monitored wildlife populations has plummeted by 73% in just 50 years, according to the Living Planet Report 2024, produced by WWF in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London. Yet just 44 out of 196 countries—22%—had come up with new biodiversity plans by the time COP16 came to a rather abrupt conclusion as attendees were anxious not to miss their flights home.

“Two years on, the vast majority of Nature targets agreed in Montreal regrettably currently still feel like unfunded words on paper,” said Catherine Weller, director of global policy at Fauna & Flora. There is much to do before the next conference, which is scheduled to take place in 2026. It is now clear that the United States, which has not signed up to the treaty, will continue to be on the sidelines for the biodiversity conferences.

The concept of “mainstreaming biodiversity” was lauded at COP16. This means that the impact on biodiversity of any development or action, whether it be local, regional or national, would have to be taken into account and the protection of Nature assured before the project would be permitted to go ahead. But it is not just governments who need to commit to mainstreaming biodiversity, but all of society, as I will discuss in this article.

The link between biodiversity and health was also championed at the conference in terms of national policies, and it was stressed that biodiversity loss is inextricably connected with and detrimental to the health of billions of people. 

After an extra day of negotiations and hard-earned efforts to make breakthroughs for world Indigenous peoples to have a seat at the table with very clear decision-making rights on how negotiations must proceed, it seemed that the city of Cali, where the conference took place, erupted in a celebration for Nature. But amidst these heartfelt demonstrations of joy it cannot go unmentioned that 79 environmental defenders were murdered in Colombia in 2023, more than anywhere else in the world by a wide margin – and this in juxtaposition to having COP16 welcomed in one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. Clearly a complex struggle is taking place between avarice and national ecological wellbeing, and is as startling as it is horrendous! Tragically, Colombia’s love/hate relationship with Nature reflects what is happening in the rest of the world.

One outcome of the conference is that the delegations from 180-plus countries voted to request that pharmaceutical corporations and other users of digital genetic information give 1% of their revenue to help secure what is called the Cali Fund. This is a new benefit-sharing mechanism for genetic resources. As things stand now, any corporation can take digital genetic information of life on Earth free of charge from three huge databases and not give back any of its profits from this exercise to the countries where that biodiversity is found. Take Moderna, which made US$30 billion from creating one of the vaccines for Covid-19 from many genetic sequences of respiratory viruses. If the 1% levy is implemented, a billion dollars a year could be raised to support global biodiversity, and Indigenous groups would finally be at the centre of the discussions. Sounds fantastic, right? Well, not quite: the corporations are not required to contribute, but will only do so voluntarily, and we all know where those aspirations have taken us in the past… Nowhere.  

“Leaders can show their commitment to real action by breaking the silos for climate-biodiversity action, direct access to finance for Indigenous peoples and local communities who do the real lifting on biodiversity protection, ocean and forest protection, and a payment mechanism for corporations who profit off digital information from Nature to finally pay what they owe to the world for taking these natural resources,” declared An Lambrechts, Biodiversity Politics Expert at Greenpeace International, who went on to say, following the disappointing lack of consensus that pitted the global north, including Canada, against the global south, which desperately needs funds to move forward on biodiversity actions: “Closing the finance gap was not merely some moral obligation, but necessary to the protection of people and Nature that grows more urgent each day… With one week to go until COP29 begins, the non-decision on a fund damages trust between global south and north countries.” 

Perhaps you recall the optimism in evidence at the Montreal biodiversity conference in 2022. All the Canadian federal politicians gave speeches, along with François Legault, the premier of Québec. Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, was in the middle of negotiations there, and subsequently Canada gave C$200 million to the Global Biodiversity Framework and another C$150 million for developing countries to protect Nature. Even Québec gave millions towards that goal, being the only sub-national state in the world to do so. 

It looked as if Canada was going to be a leader at the Cali summit in Colombia and pass the torch to help implement the 23 targets initiated in Montreal for 2030. But this has not happened. In fact, neither Guilbeault nor any other high-ranking Canadian politician showed up. There was no parliamentary delegation at COP16. Guilbeault blamed the no-show on provincial intransigence. He said provinces like Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia have refused to work closely with the federal government to protect biodiversity.

Still, Guilbeault should have gone to Cali. That would have sent the message that Canada must continue to support the international work for Nature. Bill C-73, the Nature Accountability Act, which has stalled since being introduced in parliament in June 2024, is one example of the lack of political will to set in place critical priorities that are necessary if Canada is to help push back on global biodiversity loss. The aim of the proposed legislation is to hold Canada accountable for its obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which sets targets to protect biodiversity by 2030.

https://tinyurl.com/Canada-accountability

It’s lamentably the case that most Canadians appear to put little value on protecting Nature in their daily lives. Can this be simply be due to apathy, or is it the outcome of a deliberate attempt to under-educate adult citizens?

Even organizations that profess to take Nature conservation seriously are blindsided by other considerations. As I’ve expressed before in these articles, universities and other educational establishments do not promote care for Nature as their core value and hence embed in their curriculums those Nature commitments, because the people responsible are themselves the product of a century of disengagement with Nature. 

If Bishop’s University, as an example, has no university-wide symposiums on COP16, on COP29 on climate, or on the desertification COP in December, it’s because the mandate to educate young people about biodiversity always takes a back seat. The same lack of enthusiasm on the part of professors and an uninspired administration for encouraging and engaging students in the 2022 COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal was truly astounding. The student body knew nothing about the most important biodiversity gathering of their lifetime, which was taking place on their doorstep! If people are to move on the climate/biodiversity crisis, the status quo must give way. This is an emergency, and school classes need to reflect that.

Perhaps, instead of having an entire reading week without classes, a day or more can be put aside for students and faculty to reflect on planetary solutions. Sadly, this has not happened. University deans have shown neither mentorship nor leadership regarding these vital concerns. Their future careers should be stained by this failure to act in the interests of their students. 

“If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite—the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment—is a source of dismay… and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.” 

―Wade Davis