COP16 Biodiversity
The Nepal Weekly 
March 5, 2024
The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will convene in October – November 2024. The 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (MOP) to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CP-MOP-11) and the fifth MOP to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of the Benefits Arising from their Utilization (NP-MOP-5) will also
The Bureau of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity met on 15 December and accepted Colombia’s offer to host the next United Nations Biodiversity Conference to be held from 21 October to 1 November 2024.
COP 16 will be the first Biodiversity COP since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP 15 in December 2022 in Montreal, Canada.
At COP 16, governments will be tasked with reviewing the state of implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Parties to the Convention are expected to show the alignment of their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) with the Framework. COP 16 will further develop the monitoring framework and advance resource mobilization for the Global Biodiversity Framework. Among other tasks, COP 16 is also due to finalize and operationalize the multilateral mechanism on the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources.
Canada was the last country to host the Biodiversity Summit, in December 2022, along with China, who, as the COP 15 Presidency, chaired the meeting. COP15 ended with a historic agreement to guide global action for nature towards 2030 following the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This plan includes concrete actions to halt and reverse the loss of nature, including protecting 30% of the planet and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems.
Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who is expected to be the Cop16 president, said the South American country would use the summit to ensure nature was a key part of the global environmental agenda in the year building up to the climate COP30 in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025, where countries will present new plans on how they will meet the Paris agreement.
“Although the climate is affecting biodiversity, nature is an answer to the climate crisis. It is not the only answer but it is a very important pillar and we want to position it very strongly to build towards Cop30 in Brazil,” Muhamad told the Guardian.
“We need to create the momentum and the role of Cop16 is to make nature a pillar of those discussions,” she said. “I think sometimes we divide the international environmental agenda into many issues … [but] we need to concentrate. For example, saving the Amazon is a practical and tangible action. The creation of multinational marine protected areas is a tangible action that has results for the climate and biodiversity.”
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has named CAli as the host city for Cop16 in October – the first biodiversity summit since a historic UN deal was made to halt the rampant loss of biodiversity, in Montreal, Canada at the end of 2022.
Governments heading to Cali, about 50 miles from Colombia’s Pacific coast, are expected to present national-level plans to meet the biodiversity targets, which include commitments to protect 30% of land and sea for nature and restore 30% of the planet’s degraded ecosystems.
Muhamad said will use the summit to try to negotiate stronger recognition and finance for megadiverse countries, which are home to a disproportionate amount of life on Earth.
The crisis in the natural world will feature heavily on the international stage in 2024: from Brazil’s G20 presidency, which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will use to focus on developing economic models to protect the Amazon, to the climate Cop29 in Azerbaijan.
Colombia has become a leading environmental voice on the global stage. At Cop28 in Dubai last year, the leftwing Petro announced that Colombia would back calls for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty, becoming the first large fossil fuel producer to do so. Petro said his country’s biodiversity would become the basis of its economic strength after the green transition.
David Cooper, the acting executive secretary for the UN convention on biological diversity, said Colombia would be an inspiring host for Cop16 and bring welcome leadership on the environment. He said Cop16 would be important for the implementation of this decade’s biodiversity targets, but added that he was concerned about farmers’ protests against environmental policies, and how they could affect countries’ commitments in the future.
“Protecting biodiversity and ecosystems are so fundamental to food and agriculture, yet we’re not managing to maintain a common interest,” he said.
“We’ve got major challenges. Political leaders really need to step up.”
